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Clark University

Introduction: Development Theory and Environment in an Age of Market TriumphalismAuthor(s): Richard Peet and Michael WattsSource: Economic Geography, Vol. 69, No. 3, Environment and Development, Part 1 (Jul.,1993), pp. 227-253Published by: Clark UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/143449 .

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Introduction: Development Theory and Environment inan Age of Market Triumphalism*Richard Peet

School of Geography, Clark University, Worcester, MA 01610Michael WattsDepartment of Geography, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720

The world knows much better now what[development] policies work and whatpolicies do not. . . . [Now] we almost[never] hear calls for alternative strategiesbased on harebrained schemes. (WorldBank Official, cited in Broad 1993, 154)Driven by the momentous political and

economic changes of the 1980s and byapocalyptic visions of impending globalecological crisis, the environmental ques-tion has returned with a vengeance(Turner et al. 1990; World Bank 1992).With the return of the repressed, thelanguage of "sustainability" (however ill-defined) becomes endemic, appearingwith as much frequency in World Bankpublications as in the rhetoric of grass-roots movements. Further, issues of pov-erty have become inseparable from thedevelopment-environment debate; eradi-cating poverty through enhancing andprotecting livelihood strategies is as muchan environmental sustainability issue as aresource endowment question. The envi-ronmental crisis is, in short, a povertyproblem (World Bank 1992).An emphasis on nature-society relationsin the context of concerns over thegrowing polarity of world income (UNDP1992) has emerged in a distinctive fin de

* The editors thank Susanna Hecht, KentMathewson, and Davin Ramphall for theirhelp in evaluating the articles contained in thisspecial issue on Environment and Develop-ment (Vol. 69, Nos. 3 and 4). Some of thepapers derive from a project initiated byLakshmanYapaand Ben Wisner; their effortsin assembling contributions are much appreci-ated.

single intellectual and political economicenvironment. First, the collapse of manyactually existing socialisms and the rise ofa neoliberal hegemony in policy circlessignals for many the exhaustion of a leftistmodel of development. Second, the resur-gence of environmentalist concerns artic-ulated increasingly in terms of their globalcharacter (e.g., global warming) has beenattached to a revival of the Malthusianspecter (World Bank 1992). And third, therise of political ecology, which offered apowerful Marxist-influenced analysis ofresource use and environmental conserva-tion during the 1970s and early 1980s, hasincreasingly been shaped and challengedby wide-ranging debates within socialtheory. In the late 1980s and early 1990spost-Marxism and poststructuralism be-gan to more obviously affect this area ofscholarship, and the emergence of a kindof postmodern development discourse isone of its products (Slater 1992). Indeed,poststructural concerns with power, dis-course, and cultural difference haveproven compelling in the rethinking ofboth development theory and politicalecology, as this issue of Economic Geogra-phy suggests.We wish to situate the current discus-sions around development and the envi-ronment on this expansive canvas ofintellectual and political-economic fer-ment, and more specifically to provide abroad context, stressing recent poststruc-tural tendencies, for the contributions tothis special issue (Vol. 69, No. 3 is Part 1;Vol. 69, No. 4 is Part 2). Four dimensionsseem to frame the recent study ofenvironment-development relations: (1)

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228 ECONOMICGEOGRAPHYthe debate on rationality, truth, anddiscourse, particularly that version whichsees rationalitys a specificallyWesternmode of thinking entral o an under-standingf whathascome obe known s"development";2)a mappingfdevelop-ment deasas a means orunderstandingimportantshifts and realignmentsndevelopmentheoryandpracticeduringthe 1980s and 1990s; (3) discussions oflines of researchand debatewithinabroadly efinedpolitical cology; nd(4)recentdiscussionsf socialand environ-mentalmovements hat redefinetheircausesand contents.We surveyeachinturn before concludingwith a briefstatementfposition.Rationality, Discourse, andthe West

Cogito ergo sumDescartesPoststructural theory's fascination withdiscourseoriginatesn its rejectionofmodern onceptionsf truth. n modern

philosophyruth esides nthecorrespon-dencebetween nexternalizedeality ndinternalmentalrepresentationsf thatreality.Enlightenmenthilosophyonsid-eredall minds o be structurallyimilar,truths o be universal,nowledge oten-tiallythe samefor everyone.FollowingWittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey, thepostmodern philosopher Rorty (1979, 171)arguesconverselythat the notion ofknowledge s representationhouldbeabandonedn favor fknowledge ithoutfoundations:knowledges a matterofconversationndof socialpractice,atherthanas anattempto mirror ature." orFoucault (1972, 1973, 1980; Dreyfus andRabinow 1982; Rabinow 1986), each soci-ety has its regime of truth, with control ofthe"politicalconomy f truth"onstitut-ing partof thepower f the greatpoliticaland economic pparatuses.hesediffuse"truth,"particularlyn the modernformof "scientific discourse," through thesocialbody, in a process nfusedwithsocial onfrontation.n the poststructural

view, then, truths are statements withinsocially produced discourses, rather than"facts"about reality.

Discourse TheoryA "discourse" is a particular area oflanguage use related to a certain set ofinstitutions and expressing a particularstandpoint. Concerned with a given rangeof objects, it emphasizes some concepts atthe expense of others. Significations andmeanings are integral parts of discoursesjust as, for example, the meaning of wordsdepends on where a statement containingthem is made (Macdonnell 1986, 1-4).Hence, for Barnes and Duncan (1992, 8),discourses are "frameworks that embraceparticularcombinations of narratives,con-cepts, ideologies and signifying practices,each relevant to a particular realm ofsocial action." Discourses vary amongwhat are often competing, even conflict-ing, cultural, racial, gender, class, re-gional, and other differing interests, al-though they may uneasily coexist withinrelatively stable ("hegemonic")discursiveformations.Discourse theory came to prominencein the context of a critique of Westernrationality. Horkheimer and Adorno(1991) found European rationality liberat-ing, but at the cost of political alienation.Foucault saw reason as dogmatic anddespotic; Western rationality's claim touniversal validity is "a mirage associatedwith economic domination and politicalhegemony" (Foucault 1980, 54). But asYoung (1990, 9) points out, a specialinterest of the French philosophical tradi-tion concerns the relation of the Enlight-enment, with its universal truth claims, toEuropean colonialism; the new stress onthis relation has stimulated a "relentlessanatomization of the collusive forms ofEuropean knowledge." Hence Derrida(1971, 213):"Metaphysics-the white myth-ology which reassembles and reflects theculture of the West: the white man takeshis own mythology, Indo-European myth-ology, his own logos, that is, the mythos ofhis idiom, for the universal form



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DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND ENVIRONMENT 229of that he must still wish to call Reason."In this view, enlightenment reason is aregional logic reflecting a history ofgrowing global supremacy rather than auniversal path to absolute truth. Reason,in a word, is ideological.The Collusive Dialectic

The connections between rationality,truth, discourse, and the global system ofpower relations led poststructural dis-course theory in interesting directions,some of which we will briefly pursue. Oneof these is the idea that regional discur-sive traditions are capable of capturingeven oppositional modes of thought, sothat the dialectic, perhaps the main logicof critical thinking, may be exposed asEurocentric. Simply put, the argument isthat the Hegelian-Marxist dialectic (pre-sumed to lie squarely in the EuropeanEnlightenment tradition) expresses a selfsearching for power over that which is"other." Young (1990, 2-3) argues that thistheorizes a system of European domina-tion over the colonial world, so that:"Hegel articulates a philosophical struc-ture of the appropriationof the other as aform of knowledge which uncannily simu-lates the project of nineteenth centuryimperialism." In this view, Marxism'suniversalizing narrative of the unfoldingof a rational system of world history isseen as a negative form of the history ofEuropean imperialism and hence a con-ceptual system that remains collusivelyEurocentric. It is from such a position thatpoststructural-postmodern thinkers dis-trust "totalizing" systems of knowledge,stress the singular and contingent, andseek a knowledge that respects the otherwithout absorbing it. We comment criti-cally on this version of dialectical totalityin our conclusion.Discursive Relations

