Political Ecology Forum @NMBU

In this episode, senior researcher Bibhu Prasad Nayak explains some of the implications of granting rights to rivers in the case of India. Nature and society interactions became a field to explore power relations, governmental institutions, and legal initiatives involved in the process.

In this episode, join us on a thought-provoking intellectual journey as we dive into the complex webs of social and environmental issues, exploring the pluriversal designs with Professor Arturo Escobar. In this captivating podcast series, Professor Escobar, a renowned scholar, and expert in post-development theory invites listeners to challenge conventional wisdom and explore alternative visions on globalization, sustainability, and social change from pluriversal and relational perspectives.

Oswaldo Zavala, author of Drug cartels do not exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture. He is a Mexican who grew up in Ciudad Juárez – a city in the north of Mexico that stands next to El Paso, Texas. Oswaldo began his career as a journalist in his hometown Juárez, but his professional trajectory evolved towards researching post-national imaginaries, representations of violence at the US-Mexico border, and the exhaustion of discourses of modernity in the Latin American narrative of the last two decades. Oswaldo is a Professor of contemporary Latin American literature and culture at the City University of New York.

This is the second part of the interview with Oswaldo Zavala, Professor of contemporary Latin American literature and culture at the City University of New York. In this episode Oswaldo reflects on the continuities and changes that Mexico has experienced under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In the previous episode, Oswaldo laid down the main arguments of his work on narco-narratives, especially referring to his book “Drug cartels do not exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican culture”. Check out that episode if you haven’t already. You will find references to Oswaldo’s books, articles, book chapters, and the work of other authors that Oswaldo mentioned during the interview in the description of this podcast.

The host of this epsidoe is Noé Mendoza. He is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department for International Environment and Development Studies of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.

REFERENCES (Oswaldo's work):

• Zavala, O., 2018, Los cárteles no existen: Narcotráfico y cultura en México. Malpaso ediciones.
• Zavala, O., 2021, Dispossession by militarization: Forced displacement and the neoliberal “Drug War” for energy in Mexico. In Liquid Borders: Migration as resistance. Moraña, Maribel (ed). Routledge.
• Zavala, O., 2022, Drug cartels do not exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican culture. Vanderbilt, University Press.
• Zavala, O., 2022, La guerra en las palabras: Una historia intelectual del “narco” en México (1975-2020). Penguin Random House.

Other REFERENCES:

• Astorga, L., 1996, El siglo de las drogas, México, Espasa-Calpe
• Astorga, L., 2012, Seguridad, traficantes y militares, 2007, México, Tusquets
• Paley, D., 2014, Drug War Capitalism, Oakland, AK Press
• Halper J., 2015, War against the people, London, Pluto Press
• Mastrogiovanni, F., 2016, Ni vivos ni muertos. La desaparición forzada en México como estrategia de terror, México, Penguin Random house
• Miller T., 2019, Empire of Borders: The expansion of the US border around the world, Verso, Londo
• Benjamin S., 2021. The Dope: The real history of the Mexican drug trade, New York, W.W. Norton & Company

Oswaldo Zavala, author of Drug cartels do not exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture. He is a Mexican who grew up in Ciudad Juárez – a city in the north of Mexico that stands next to El Paso, Texas. Oswaldo began his career as a journalist in his hometown Juárez, but his professional trajectory evolved towards researching post-national imaginaries, representations of violence at the US-Mexico border, and the exhaustion of discourses of modernity in the Latin American narrative of the last two decades. Oswaldo is a Professor of contemporary Latin American literature and culture at the City University of New York.

This interview is divided into two episodes. The first episode (this one) lays down the main arguments of Oswaldo’s work on narco-narratives, especially referring to his book “Drug cartels do not exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican culture”. Oswaldo will explain how an agenda of national security, originally designed by the US, influences public policies of security, migration and energy, not only in Mexico, but even beyond the American hemisphere.  

In the second part of the interview - which you will find in the next episode - Oswaldo briefly describes the story of the Drug Wars and reflects on the continuities and changes that Mexico has experienced under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. You will find references to Oswaldo’s books, articles, book chapters, and the work of other authors that Oswaldo mentioned during the interview in the description of this podcast.

