Geoforum 40 (2009) 116125

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Geoforum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Seeing the local in the global: Political ecologies, world-systems,

and the question of scale
Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro 1
Department of Geography, SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz, NY 12561, USA

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 22 June 2007
Received in revised form 3 September 2008

Keywords:
Scale
Political ecology
World-systems
Environmental change
World economy
Nepal

a b s t r a c t
Scale, as concept, has featured prominently in political ecology and remains, even if implicitly, a crucial
point of analytical reference. Recent studies, drawing from both human geography and ecology, have
sought to demonstrate how scales, rather than pre-existing ontologically, are both socially and environmentally produced. Given the different scales through which social and environmental processes occur,
the study of societyenvironment relations can be improved by analysing varying scalar congurations of
interaction. This recent and promising methodological corrective would greatly benet from a dialogue
with world-systems approaches, which integrate diverse scale-producing processes and to some extent
overlap in scope with political ecology. World-systems perspectives, by focusing on the long-term systemic character of peopleenvironment relations, effectively connect micro- to macro-scale social and
ecological processes and explain long-term internal dynamics and interrelations of systems at different
scales. Conversely, world-systems approaches could learn much from political ecologists consideration
of nonhuman processes into understandings of scale and societyenvironment relations, which has a long
tradition in geography, as well as from the more context-sensitive analytical framework brought to those
understandings. Case studies are discussed to demonstrate not only how these two perspectives could be
integrated, but also how explanations of environmental change can be thereby improved. Combining the
two approaches provides the basis for a more ecologically oriented world-systems paradigm and, in political ecology, for greater sensitivity to socially large-scale systemic processes and, given the originally
anti-capitalist underpinnings of both paradigms, for more political coherence.
2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Scales of peopleenvironment relations

Scale, as analytical concept, traverses most, if not all geographical subelds and approaches. Although scale has both temporal
and spatial aspects, many often emphasise one or the other. Largely within human geography, some regard the spatial aspect as
an innate mental construct that helps make sense of reality, while
others interpret it as a socially produced entity or process. Similarly, temporal scales are viewed as either a form of mental ordering of the universe or a social construct or product. Still others,
especially in physical geography, regard spatial and temporal scale
as the empirical range at which a given phenomenon or system
operates and in terms of physical processes independent of the
activities of organisms, such as humans (Herod and Wright,
2002; Marston, 2000).
Excepting the conicting notions of scale as innate mental constructs or as historically specic social production, physical and so1
The manuscript was largely researched and written while employed at the
Department of Geography and Geology, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
E-mail address: engeldis@newpaltz.edu

0016-7185/$ - see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.09.004

cial approaches to scale are at least not mutually exclusive. As

Sayre has recently argued, the potential for integration exists if
physical scientists desist from reifying scale and from treating aspects of scale that are epistemological (resolution and area size)
and ontological (phenomena characteristics resulting from interprocessual relations) as if they were unrelated. At the same time,
social scientists must avoid conating epistemological and ontological moments of scale and focus instead on their dialectical relation (Sayre, 2005, p. 283, 285; Tomich, 1990, p. 6). Concentrating
on processes (and accompanying social and/or environmental levels) as constitutive of scale claries what exactly is being investigated when the scale of a phenomenon is considered (Smith,
1990; Swyngedouw, 1997). Just how constructive this approach
will be is contingent on avoiding the reduction of biogeophysical
processes to the outcomes of the politics of scale, as some persist
in doing (Hintz, 2008; Sayre, 2005; Zimmerer and Bassett, 2003).
Reconciling these diverse (and often confusing) approaches to
scale can be arduous and few have been able to mesh them successfully, without unduly accenting one over the other. Political
ecology, in the sense of understanding political as well as biogeophysical processes behind peopleenvironment relations (Peet

S.E.-D. Mauro / Geoforum 40 (2009) 116125

and Watts, 1993; Robbins, 2004, p. xiv; Rocheleau et al., 1996, p. 4;