A second (related) theme of particularlygeographic interest involves the expan-sion of the social production of regionaldiscourse through reflection on the other

to a critique of discursive relations be-tween hegemonic and dominated regions.The outstanding exemplar of the critiqueof European discourses on the non-European other, Said's (1979) Oriental-ism, argues that "the Orient" helpeddefine Europe as its contrasting image,idea, personality, and experience (i.e., as"its other"). Orientalism is a "mode ofdiscourse with supporting institutions,vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doc-trines, even colonial bureaucracies andcolonial styles" (Said 1979, 2) throughwhich European culture was able to"produce" the Orient (politically, imagina-tively, and so forth)in the post-Enlighten-ment period. Because of the limitations onthought and action imposed by thisdiscourse, the Orient was not, and is not,a free subject of thought or action.Extending to geography Vico's observa-tion that humans make their own historybased on what they know, Said findslocalities, regions, and geographic sectorslike Orient and Occident to be humanly"made." Subsequent work extends thisnotion of "discourse on the other" toEuropean conceptions of the Americas(Hulme 1986; Todorov 1987) and, in anambitious study, to a history of thedifferent European conceptions ("sciencefictions") of "alien cultures" (McGrane1989).More can be learned about this projectfrom discussions appearing subsequent toSaid's main work and playing on it. Saidhas been criticized for assuming a singularpolitical-ideological European intention(imperial possession), an instrumentalistrelation between power and knowledge,and a monolithic conception of the dis-course of Orientalism (Bhaba 1983a). ForBhaba(1983b, 19), conversely, representa-tions of the Orient in Western discourseevidence a profound ambivalence toward"that otherness which is at once an objectof dislike and derision." Colonial dis-course is founded on anxiety, and colonialpower itself has a conflictual economy-hence colonial stereotyping of subjectpeoples is a complex, ambivalent, contra-dictory mode of representation, as anxious



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230 ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHYas it is assertive. For Baudet (1965, vii),therefore: "the European images of non-European man are not primarily, if at all,descriptions of real people, but ratherprojections of his own nostalgia andfeelings of inadequacy." Likewise, in ananalysis of mimicry, Bhaba (1984) arguesthat when colonized people become "Eu-ropean" the resemblance is both familiarand menacing to the colonists, subvertingthe identity of that which is beingrepresented. Furthermore, the hybridthat articulates colonial and native knowl-edges may reverse the process of domina-tion as repressed knowledges enter sub-liminally, enabling subversion, interven-tion, and resistance (Bhaba 1985).Subaltern Discourse

A third complex, controversial, andunresolved issue is whether, and in whatways, discourse theory can recover thevoices of oppressed peoples. Somethinglike this is the aim of the subaltern studiesgroup (Guha and Spivak 1988). RanajitGuha's original position combined Gram-scian Marxismwith Foucauldian discoursetheory in a study of peasant insurgency incolonial India. Guha's (1983, 2-3) argu-ment is that colonial historiography de-nied the peasant recognition as a subjectof history. Acknowledging peasants asmakers of rebellion means attributing tothem a consciousness (cf. Gramsci 1971,53). Guha tries to identify what, followingGramsci, he calls the (recurring)elemen-tary aspects in rebel consciousness, hismain theme being negation-the peas-ant's subaltern identity includes an im-posed negative consciousness, fromwhich, however, revolt was often derivedthrough inversion (as with the fight forprestige).For Spivak (1987, 197), the mostsignificant outcome of this revision is that"the agency of change is located in theinsurgent or the 'subaltern."' Spivak(1987, 206-7), however, sees the subalternstudies group's attempt to retrieve asubaltern or peasant consciousness as astrategic adherence to essentialist and

humanist notions that can be subjected toan antihumanist critique even as thesubaltern group draws many of itsstrengths from that critique. As long asWestern, modernist notions of subjectiv-ity and consciousness are left unexam-ined, the subaltern will be narrativized intheoretically alternative, but politicallysimilar, ways (MacCabe 1987, xv). Spiv-ak's alternative to the project of retrievingconsciousness involves the Foucauldian(and structuralist) notion of subject-positions, in which the "subject" of astatement is not its immediate author but"aparticular,vacant place that may in factbe filled by different individuals" (Fou-cault 1972, 95; but see also Foucault 1980,196-97). Spivak seeks to reinscribe themultiple, and often contradictory, subject-positions assigned by colonial relations ofcontrol and insurgency, so that a subalternwoman, for example, is subjected to threemain domination systems: class, ethnicity,and gender. From this she reaches theextreme, and for us indefensible, positionthat subaltern women have no subjectposition from which to speak: "the subal-tern cannot speak" (Spivak 1988, 308).Regional Discursive Formations

These three themes hardly exhaust thepotentials of the various poststructuralversions of discourse theory. While re-maining ambivalent overall, we find thesespecific positions attractive, in thatthrough them poststructural theory islinked more directly than usual to thecauses of oppressed peoples, the geo-graphic dimensions of power relations,and the relentless critique of everythingthat exists. We find particularly sugges-tive the connection between centralizedpower articulated through hegemonicdiscourses and the discourses of domi-nated peoples. We would theorize this interms of what might be called regionaldiscursive formations (cf. Lowe 1991).Certain modes of thought, logics, themes,styles of expression, and typical meta-phors run through the discursive historyof a region, appearing in a variety of



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DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND ENVIRONMENT 231forms, disappearing occasionally, only toreappear with even greater intensity innew guises. A regional discursive forma-tion is, however, as important for thetopics and themes it disallows-its ab-sences, silences, repressed ideas, margin-alized statements. In a regional discursiveformation even competing notions oftenuse the same metaphors, interpret insimilar ways, perhaps even think withsimilar logics. Hence oppositional posi-tions may be partly captured by hege-monic discourses, but the hegemonicitself also shifts to incorporate particularlyinsightful, vivid oppositional images. Wewould argue that regional discursiveformations originate in, and display theeffects of, certain physical, political-economic, and institutional settings, butthat discursive formations grounded inmaterial, political, or ideological powersupremacies demonstrate a continual ten-dency to extend over spaces with greatlydifferent characteristics and discursivetraditions.We find particularlyrelevant tothe geographic imagination theoreticalnotions dealing with the power-saturatedinteractions and interchanges betweenregional discursive formations, articula-tions which leave no discourse intact. Wewould also stress the theme of thediscourse on nature as a powerful, almostprimordial, element in discursive forma-tion.The Western, modernist discursive for-mation, formulated during momentouschanges in global power relations, incontrol over nature, and in science andtechnology, has as its dynamic theme thecore concept of "development." In thefollowing section we map out recenttendencies in the content and meaning ofthis concept as a case study of the generalnotion of regional discursive formations.Mapping DevelopmentDiscourse: A Cartographyof Power

Anynewlong-term trategy, o be credible,shouldbe basedon a hard-headed xamina-tion of the lessons of the past. The first

generation after independence assumedthat development meant achieving North-ern standards of living. . . . The strategyfailed . . . because it was based on poorlyadapted foreign models. The vision wascouched in the idiom of modernization....In recentyears,however,manyelementsofthis vision have been challenged.Alterna-tive paths have been proposed.They giveprimacyto agriculturaldevelopment, andemphasize not only prices, markets andprivate sector activities but also capacitybuilding, grassroots participation, decen-tralization and sound environmentalpractices. . . . The time has come to putthem fully into practice.(emphasisadded;WorldBank1989, 36).Failed modernization, alternative vi-sions, grassroots participation, environ-mental sustainability: this is not a lexicontypically associated with the most influen-tial advocate of global capitalist develop-ment. Could the World Bank really haveembraced the popular energies of "ordi-nary people" in the name of sustainabledevelopment alternatives? At the heart ofits long-term strategy, says the bank, isthe desire to release energies that permit

