Rudolf Heberle

On Political Ecology

Political ecology is a critical research field within anthropology and related disciplines that examines how and why economic structures and power relations drive environmental change in an increasingly interconnected world. Initially it was most wellknown for investigating the practices and impacts of large-scale resource development projects in subsistence-oriented communities in the Global South. Over time, political ecology has expanded its research trajectory to include analyses of environmental politics and socio-ecological degradation in urban, industrialised settings as well. This entry outlines the historical development of political ecology in order to understand the bases for its common theoretical assumptions, research themes, methodological approaches, and sources of critique. In doing so, it provides particular insight into the important ways that anthropologists have influenced, and been influenced by, political ecology. Though individual research interests and emphases have expanded since the early days of political ecology, the field continues to provide a valuable means for tracing the broader structural forces of socio-ecological change to a thorough understanding of the impacts and responses to that change at the local level. Yet, as an inherently interdisciplinary field, the challenge for political ecology continues to revolve around properly integrating its various disciplinary interests and influences into a consistent framework capable of analysing political, cultural, and ecological matters with sufficient rigor. Political ecologists’ on-going efforts to meet this challenge have never been more important than they are today, as the world increasingly struggles with interrelated issues such as global climate change, industrial pollution, resource degradation, economic dispossession, and changing patterns of environmental health.

A Sociological Interpretation of Social Change in the South

While war weariness and a certain apathy and hopelessness may in time be alleviated, one may well question whether there will be a revival of national ambition which in turn may lead to an upswing in population. What happens in a nation in which the masses and the leaders alike feel rather hopeless as to their future? One wonders about this with regard to present-day France, Germany, and Great Britain. Will the loss of domestic and foreign trade and a decrease in political power in the world further depress the birth rate? In other words, may we expect to see the will to life go out of these people? Yet one may ask another question: Will the revival of nationalistic feeling or perhaps the rise of some socialistic substitute for capitalist nationalism provide a new focus of hope leading to a change in population practice? Or, to mention another possible stimulus, will a growing fear of the Slavic population pressure-disguised in economic and political dress-serve to induce in the name of national survival a higher birth rate in the West? The answer to such questions rests in the lap of conjecture. But I submit that there may be a psychological component in these situations which should be studied. Of course, it may be that the psvchological elements are actually epiphenomena deriving from much deeper biological dynamics of a younger and more virile people on the march. Who knows?

The Changing Social Stratification of the South

In the case of Pmi only the survivors are assumed to be at risk; in Pm2 all of the beginning population are assumed to be at risk; and in the case of Pm3 the population at risk is the beginning population less Y2 of the deaths to that population. Dr. Prices paper discusses other sources of error in making estimates of net migration. However, under the assumptions made, it is a convenient fact that the rate of net migration based on the forward method yields just about all the information that can be squeezed out of the data available. The validity of the assumptions is another problem.

Reminiscences of a sociologist

The author tells of his drift from law and economics into sociology at a time when this field was not yet institutionalized in his native Germany. He describes his research experiences in European countries and in America. He shows how working on a variety of seemingly disconnected subjects contributed to his education as a sociologist. He also discusses his experiences as teacher and author during the first years of the Hitler regime.

The Social Structure of New-Ground Settlements in the Mississippi Delta

neighborhood groups throughout the county. The church remains as the chief integrating force in the majority of these neighborhoods. Neighborliness and mutual cooperation within small units is still a prized virtue. Moreover it is becoming increasingly evident that democracy in its present crucial test needs to magnify rather than minimize the importance of the small locality group. If democracy has to do with the people, then the kernel of it has to do with those small and many times informal groupings which lie closest to daily activities. The degree to which these fundamental social relations have been changed by increased facilities of communication can easily be overestimated. The small locality group has in many instances already disappeared but lamentably in many instances nothing has been put in its place to supplant the social values which it cannot now fulfill. The question of the continuance of these small groups in their present form is not of such primary importance as is the problem of seeing to it that the values which inhere in this type of intimate grouping, and the people which make up these groups, and which constitute the backbone of the Southland, are not lost in a centralizing process which takes no account of the localities which it swallows up.