Abstract
I recently attended a workshop on political ecology and witnessed an interesting debate: some participants argued that political ecologists should refocus their attention on the political; others, in contrast, argued that scholars should re-emphasize the ecology in political ecology, strengthening their analysis with natural science. Rebecca Lave, in Fields and Streams, shows the potential benefits of trying to do both: by combining ‘critical physical geography’ (p. 123) and critical social science, she offers a rich and incisive analysis of the ‘Rosgen Wars’ in the US stream restoration field.
Ecological restoration is predicated on the assumption that humans ‘can undo past anthropogenic environmental damage and contribute positively to the planet’s health’ (p. 1). Lave notes that the stream restoration field, which dates back to the 1800s, has expanded rapidly since the 1980s, dominated by Dave Rosgen’s ‘Natural Channel Design’ (NCD) approach. This approach, developed by Rosgen – a self-styled cowboy, known for his folksy language and maverick attitude, and ‘with only a BS from Humbolt State University’ (p. 113) – purports to restore damaged streams through the use of natural materials, such as boulders and woody debris, in order to ‘prevent streams from eroding downward or migrating across the landscape’ (p. 1). His approach aims to design channels that are both stable and natural (p. 1), in contrast to the traditional hydraulic engineers who attempt to control streams without aesthetic or biological goals (p. 37). Rosgen’s NCD approach is the preferred restoration technique for US regulators and the stream mitigation banking industry, despite intense criticism from the academic community, which claims that Rosgen’s approach has no scientific merit and, in fact, does ‘considerable environmental damage’ (p. 2).
Explaining the ascendance of Rosgen’s NCD approach in the stream restoration industry is Lave’s main preoccupation in the book. She asks: how can Rosgen wield more authority and influence than well-respected fluvial geomorphologists and riparian ecologists? In order to answer this question, she seeks to reconcile political ecology and science and technology studies (STS). Political ecology, she argues, is concerned with the power dynamics governing the deployment of scientific knowledge, but has relatively little to say about the production of scientific knowledge (p. 6); STS, on the other hand, provide a framework for understanding the production, circulation and application of science, but have relatively little to say about how political economic forces affect those processes (p. 7). These differences, she argues, are important, but ‘not insurmountable’ (p. 8).
In order to bridge political ecology and STS, Lave turns to the work of Pierre Bourdieu and his ‘conceptual triumvirate’ (p. 136: note 6): field, capital and habitus. A field is ‘a bounded, structured social arena’ (p. 10), capital is the forms of power or prestige in a specific field, and habitus is the ‘set of embodied dispositions learned through education/participation in a field’ (p. 11). A field, for Bourdieu, is an agonistic concept, structured by struggles over the boundaries of the field and the valuation of different types of capital. The field is hierarchically divided between two poles: the autonomous pole, where actors are most thoroughly determined by the power relations of the field, and the heteronomous pole, where actors are shaped by outside forces (p. 10). Lave, through Bourdieu, also distinguishes between the objective structure of the field, ‘the hierarchical and structured relations among positions’ (p. 11), and the subjective structure of the field, ‘The habitus that agents within the field acquire through participation in it and the dispositions they bring to it’ (p. 11).
Rosgen’s success, argues Lave, cannot be explained by his ‘charismatic authority’ (p. 119), by NCD’s ‘correspondence with bureaucratic timelines’ (p. 53), or by simple random chance (p. 3). The debate, moreover, cannot be resolved on substantive grounds, as the scientific data cannot parse each claim and counterclaim, as both sides advance some claims that are plausible while ‘others are unsupported by definitive evidence or just plain wrong’ (p. 77). Rather, armed with her Bourdieusian conceptual framework, Lave explains Rosgen’s success by arguing that the subjective structure created by his approach corresponds with the ‘neoliberalisation of the objective structure within which the stream restoration field is contained’ (p. 12), characterized by three key shifts: the increasing privatization of knowledge claims, the emphasis on applied research to meet market demands, and the creation of metrics to commodify and marketize nature (p. 103).
Lave’s argument is conceptually rich, and her synthesis of political ecology and STS through Bourdieu is novel, allowing for a granular analysis of the construction and performance of scientific authority. Nevertheless, I have three main criticisms. First, her insistence on tracing political economic ‘influences on’ science risk missing how political economy and science are co-constituted. Second, the book is almost devoid of normative argumentation; Lave outlines the positions of Rosgen supporters and detractors in the ‘Rosgen Wars’, but her political position is never fully articulated. Third, the book is written in accessible and lively language, an impressive feat; however, while I think this is accomplished successfully for the most part, some of the more jocular images occasionally seem out of place.
Fields and Streams demonstrates the potential benefits, and difficulties, in doing political ecology with a dual focus on the ‘political’ and the ‘ecological’. Lave’s book is a novel contribution to the field, and can serve as both an accessible introduction for the novice and a thought-provoking intervention for the expert.