"ordinary people . . . to take charge oftheir lives" (emphasis added; World Bank1989, 4). The subtext is a recognition,indeed celebration, of democratizationmovements which have attended thefrontal assault (led in large measure byglobal regulatory institutions like theInternational Bankfor Reconstruction andDevelopment and the International Mon-etary Fund) on various forms of state-administered development.The "new" World Bank approach maybe contested at many levels: its ability torewrite history to suit the bank's ownideological purpose, its unwillingness toassume accountability for past activities,its flimsy commitment to the environ-ment, its partial and limited interpreta-tion of sustainability, and so on. As withmany actors in the business of develop-ment, the World Bank's proposals arestrikingnot for their newness but for their

historical continuity, hence their links towhat might be called a cartography ofdevelopment discourses. Unlike the bank,



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232 ECONoMicGEOGRAPHYwhich believes that the 1950s represents ahistoric watershed with the arrival ofdevelopment thinking in Africa and else-where,' postwar theorizing recycles keydevelopment ideas which appear, disap-pear, and reappear under changed politi-cal-economic and ideological circum-stances (i.e., regional discursive forma-tions). These ideas may have real powerand endurance, but, as Hall (1989, 390)rightly notes, "they do not acquire politi-cal force independent of the constellationof institutions and interests alreadypresent there."

A Genealogy of "Development"While "development" came into theEnglish language in the eighteenth cen-tury, with its root sense of unfolding, itwas granted a new lease on life by theevolutionary ideas of the nineteenth cen-tury (Rist 1991; Williams 1976). As aconsequence, development has rarelybroken from organicist notions of growthor from a close affinity with teleologicalviews of history, science, and progress inthe West (Parajuli 1991). By the end ofthe nineteenth century, for example, itwas possible to talk of societies in a stateof "frozen development." Even radicalalternative intellectual traditions, Marx-isms among them, became associated withlinearity, scientism, and modernization,universalisms which carried the appeal ofsecular utopias constructed with rational-ity and enlightenment. Development wasmodernity on a planetary scale, in whichthe West was the "transcendental pivot ofanalytical reflection" (Slater 1992, 312).2

In Keywords, Williams (1976, 104-6)notes that the complex genealogy ofdevelopment in Western thinking can"limit and confuse virtually any generaliz-ing description of the current worldorder"; rather, it is in the analysis of the"real practices subsumed by developmentthat more specific recognitions are neces-sary and possible." In this sense, develop-ment, understood as a preoccupation ofpublic and international policy with im-proving welfare and the production ofgovernable subjects in "the Third World,"is of relatively recent provenance (Sachs1992). The origins of development theoryare part of the process by which the"colonial world" was reconfigured into a"developing world" in the aftermath ofWorld War II. Africa, for example, onlybecame an object of planned developmentafter the Great Depression of the 1930s.The British Colonial Development andWelfare Act (1940) and the FrenchInvestment Fund for Economic and SocialDevelopment (1946) both representedresponses to the crises and challengeswhich imperial powers confronted inAfrica, providing a means by which theycould negotiate the perils of indepen-dence movements on the one hand and aperpetuation of the colonial mission onthe other. The field of developmenteconomics which arose in the 1940s and1950s-for example, the growth theoriesof Lewis, Hirschmann, and Rodenstein-grew in the soil of imperial planninginitiatives, albeit propeled after 1945 bythe establishment of a panoply of globaldevelopment institutions (Bretton Woods,the United Nations) and President Tru-man's "programof development based onthe concepts of democratic fair dealing"(20 January 1949, cited in Esteva 1992, 6).A Cartography of Development

If development theory is, in this limitedsense, a post-1945 construction rooted in

1 "Modern economic growth has a relativelyshort history in sub-Saharan Africa ... generaland sustained development came only in [the1950s]. . . . Thus, when the post-colonialperiod began, most Africans were outside themodern economy" (World Bank 1981, 11-12).2 There is a growing body of scholarshipwhich contests this view of development andposes "alternatives to development," typicallyrooted in new social movements and what are taken to be local knowledge systems (see Sachs1992; Watts 1993).



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DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND ENVIRONMENT 233growing U.S. hegemony on the one handand the geopolitics of postcolonialism onthe other, it nevertheless can be depos-ited on a much larger historical ground ofideas about comparative economic growthand sociopolitical transformation. Onesimple way to situate development dis-course historically and provide a typologyof its normative theoretical content is tosee development as a constant oscillationbetween, and reconfiguration of, state,market, and civil society (Fig. 1). Thisintellectual cartography is in no senseexhaustive-it refers largely to Eurocen-tric development theory associated withconventional development institutionsand practices-and only refers to thenormative (as opposed to the positive)aspects of development theory. As aheuristic device, however, it may high-light a number of important points.The first is to historicize developmentitself, locating in the complex geopoliticalenvironment of the inter- and postwarperiod, the construction, or, more prop-erly, the invention, of development asplanned social and economic improve-ment (Escobar 1992a; Watts 1993). Asecond is the recognition that develop-ment discourse is calibrated around therelative weight attributed in its normativevision to the role of the state, the market,and civil institutions. At any historicalmoment, a particularcenter of intellectualgravity in development discourse mightbe identified around one of these norma-tive poles. The 1980s counterrevolution,as Toye (1987) calls it, which shifted themarket to center stage, stands in sharpcontrast to the 1950s, at which time therewas widespread acceptance of some sort ofstate planning-a strange hybrid of aGerschenkronian and Keyenesian state-as a prerequisite for "catching up" andas a response to the maladies of relativebackwardness. A third implication ofFigure 1 is that each vertical axis-state,market, civil society-is engaged in somesort of internal puzzle-solving; it containsits own internal debate concerning itsrole, character, function, and definition.There is, then, a tradition of thinking

about the state normatively-a largelycomplex map, or, perhaps more properly,a venn-diagram-which has a momentumdriven in part by the anomalies and realworld problems which the theory mustaddress. No simple or direct relationexists between particular theoretical tradi-tions-Marxism or modernization theory,for example-and each axis. Marxismdoesnot dismiss entirely the role of themarket, for example, although the marketnexus is defined in a particular way (Elson1988); similarly, neoliberalism rarely jetti-sons the state entirely, though it too isdefined in a particular fashion. In thissense, theories tend to combine thenormative content of development asparticular configurations of state, market,and civil society, each constituted in wayspeculiar to the core propositions of eachtheory. Different theoretical traditionstend naturally to weight these normativeelements quite differently. In this sense,development theories may be distin-guished in terms of the extent to whichstates, markets, and civil society fail. Forexample, whatever the purported virtuesof markets, they may be monopolistic,imperfect, inflexible, or encourage exter-nalities. Often seen as compensatorymechanisms for marketfailure, states maybe rigid and inflexible mechanisms forallocating resources, they may be poorlycoordinated, may create rents for particu-lar classes, or may simply colonize civilsociety (Stern 1989). Civil society, oftenseen as a critical mediating space betweenstate and market, a repository of rights,participation, and associational life, mayequally be the crucible within whichreligious, ethnic, or other identificationsimpose strictures.Finally, there is a lateral (i.e., diachro-nic) dimension to Figure 1 in the sensethat the intellectual and discursive tradi-tions surrounding the market, state, andcivil society engage each other, an en-gagement driven in some measure by thepressing development realities they seekto explain (forexample, see Colclough andManors' States or Markets? (1991)) andthe debate in the 1980s over whether the