  The host of this epsidoe is Noé Mendoza. He is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department for International Environment and Development Studies of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. REFERENCES (Oswaldo's work):

• Zavala, O., 2018, Los cárteles no existen: Narcotráfico y cultura en México. Malpaso ediciones.
• Zavala, O., 2021, Dispossession by militarization: Forced displacement and the neoliberal “Drug War” for energy in Mexico. In Liquid Borders: Migration as resistance. Moraña, Maribel (ed). Routledge.
• Zavala, O., 2022, Drug cartels do not exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican culture. Vanderbilt, University Press.
• Zavala, O., 2022, La guerra en las palabras: Una historia intelectual del “narco” en México (1975-2020). Penguin Random House.

Other REFERENCES:

• Astorga, L., 1996, El siglo de las drogas, México, Espasa-Calpe
• Astorga, L., 2012, Seguridad, traficantes y militares, 2007, México, Tusquets
• Paley, D., 2014, Drug War Capitalism, Oakland, AK Press
• Halper J., 2015, War against the people, London, Pluto Press
• Mastrogiovanni, F., 2016, Ni vivos ni muertos. La desaparición forzada en México como estrategia de terror, México, Penguin Random house
• Miller T., 2019, Empire of Borders: The expansion of the US border around the world, Verso, Londo
• Benjamin S., 2021. The Dope: The real history of the Mexican drug trade, New York, W.W. Norton & Company

In this episode, Professor Nightingale discusses feminist perspectives and Political Ecology from an anti-essentialist viewpoint.

My name is Carmen Mapis, and I am a Ph.D. candidate for the Department of Urban Planning and Development at NMBU. I produce and interview different academics within the wide field of Political Ecology.

In this episode of the Political Ecology Podcastforum, we had the pleasure of speaking with Professor Andrea Nightingale from the University of Oslo about non-essentialist feminist perspectives in analyzing cases from a political ecology lens.

Professor Nightingale began by explaining the differences between essentialist and non-essentialist feminist perspectives. Essentialism, she argued, views gender as a fixed and innate characteristic, whereas non-essentialist perspectives recognize gender as socially constructed and continually negotiated.

The conversation then turned to apply non-essentialist feminist perspectives in political ecology. Professor Nightingale discussed how these perspectives could help to uncover how gendered power relations intersect with other forms of power, such as class and race, to shape environmental governance and decision-making.

To illustrate this point, she provided examples from her research on environmental governance in Nepal and Iceland. She discussed how gendered power relations played out differently in each context, highlighting the importance of situating analyses within specific socio-cultural and political contexts.

The conversation then delved into the challenges of applying non-essentialist feminist perspectives in practice, such as navigating tensions between universalizing tendencies in academic discourse and the need to attend to local specificities. Professor Nightingale also discussed the importance of reflexivity and the need for researchers to know of their positionality and potential biases.

This episode provided a thought-provoking discussion on the relevance and potential of non-essentialist feminist perspectives in political ecology research. We thank Professor Nightingale for sharing her insights and expertise with us.

Sustainability is one of the most used terms in projects and planning. In this episode professor Jin Xue reflects on the impacts and connections between dwelling development and planning on the environment and the climate. From a critical perspective, Xue explains her view on Political Ecology, Degrowth, and planning. Building a bridge between academic movements that combined have the potential to provide research tools for the design of sustainable futures. 

In this episode Dara Sands, PhD candidate at NMBU-Noragric, is interviewed by Noé Mendoza to reflect on Dara's recent paper 'Dewilding ‘Wolf-land’: Exploring the Historical Dimensions of Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence in Ireland by Dara Sands' where he examines 'historical drivers of change which disrupted a long history of human-wolf coexistence in Ireland'. It is published y the journal Conservation and Society.

In this interview, Carmen Beatriz M. Mapis interviews Alexander Dunlap who reflects on the links between Political Ecology, green solutions, decoloniality and anarchism.

Foto: Scott (https://www.flickr.com/photos/snordq/8224007187/in/photolist-4B6Y9m-4B6Y9s-4B6Y9u-4B2QC8-4B2QCa-4B2LtB-4B2LtD-4B2QCe-4B2QCc-4B2QC6-gFuLK7-ceLYvE-6EHryc-91HbMW-2izuj3H-dja8bv-6EHrep-fTeYGN-dhRHWm-4B6Y9o-4B2Ltt-7py2S4-7py33g-7pBVvY-7py5xT-829rdU-91E5qp-295yZPo-5Vrr5V-dwJ5Jg-dwJbPn-2mJkeMf-2mJkdpf-2mJgZa8-2mJgZ8E-2mJfKLV-2mJjctD-2mJjcz5-25LSpC-q7xAT-dwPqqf-mEU9kP-bAwVCp)