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236 ECONOMICGEOGRAPHYEast Asian New Industrial Countries(NICs) are free-market or "Leninist"success stories (Amsden 1989; Wade1990). These lateral and vertical dimen-sions vastly simplify the complexities ofpractical and theoretical differences in thefield of development discourse. Individu-als may shift locations on the map duringthe course of their careers-as, for exam-ple, Hirschmann did-and all theoreticaltraditions, almost by definition, containparticular definitions of states, markets,and civil society, which in some wayreinforces the earlier point about the lackof correspondence between the verticalaxis and theories of development per se.Lastly, it needs to be emphasized thatdevelopment ideas are always regional-ized into what we earlier called regionaldiscursive formations: Latin Americandependency theory is part of a particularregional discursive formation containing astate-centric development discourse.Recent Tendencies in WesternDevelopment Theory

In the context of this simple map, the1980s represents a period of retrench-ment and restructuring in which recessionand the debt crisis focused attention onshort-term management ("disequilibria").The literature was dominated by ques-tions of stabilization and adjustment,driven increasingly by a neoliberal ortho-doxy that sought to reaffirm the necessityof reintegration into a global market andemphasize a "back-to-the-future"strategy(i.e., a return to the colonial model ofcomparative advantage and export-ori-ented commodity production). The EastAsian NICs were studied as successstories in the context of widespread failure(stagnation, corruption, deindustrializa-tion) of debt- or state-led developmentmodels. State-centered analysis focusedboth on the peculiarities of the develop-mental state in Taiwan and South Korea(relative autonomy, partial embedded-ness) and the problems of state account-ability, credibility, and rent seeking inLatin America and Africa, not least in

relation to the 1980s reform packages forstabilization.Ironically, state- and market-centered theories converged at the levelof analytics through transaction cost andcollective action theory and the so-callednew institutional economics (Bardhan1989). By the 1990s, in a rather differentgeopolitical and economic environment-the end of the cold war, a declining debtburden, new social actors-developmentseemed to gravitate around the "balance"between state, market, and civil organiza-tions, each with different incentiveschemes and compliance-cooperationmechanisms (de Janvry, Sadoulet, andThornbecke 1991).

For both theoretical and empiricalreasons, then, the 1980s saw a growingconcern with institutions, whether ex-pressed in terms of agrarian social rela-tions (Bardhan 1989), state-society rela-tions (Migdal 1989), or new socialmovements (Melucci 1988). Moreover,criticisms leveled at the failings of bothneoliberal and authoritarian and bureau-cratic development provided considerablemomentum for a focus on institutionswithin civil society, especially agreementsbased on bargaining, cooperation, andpersuasion. As de Janvry, Sadoulet, andThornbecke (1991, 4) note: "When thestate fails to deliver public goods, insur-ance, management of externalities, mini-mum basic needs and democratic rights,civil organizations may fill the vacuum.The same holds for the market wheremarket failures lead to the emergence of[civil] institutions, many of which take theform of organizations."Of particularinter-est are development strategies that buildrelations of complementarity betweencivil organizationsand the marketand thestate.This resurgence of civil society indevelopment discourse has been drivenby a complex set of political forces andintellectual confluences. We have alreadyreferred to the impact of "people's power"in the overthrow of various Stalinisms inEastern Europe, but one should take notealso of the proliferation of new socialactors and civics movements, in part as a



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DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND ENVIRONMENT 237response to the austerity of the 1980s, inLatin America, South Africa, the Philip-pines, India, and, more recently, in partsof sub-Saharan Africa (we discuss this inmore detail later). But there has also beena rethinking of the relations betweenculture and development by returning tothe modernization theory of Shills,Geertz, and Weber (Hoben and Hefner1991); in the role of grass roots organiza-tions in the context of diminishing statesand expanding markets (Uphoff 1991); inthe social embeddedness of states andmarkets (Evans 1991; Friedland and Rob-ertson 1991); in the endogeneity ofdevelopment institutions and social norms(de Janvry Sadoulet, and Thornebecke1991); and in the promotion of localknowledge systems and resource manage-ment (Richards 1985; Warren 1991). In asense, these tendencies reaffirmthe con-fluence of analytics noted by Bardhan(1989) in his observation that the analysisof institutions has emerged as a centralproblematic, whether expressed in termsof analytical Marxism, the contract theoryof the neoinstitutionalists, or the anthro-pological study of common-property regu-lation."Populism" Reconsidered

It is perhaps not surprising, then, thatthe enhanced emphasis within develop-ment on consolidating and promoting civilsociety has often drawn from populismand the power of what the World Bankcalls "ordinary people." Populism hereimplies not only a broadly specifieddevelopment strategy-that is to say, thepromotion of small-scale, owner-operated,anti-urban programs which stand againstthe ravages of industrial capitalism (Kitch-ing 1980)-but also as a particular sort ofpolitics, authority structure, and ideologyin which an effort is made to manufacturea collective popularwill and an "ordinary"subject (Laclau 1977). In general, popu-lism: "is . . . based on the following majorpremise: virtue resides in the simplepeople, who are in the overwhelmingmajority, and in their collective tradi-

tions" (Wiles 1969, 166). The recycling ofpopulisms in development discourse,therefore, contains both a historical conti-nuity-the recurrent motif of "the peo-ple" and "the ordinary" n development-and a historical difference, insofar aspopulist claims are always rooted inspecific configurations of political andideological discourses and practices.Populism in no sense exhausts discus-sions of civil society (see Gramsci 1971;Keane 1988), but it represents an impor-tant line of thinking and theorizing fromthe early nineteenth century to thepresent. Indeed, a distinctive feature ofpopulism-which perhaps explains itscurrent appeal-is its flexible ability todraw on liberalism, nationalism and so-cialism in fashioning its pragmatic, ratherthan political, agenda: "[Populism] . . . isprofoundly a-political .... It goes beyonddemocracy to consensus. . . . It calls onthe state to inaugurate restoration, but itdistrusts the state and its bureaucracyandwould minimize them before the rightsand virtues of local communities and thepopulist individual" (Macrae 1969, 162).But when people are invoked in develop-mental discourses about civil society-whether it is the World Bank singing thepraises of the ordinary African or thegeographer lauding peasant science-whothe people are, and how they are interpo-lated, are precisely political questions:"The question as to who 'the people' are,where they/we will be made to stand, lineup and be counted, the political directionin which they/we will be made to point:these are the questions which cannot beresolved abstractly; they can only beanswered politically" (Bennett 1986, 20).Populist strategies, and the language ofpopulism more generally, rest on whatLaclau (1977, 193) calls the "doublearticulation of discourse": the dialecticaltension between "the people" and classeswithin the power bloc, and the variousways in which "the people" are articulatedwith specific classes. How, in other words,does particular populist language articu-late with a particularpower bloc, and howis a particular populist subject interpo-



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238 ECONOMICGEOGRAPHYlated-for example, the ordinary peasantpossessed of local knowledge and resourcemanagement capability, or the informal-sector worker equipped with the entre-preneurial skills for appropriate technol-ogy or flexible specialization? Theconfluence of social movements in theformer socialist bloc (the 1989 "revolu-tions")with a neoliberal conservatism thatadvertises individual agency in the mar-ketplace (for example, the authoritarianpopulism of Mrs. Thatcher) has helpedsustain a developmental populism for the1990s, reflected in the uncritical promo-tion of nongovernmental organizations(NGOs), civil institutions, and the powerof ordinary people. Current populistdevelopment claims, therefore, can andshould be located on a larger historicalcanvas, but their particularcharacter andspecificity must be rooted in the realpolitique of the end of the cold war, awidespread disenchantment with state-administered politics, and in the self-interested, freedom-loving individual ofthe neoliberal counterrevolution (Bier-stecker 1990; Fukuyama 1990).

Concern for ordinary people, from avariety of political vantage points, hap-pens at a moment when the Washingtondevelopment consensus-the "new real-ism" of free markets, export-orientedproduction, and lean and mean states-ismet by at least three pressing, somemight say debilitating, crises. First, theresurgence of ferocious nationalisms, rac-isms, and ethnic genocide-in somesenses the implosion of civil society(Somalia, the former Yugoslavia)-at amoment of free-market hegemony. Sec-ond, the problem of environmental "ex-ternalities," driven in parts of the ThirdWorld by the very success of the NICsand peripheral industrialization, whichsome see as the contemporary equivalentof the Great Plague (Lipietz 1988). Andthird, the appalling spectacle detailedblandly every year in the World BankDevelopment Report of deepening globalpolarization. According to the UnitedNations Development Program (UNDP1992), the polarization of global wealth

doubled between 1960 and 1989. In thefin de siecle world economy, 82.7 percentof global income is accounted for by thewealthiest 20 percent, while the poorest20 percent account for 1.4 percent. In1960, the top fifth of the world's popula-tion had 30 times the wealth of the bottomfifth; by 1989 the disparity had grown to60 times. The growing bimodal characterof relations between North and SouthAmerica (indeed, within Third Worldstates, as Brazil, the Philippines, andIndia testify) is unquestionably rooted inthe period of adjustment and stabilizationsince the oil crisis of the 1970s. For goodreason, then, have many intellectuals andactivists from South America come to seedevelopment discourse as a cruel hoax, a"blunder of planetary proportions"(Sachs1992, 3). "You must be either very dumbor very rich if you fail to notice," notesMexican activist Esteva (1992, 7) "that'development' stinks." It is precisely theground swell of antidevelopment thinking,oppositional discourses that have as theirstarting point the rejection of develop-ment, of rationality and the Westernmodernist project, at the moment of apurported Washington consensus andfree-markettriumphalism, that representsone of the striking paradoxesof the 1990s.

A Political Ecology for the 1990sThe term "political ecology" can betraced with some certainty to the 1970s,when it emerged as a response to the

theoretical need to integrate land-usepractice with local-global political econ-omy (Wolf 1972) and as a reaction to thegrowing politicization of the environment(Cockburn and Ridgeway 1979). Subse-quently taken up by geographers, anthro-pologists, and historians (Bryant 1991), itis perhaps most closely associated withBlaikie (1985) and Blaikie and Brookfield(1987). In their view, political ecologycombines the concerns of ecology with "abroadly defined political economy" (1987,17) as part of a larger body of work whichhad its origins in the critique of ecological



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DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND ENVIRONMENT 239anthropology and cultural ecology in thelate 1970s (Watts 1983).This earlier theory gained currencyduring the first wave of the postwarenvironmental movement in the late1960s, but was ultimately hamstrung byits attachment to adaptation theory drawnfrom systems ecology, cybernetics, andthe work of Bateson. Even the best of thisresearch (e.g., Peter Vayda, Roy Rappa-port) suffered from a naive organismicview of society and a functionalism thatsaw culture as having adaptive value withrespect to the general goals of livingsystems. Typically working in rural andagrarian Third World societies, culturalecologists nonetheless uncovered substan-tial data on local ethnoscientific knowl-edges and the relations between culturalpractices and resource management, butthey typically placed these in an overarch-ing regulatory structure derived from thecybernetic and self-correcting propertiesof closed living systems. Many societiesstudied were actually part of large,complex, open political economies, and itwas precisely this openness which inmany cases seemed to undermine, or bein contradiction with, the ideas of equilib-rium and homeostasis on which geogra-phers and anthropologists had drawn(Nietschmann 1973).By the late 1970s, propelled by theappeal of Marxism and political economyin the study of Third World development,ecologically concerned social scientistsattempted to weld together the compel-ling questions of the relations of produc-tion in a global economy ("economicchange") with resource management andenvironmental regulation (Grossman1984; Watts 1983). By the 1980s, thisattempt at synthesis met a second phaseof environmental activism (the rise of theGreen movements worldwide) and arecognition of the deepening global hu-man-induced modifications of the envi-ronment in part driven by the rapidindustrializationof parts of South Americaand a renewed concern with demographicgrowth (Turnerand Meyer 1992).

A Critique of Political EcologyIf political ecology reflects a confluencebetween ecologically rooted social scienceand the principles of political economy, its

theoretical coherence nonetheless re-mains in question. A broad and wide-ranging approach, encompassing the workof such diverse scholars as Hecht, Brook-field, Bramwell, Stonich, Redclift, andRam Guha, political ecology seemsgrounded less in a coherent theory than insimilar areas of inquiry (cf. Bryant 1992,who specifically identifies contextualsources of ecological change, questions ofaccess, and political ramifications of envi-ronmental alteration). Some of the ten-sions and heterogeneities are reflected inBlaikie and Brookfield's (1987) key text.The authors raise a number of importantissues, including the social origins ofdegradation, the plurality of perceptionsand definitions of ecological problems, theneed to focus on the land manager, andthe pressure of production on resources.But Blaikie and Brookfield try to tiepolitical ecology to an integration of whatthey refer to as Marxism and behavioral-ism. This attempts to: (1) link nature andsociety dialectically; (2) explain degrada-tion through chains of explanatoryfactors;and (3) link resource managers to "exter-nal structures." At this point their concep-tion of political economy appears woolly("almost every element in the worldeconomy," p. 68) and dispersed. Theiremphasis on plurality comes perilouslyclose to voluntarism; similarly, theirchains of explanation seem incapable ofexplaining how factors become causes.Particularlystriking is the fact that politi-cal ecology has very little politics-thereis no serious attempt at treating themeans by which control and access ofresources or property rights are defined,negotiated, and contested within thepolitical arenas of the household, theworkplace, and the state-and they adopta rather old-fashioned view of ecologyrooted in stability, resilience, and systemstheory (Zimmerer 1991).The lacunae in Blaikie and Brookfield's



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240 ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHYbook, coupled with its broad interdiscipli-nary focus, have pushed the field ofpolitical ecology in a number of importantand interesting directions. No attempt ismade here to review the burgeoning fieldof political ecology-instead, many ofthese concerns are raised directly bypapers in this issue-but rather we pointto several fruitful avenues for debate andempirical exploration. It is striking, none-theless, how political ecology has, from itsinception, wrestled with the way manage-ment questions-whether regulatory ap-paratuses, local knowledge systems, ornew community groups-occupy an im-portant space in civil society. As wesuggested in our map of developmenttheory, political ecology discourse in the1990s also seems to be directly concernedwith institutions and organizations in thecontext of shifting configurations of stateand market roles.New Directions in Political Ecology

A number of loosely configured areas ofscholarship extend the frontiers of politi-cal ecology. The first attempts to refinepolitical economy in political ecology.Some of the most exciting new workcenters on effortsat explicitly retheorizingpolitical economy and environment atseveral different levels. At the philosoph-ical level there are debates about Marxismand ecology (Benton 1989; Grundemann1991; see also Leff 1986) and aboutwhether the labor process is compatiblewith eco-regulation and the notion ofbiological limits. The work of O'Connor(1988)and the journal Capitalism, Nature,Socialism start from the "second contra-diction of capitalism." In this view, Marxidentifies production conditions (nature,labor power, and communal conditions ofproduction) which capital cannot producefor itself as commodities. The statemediates, and hence politicizes, conflictsaround these conditions (environmentalmovements, feminism, and social move-ments) in an effort at maintaining capital-ist accumulation. Many contributions toCapitalism, Nature, Socialism explore

these ideas in various parts of the ThirdWorld. Attempts at harnessing specificconcepts drawn from political economyalso exist as a way of linking the twostructures of nature and society. Forexample, how does the simple reproduc-tion squeeze compel self-exploitationamong peasants who mine the soil; or howcan functional dualism facilitate labormigration which undermines local conser-vation or constrains sustainable herdingpractices (Little and Horowitz 1987; Toul-min 1992; Faber 1992; Stonich 1989;Garcia Barrios and Garcia Barrios 1990;Turner, this special issue, Pt. 2).A second broad thrust questions theabsence of a serious treatment of politicsin political ecology. Efforts at integratingpolitical action-whether everyday resis-tance, civic movements, or organizedparty politics-into questions of resourceaccess and control have proven especiallyfruitful (Broad 1993; Kirby 1990). At thehousehold management level, severalstudies focus on gender struggles cen-tered around the environment (Agarwal1992; RamachandraGuha 1990; Macken-zie 1991; see also Carney, this specialissue, Pt. 2; and Schroeder, this issue, Pt.2), and there is substantialdocumentationof the growing Third World environmen-tal-livelihood movements (Broad 1993;Gadgil and Guha 1992; Hecht and Cock-burn 1989). Peluso's brilliant study (1993)links the historiography of criminalitywith everyday resistance to show howstate forest management is contested byIndonesian peasants. "Liberationecology"as a means of uniting nature with socialjustice is a key theme in the emergingbody of work on the ecology of the poor(Martinez-Alier 1990) and in the largebody of work on Indian environmentalmovements (see IICQ 1992).A third focus is the complex analyticaland practical association of political ecol-ogy and civil society. The growth ofenvironmental movements largely unreg-ulated by, and distinct from, the stateposes sharplythe question of the relationsbetween civil society and the environ-ment. There are two obvious facets of



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DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND ENVIRONMENT 241these relations, both of which havereceived some attention. The first is theorigins, development, and trajectories ofthe environmental associations and orga-nizations (see Escobar 1992a; Ghai 1992;Socialist Review 1992). What are thespaces within which these movementsdevelop, and how, if at all, do theyarticulate with other organizations andresist the predations of the state (seeBebbington, this special issue, pt. 1;Moore, this special issue, pt. 2)? Thesecond draws on the substantial literatureon local knowledges and ecological popu-lisms (Warren 1991; Richards 1985). Theconcern is not simply a salvage opera-tion-recovering disappearing knowl-edges and management practices-butrather a better understanding of both theregulatory systems in which they inhere(see the literature on common property,Ostrom 1990) and the conditions underwhich knowledges and practices becomepart of alternative development strategies.In this latter sense we return to thepolitics of political ecology, but moredirectly to the institutional and regulatorysystems in which the knowledges andpractices are encoded, negotiated, andcontested (see Jarosz, this special issue,pt. 2).A fourth theme tackles head-on theproblem of constructing and deconstruct-ing sustainable development. Linked toBlaikie and Brookfield's emphasis on theplurality of perceptions and definitions,discourse analysis (and more generally aconcern with the social construction ofknowledge) is deployed with effect inunderstanding the variety of environmen-tal discourses around sustainability. Ad-ams (1991) and others identify contrastingideologies and the communities whichcontest its definition and domain. Taylorand Buttel (1992) trace the moral andtechnocraticways in which the new globaldiscourse on the environment is privi-leged, and how in the formulation ofenvironmental science some courses ofaction are facilitated over others. Thesocial construction of the environmentand nature as categories with a long

history in geography has recently beenproductively taken up in the context ofconservation (Grove 1993; Neumann1992), the history of ecology (Bramwell1989), the production of nature in thelaboratory (Harraway 1992) and in envi-ronmental ideologies (Lewis 1992).The question of doing environmentalhistory represents a fifth aspect of aninvigorated political economy. In provid-ing much-needed historical depth topolitical ecology, environmental historiansraise important theoretical and methodo-logical questions for the study of long-term environmental change. The obvioustheoretical contrasts between Worster(1977), Merchant (1993), and Cronon(1992) point to an extraordinary heteroge-neity in the field. Contained within eachis the idea of writing alternative histo-ries-of Chicago, imperialism, modes ofproduction, early U.S. agriculture-fromthe perspective of long-term ecosystemicchange. In so doing, environmental histo-rians meet on the same ground as a quitedifferent intellectual tradition, the so-called agrarian question (cf. Kautsky1906), which attempts to chart the ways inwhich the biological character of agricul-ture shapes the trajectories of capitalistdevelopment (Kloppenberg 1989). Oppor-tunities for exploring the capitalization ofnature through "appropriation"and "sub-stitution" (Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson1990), and their environmental ramifica-tions, can and should be readily seized bypolitical ecologists (see Arce and Mars-den, this special issue, pt. 1; and Yapa,this special issue, pt. 1).Finally, there is the question of ecologyin political ecology and the extent towhich political ecology is harnessed tosomewhat outdated notions of environ-mental science. Botkin (1990) and Wor-ster (1977), among others, describe therelatively new ecological concepts whichpose problems for the theory and practiceof political ecology. The shift from 1960ssystems models to the ecology of chaos-that is to say, chaotic fluctuations, disequi-libria, and instability-suggests that manyprevious studies of range management or



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242 ECONOMICGEOGRAPHYsoil degradation resting on simple notionsof stability, harmony, and resilience mayhave to be rethought (Zimmerer 1991).The new ecology is especially sensitive torethinking space-time relations to under-stand the complex dynamics of localenvironmental relations in the same waythat the so-called dialectical biologists(Levins and Lewontin 1988) rethink theevolutionary dynamics of biological sys-tems. Notwithstanding Worster's (1977)warning that disequilibria can easily func-tion as a cover for legitimating environ-mental destruction, some of the work onagro-ecology (Gleissman 1990; Altieri andHecht 1990; see also Zimmerer, thisspecial issue, pt. 1) suggests that therethinking of ecological science can beeffectively deployed in understanding thecomplexities of local management (forexample, in intercropping and pest man-agement).All of these new directions are notnecessarily of a theoretical piece, and itremains to be seen where the conceptualconfluences and tensions will arise withinthe political ecology of the 1990s. Thereis, however, an extraordinary vitalitywithin the field, reflecting the engage-ments within and between political econ-omy, poststructuralism, discourse theory,and ecological science itself. A major siteof such engagement is in the analysis ofsocial and environmental movements, afield that draws together the explosivegrowth of organizations and civic move-ments around sustainability with an im-plicit critique of (and an alternative visionof "development." It is to this "liberationecology" and the new social movements,many of which emerged in the 1980s, towhich we now turn.Social and EnvironmentalMovements: An AlternativeDevelopment?

Development can only occur when thepeopleit affectsparticipaten the designofthe proposedpolicies,andthe model whichis implemented herebycorrespondso thelocalpeople's aspirations.... The indige-

nous people of the Amazon have alwayslived there; the Amazon s our home. Weknow its secrets, both whatit can offer us,and what its limits are. (statementby theCo-ordinatingBody for the IndigenousOrganizationsf the Amazonbasin,1989)As we have intimated, political econ-omy and political ecology have longsustained strong interest in social move-ments. Much of this work begins withMarxism and a dialectical version ofhistorical change. In the dialectical view,societal dynamics emerge from contradic-tory oppositions, crises, and social con-flicts. Thus, moments of contradictionbetween the forces and relations of

production are, for classical Marxists, thecontexts in which a class existing "in-itself' engages in intensified politicalstruggle and becomes a class "for-itself'-that is, a collective agency forcing histori-cal transformations. In Marx'sworks, classis the main form of social engagement andcontrol of the means of production itsprimaryterrain of struggle.

Critique of Classical Models"Post-Marxist" ritiques, such as Cohen(1982), often accept Marxianprinciples ofclass stratification and social antagonism,but challenge certain aspects of theclassical Marxist account. First, as Haber-mas (1971) argues, the conceptions ofhistory as an evolutionary unfolding of theobjective contradictions between theforces and relations of production (Marx1970) and of "the history of class strug-gles" (Marx and Engels 1974, 84) do noteasily cohere into a single theory. Second,Marxist theory takes for granted thepenetration of all spheres of social life by asingle, productivist logic that privilegeseconomy and identifies class relations askey to the structure of domination and theforms of resistance in contemporary soci-ety. For Cohen (1982, xiii), this latterassumption occludes the very aspects ofsociety that must be interrogated andprecludes an understanding of the noveltyof recent social movements.To a degree, neo-Marxist theorists have



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DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND ENVIRONMENT 243rectified, but in some cases exaggerated,deficiencies in the classical formulation.Four basic types of neo-Marxist theorymay be discerned. Theoreticians likeMarcuse (1964) search for a substituterevolutionary subject to play the rolepreviously assigned to the proletariat."New working class" theorists (Mallet1969; Gorz 1967; Aronowitz 1973) focuson changes in the structure of productionin welfare state capitalism to provide anew strategy for labor. Structural Marxistclass analysis (Poulantzas 1973; Wright1979) rejects many of the features stressedby humanist Marxism to concentrate onclasses defined as effects of structures.Theorists of the "new intellectual class"(Gouldner 1979; Szeleny and Konrad1979) transfer attention from workers tocritical intellectuals. But for critics likeCohen (1982, 3), the presupposition be-hind neo-Marxism remains that produc-tion relations are key to the logics of civilsociety and radical social movements.Cohen (1985) also criticizes the "re-source-mobilization paradigm" based inconflict models of collective action (Tilly,Tilly, and Tilly 1975; Gamson 1975;Oberschall 1973). Here the assumption isthat conflicts of interest are built intoinstitutionalized power relations, withcollective action involving the rationalpursuit of interests by conflicting groups.Insisting on the strategic-instrumentalrationality of collective action and theorientation to interests by collective ac-tors, this position occupies groundmapped out by Olson (1965). As with hiswork, it remains unclear why individualsacting rationally in pursuit of their inter-ests get involved in groups (the "free riderproblem" (Miller 1992)) and what makesgroups solidary in the first place. Also,many post-Marxist theorists maintain thatneo-utilitarian, rational-actor models areinapplicable, for collective interactioninvolves something other than strategic orinstrumental rationality (Habermas1984).

The result of such criticisms is aposition which tries to analyze the condi-tions and processes by which structural

change is transformed into collectiveaction (Klandermans and Tarrow 1988).Here it is clear that geography is both partof the structure (as with control of space,use of resources, and so forth) and part ofthe process by which structures becomecollective actions (the influence of terrainsof struggle on the forms and intensities ofstruggles-Ackelsberg and Breitbart1987-88). Even the clarification of terms~~~~3.19 . a s 3-~ .`dsslike "terrains, fields of action," arenas"(Rucht 1988) is just beginning. But wefind this an area of inquiry rich inpotential.

The Self-Production of SocietyGiven the (partly valid) critiques ofMarxian and resource-mobilization theo-ries, much of the recent work on socialmovements has drawn, instead, on atradition in French social theory initiatedby Castoriadis (1975) and continued, inmodified form, by Touraine (1977). Aswith Marx, Castoriadis begins with thephysical environment, the biological prop-erties of human beings, and the necessityof material and sexual reproduction, forwhich fragments of logic and appliedknowledge must be created. But he claimsthis would be as true for apes as it is forhumans. Instead, for Castoriadis (1991,41):The construction f its own worldby eachand every society is, in essence, thecreationof a worldof meanings, ts socialimaginaryignifications, hichorganize he(pre-social, "biologicallygiven") naturalworld, institute a social world proper toeach society (with its articulations, ules,purposes,etc.), establish he waysin whichsocializedandhumanized ndividuals retobe fabricated,and insaturate he motives,values, and hierarchiesof social (human)life. Society leans upon the first naturalstratum,but only to erect a fantasticallycomplex andamazingly oherent) difice ofsignificationswhich vest any and everythingwithmeaning.

The task of "knowing"a society thereforeconsists in reconstituting the world of itssocial imaginary significations. For Casto-



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244 ECONOMicGEOGRAPHYriadis (1991, 34): "History does nothappen to society: history is the self-deployment of society." His notion is thatthe elements of social-historical life arecreated each time (in terms of relevancy,meaning, connections, and so forth)in andthrough the particular institution of soci-ety to which they "belong." Each social-historical instance thus has an essentialsingularity: phenomenologically specificin the social forms and individuals itcreates, ontologically specific in that it canput itself into question, able to explicitlyalter itself through self-reflective activity.Similarly, Touraine (1988) replaces theconstruct of society as a system driven byan inner logic with society as a "field ofaction." His stress lies on the social praxisinvolved in the genesis of norms and theconflicts over their interpretations.Whereas in Marxism classes are definedstructurally by positions in the productionprocess, for Touraine they are definedpurely in terms of social action. Tourainealso distinguishes himself from what heregardsas the main message of structural-poststructural social theory. From Mar-cuse to Althusser to Foucault and Bour-dieu the claim is that social life is nothingmore than "the system of signs of anunrelenting domination" (Touraine 1988,71); in such systems radical social move-ments would be quickly shunted to themargins. But for Touraine, the necessarydecomposition of society, the passagefrom one cultural and societal field toanother, makes possible the entry of socialmovements.

At the core of his analysis lies the"cultural orientations common to actorswho are in conflict over the managementof these orientations, for the benefit ofeither an innovative ruling class or, on thecontrary, those who are subordinated toits domination" (Touraine 1988, 155). ForTouraine (1985, 750-54) social conflictsinvolve the competitive pursuit of collec-tive interests and the reconstitution ofsocial, cultural, or political identity; theycombine a political force aimed at chang-ing the rules of the game with a defense ofstatus or privilege; but above all, conflict

occurs over control of the main culturalpatterns through which relationships withthe environment are normatively orga-nized. Most significantly, for Touraine,class struggles and social movementsexpress conscious contestation over the"self production of society," by which hemeans the work society performs on itselfby reinventing its norms, institutions, andpractices. Struggles over historicity lie atthe center of the functioning of societyand of the process by which society iscreated.From Neo- to Post-Marxism in UrbanSocial MovementsDrawing on the Marxist tradition, butagain differing significantly from it, aseries of worksappearing in the late 1970sand 1980s explored the connections be-tween contradictions, crises, and urbansocial conflicts. This work was precipi-tated by the rise of protest movements inthe late 1960s and 1970s (civil rights,student, feminist, environmental) whichcame to be referred to as the new socialmovements. In Castells's (1977) earlyAlthusserian work, urban social move-ments respond to structural contradic-tions, although, as opposed to classicalMarxism, these are of a plural-class andsecondary nature, involving not controlover the means of production but lack ofcollective goods and services, the relega-tion of groups to the decaying inner cities,and similar deprivations. Protest move-ments organize around common interestson a variety of terrains of struggle, often inopposition to the state and other politicaland sociocultural institutions, rather thanthe economically ruling class directly. Bythe early 1980s Castells (1983, 299) wasarguing even more strongly that "theconcept of social movement as an agent ofsocial transformation is strictly unthink-able in the Marxisttheory." Influenced byTouraine, he argues that social changehappens when a new urban meaning isproduced through a process of conflict,domination, and resistance to domination.For Castells (1983, 311), then, "the new



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DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND ENVIRONMENT 245emerging social movements call for thepre-eminence of human experience overstate power and capitalist profit."Another sequence of works in thepost-Marxist vein stems from collabora-tion between Laclau and Mouffe. Mouffe(1984) argues that the commodification ofsocial life, bureaucratization,and "culturalmassification" have created new forms ofsubordination in terms of which newsocial movements should be interpreted.Laclau and Mouffe (1985) find the com-mon demoninator of all the new socialmovements (urban, ecological, feminist,antiracist, regional, sexual minorities) tobe their differentiation from workers'struggles considered as class struggles.Indeed, Laclau (1985, 29) argues that:"Categories such as 'working class,' 'pe-tite bourgeois,' etc. [have become] lessand less meaningful as ways of under-standing the overall identity of socialagents. The concept of 'class struggle' forexample, is neither correct nor incor-rect-it is, simply, totally insufficient as away of accounting for contemporary socialconflicts." For Laclau (1985, 27), the newsocial movements have precipitated acrisis in the way social agents and socialconflict are theorized. It has becomeincreasingly difficult to identify socialgroups with a coherent system of subjectpositions. Transformationsin the twenti-eth century weakened the ties betweenthe subject's various identities, so that, forexample, the worker's position in therelations of production and his or herposition as consumer, resident, politicalparticipant, and so forth have becomeincreasingly autonomous. This autonomylies at the root of the specificity of the newsocial movements. Thus for Laclau sub-ject-positions always display openness andambiguity and there is no fully acquiredsocial identity. Furthermore, the socialcontradictions to which social agentsrespond cannot be reduced to moments inthe operation of an underlying societallogic-"the social is in the last instancegroundless" (Laclau 1985, 34). This leadstoward a differing conception of radicalpolitics. In the nineteenth century, Laclau

says, crises involved a total model ofsociety and social struggles developed aunified political imaginary. In the twenti-eth century, by comparison, the multipli-cation of points of rupture in society leadsto a proliferation of antagonisms, eachtending to create its own space and todirectly politicize a specific area of socialrelations. What Laclau (1985, 39) calls the"moment of totalization" in the politicalimaginary is now restricted to specificdemands in particular circumstances.Ratherthan finding this a political retreat,Laclau finds the democratic potential ofthe new social movements to lie preciselyin their implicit demands for a radicallyopen and indeterminate view of society.New Social Movements in theThird World

Recent thinking on social movementshas therefore involved a movement awayfrom what are frequently found to be therestrictions of classical theories. Duringthe 1980s, the geographic focus of researchshifted from urban social movements inWestern Europe and the United States tonew social movements in the ThirdWorld, particularly Latin America. Amultiplicity of groups independent oftraditional trade unions and politicalparties, squatter movements and neigh-borhood councils, baselevel communitieswithin the Catholic church, indiginistassociations,women's associations, humanrights' committees, youth meetings, edu-cational and artistic activities, coalitionsfor the defense of regional traditions andinterests, and self-help groupings amongunemployed and poor people created anew social reality which, in Evers's (1985,44) terms, "lies beyond the realm oftraditional modes of perception and in-struments of interpretation." Radical the-orists involved with these movementsfound in them potential for a new politicalhegemony constructed through the directaction of the masses. This radical opti-mism was tempered in the second half ofthe 1980s as some movements declinedand their limited potential was realized.



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246 ECONoMIc GEOGRAPHYAt the same time, poststructural andpostmodern approaches were increasinglyexplored in Third World social move-ments research.Although not strictly in the socialmovements tradition, some of the moreinteresting ideas derive from the work ofScott (1985, 1990). Scott criticizes struc-turalist variants of Marxism for assumingthat the nature of class relations in a ThirdWorld society can be inferred from a fewdiagnostic features like the dominantmode of production. He agrees thateconomic factors place limits on thesituations faced by human actors, butwithin these limits people fashion theirown responses, their own experiences ofclass, their own histories. Also, class doesnot exhaust the total explanatory space ofsocial actions, especially in peasant vil-lages, where kinship, neighborhood, fac-tion and ritual links are competing foci ofhuman identity and solidarity: "the messyreality of multiple identities [is] theexperience out of which social relationsare conducted" (Scott 1985, 43).Drawing on phenomenology and eth-nomethodology, Scott (1985, 80) arguesthat subordinate classes "have rarelybeenafforded the luxury of open, organized,political activity,"which is the preserve ofthe middle classes and intelligentsia.Instead, he focuses on:

everydayformsof peasantresistance-theprosaicbut constantstrugglebetween thepeasantryand those who seek to extractlabor, food, taxes,rents and interest fromthem. Most of the forms his struggle akesstop well short of outrightcollectivedefi-ance. Here I have in mind the ordinaryweaponsofrelativelypowerlessgroups:ootdragging, dissimulation, alse compliance,pilfering, eigned ignorance, lander,arson,sabotage,andso forth.(Scott 1985, 29)In struggles over land, everyday resis-tance might entail piecemeal peasantsquatting on plantation or state forestland; open defiance, by contrast,would bea public invasion that challenges propertyrights. Everyday forms of resistance areoften the most significant and effectiveover the long run.

By the time of Domination and the Artsof Resistance, Scott's (1990, 14) attentionwas drawn more toward poststructuralissues of "how power relations affecteddiscourse." Scott works under the (tenta-tive) premise that there are structurallysimilarforms of domination and that theseelicit broadly comparable reactions andpatterns of resistance. Focusing on ex-treme powerlessness, he argues thatslaves, serfs, and members of lower castesordinarily dare not openly contest theterms of subordination. "Behind thescenes, though, they are likely to createand defend a social space in which offstagedissent to the official transcript of powerrelations may be voiced" (Scott 1990, x).The fugitive political conduct of subordi-nate groups may be read and interpretedin a different kind of study of power thatuncovers contradictions, tensions, andimmanent possibilities:Every subordinate roupcreates,out of itsordeal, a "hidden transcript" hat repre-sents a critiqueofpowerspokenbehindtheback of the dominant.The powerful,fortheirpart,alsodevelopa hiddentranscriptrepresentingthe practicesand claims oftheir rule thatcannotbe openlyavowed.Acomparison f the hiddentranscript f theweak with that of the powerfulandof bothhidden ranscriptso thepublictranscript fpower relations offers a substantiallynewwayof understandingesistance o domina-tion. (Scott1990,xii)Drawing more directly on poststruc-tural themes, Escobar (1992b) sees socialmovements equally as cultural strugglesover meaning and over material condi-tions and needs. Yet cultural politics arerarely visible in conventional forms ofanalysis. Escobar draws together a num-ber of themes which might make thecultural dimension more visible. His firsttheme is a more accurate theorization ofthe practice of everyday life throughwhich culture is created and reproduced,locating daily life at the intersection of thearticulation of meaning through practice

on the one hand and macro processes ofdomination on the other. His secondtheme is the need to rethink the relations



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DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND ENVIRONMENT 249laws of history as its prevailing model.The dialectic, then, is portrayed as anidealist device in which thesis incorpo-rates anti-thesis during teleological pas-sage to an already-given synthesis, allow-ing no room for contingency, difference,or, for that matter, the new. In our view,dialectical analysis instead provides thepossibility of imagining a system ofrelations that does not consume theautonomy of the particular, one in which anumber of dynamic tendencies in shiftinghierarchical arrangements are constantlydisturbed by new sequences of differentevents, a dynamic which has pattern,order, and determination without beingteleological, a theory of totalities which,because it values their unique aspects, isnot totalizing.This expanded notion of dialecticsprovides a way of understanding thecomplex forms of environmental contra-dictions, crisis, and social movements.O'Connor's work (1988) on the secondcontradictionof capitalism-and its recentelaboration by Altvater (1993)-seemsespecially apposite. By formulating adialectic of relations of production, pro-ductive forces, and conditions of produc-tion, O'Connor seeks to outline both anecological Marxism and a series of crisesrooted in the peculiarities of naturebroadly understood-what he calls under-production crises-which complementthe overproduction tendencies intrinsic tomarket-based societies. This body of workattempts to locate specific sorts of move-ments emerging from the tensions andcontradictions of underproduction crises,to understand the discursive character oftheir politics, and to see the possibilitiesfor broadening environmental issues intoa movement for livelihood, entitlements,and social justice. This is a tall order, andin a sense the theoretical work has onlyjust begun. We believe that this specialissue of Economic Geography represents,from a multiplicity of vantage points, acommon effort to refine and deepen whatwe insist on continuing to call a dialecticalanalysis of the relations between develop-ment and the environment.

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