Zimmerer and Bassett, 2003, p. 3; Watts, 2000), represents a potentially constructive meeting point for the integration of such diverse
perspectives. Since its inception, political ecology has been sensitive to issues of scale, with respect to both social and biogeophysical phenomena (Blaikie, 1985; Blaikie and Brookeld, 1987, pp.
6469).
For Brown and Purcell, this concern for scale has been conned
to issues of units of analysis, rather than the more fundamental
problem of what determines scale (Brown and Purcell, 2005). However, there has already been a critique of the treatment of scale as
ontologically given (Zimmerer and Bassett, 2003; Watts, 2000, p.
258). Scale is increasingly understood, at least by some political
ecologists, as a process constructed or produced out of the variable
interactions among social and environmental processes or agents.
This not only allows for greater sensitivity to scale dependence,
but also promotes greater exibility in describing and explaining
phenomena by not being tied to a single scale unit and not losing
sight of the possibility of scalar shifts for the same phenomenon
or process, due to the changing interactions of social and environmental factors at specic times and places (henceforth referred to
as spacetime conjunctures). Furthermore, Brown and Purcell, in
their understandable preoccupation with reconnecting political
ecology to political economy, manage to reinforce the erroneous
view that there is little to no ecological perspective in political
ecology (e.g., Vayda and Walters, 1999). Reducing scale to politics,
they miss an opportunity to rene the more recent and more
encompassing reconceptualisation of scale (Zimmerer and Bassett,
2003, pp. 288290).
This promising development in political ecology parallels
what has transpired in world-systems approaches over the past
two decades. The understanding of social change and scientic
knowledge itself as involving multiple spatio-temporal scales,
especially with respect to long-term processes, should be of particular interest to political ecologists. Scale itself has been conceived of as socially contested and the world-system as the
product of forces that encompass different scales (see, for instance, Arrighi, 1994; Brenner, 1999; Hopkins and Wallerstein,
1982; McMichael, 1990; Tomich, 1990). Even more directly relevant is the increasing interweaving of research on the rise
and collapse of different world-systems with analyses of environmental change, both anthropogenic and not (Chew, 2001;
Goldfrank et al., 1999; Hall, 2000; Hornborg and Crumley,
2006; Hornborg et al., 2007; Wallerstein, 1998). This has notably
improved explanations of both internal societal dynamics and
interrelations of social and ecosystems, connecting micro-scale
dynamics to larger-scale social and ecological processes (the
largest scale or total physical area encompassed by a world-system is specic to historical context).
There are, of course, other fundamental concepts, besides scale,
that are shared by world-systems and political ecology approaches
and for which similar theoretical explorations could be mutually
benecial, such as the notion of development and the process of
commoditisation (and, as remarked above, the concept of place).
I focus on the concept of scale because it applies to the study of
both human and nonhuman systems, unlike other overlapping
concepts that involve largely the understanding of social relations,
and because scale is often at the core of methodological questions
pertaining to the explanation of peopleenvironment relations.
The systems approach is not really shared by the two approaches
and, arguably, analytical problems regarding systems often stem
from inadequate attention to scale. In other words, if one wishes
to dene and explain the interaction of social and nonhuman systems, understanding the scale of interaction and the scale of different environmental and social processes is of paramount
importance.

117

2. Political ecology and the analytical limits of privileging either

the local or regional
Despite the emphasis on multiple scales of analysis, webs of
relation (Rocheleau and Roth, 2007), chains of explanation
(Blaikie and Brookeld, 1987, p. 27), bottom-up (Blaikie, 1985, p.
82), or progressive contextualisation (Vayda, 1983), most of the
work in political ecology privileges spatio-temporally limited social
contexts over longer-term, macro-scale social processes (Bridge,
2002, p. 371). While this may be the outcome of a recent distancing
from political economy perspectives (Brown and Purcell, 2005, p.
611), the problem was inherent from the very beginning, with a tendency to emphasise the regional or meso-scale (and then local, or
micro-scale) as the starting unit of analysis. This analytical centring
of smaller-scale dynamics has resulted in an inability to integrate
general patterns and interconnections with ethnographic and ecosystemic data (Blaikie, 1999, p. 140; Brown and Purcell, 2005, p. 612).
This is far from saying that micro- or meso-specicity is less
important than macro-specicity (the two are equally important
in my view). Micro- and meso-level analysis is pivotal in understanding peopleenvironment relations, especially given that the
most tangible occur largely over small areas. Yet emphasis on the
smaller scale becomes a hindrance when it guides, rather than builds
the empirical foundations of a research project. With few exceptions,
political ecology continues to suffer from a methodological insistence on explaining peopleenvironment relations through the
analysis of smaller-scale circumstances and/or starting points.
Planet-wide environmental and, since at least 500 years ago, social processes enable and/or constrain smaller-scale peopleenvironment relations, especially with recent human-induced shifts in
atmosphere composition (radiative forcing through greenhouse
gas emissions, stratospheric ozone layer disruption through the
emissions of bromines and chlorouorocarbons, regional releases
of atmospheric pollutants through burning vegetation and coal combustion, etc.). The scale of analysis adopted in a research project may
depend on the kind of question one wishes to answer (Blaikie and
Brookeld, 1987, p. 65), but ultimately larger-scale processes must
be included to arrive at explanations that go beyond appeals to complexity (Blaikie, 1985) or beyond eclecticism in the frameworks
being combined (Blaikie, 1999, p. 139). The matter is exacerbated
when phenomena in some parts of the whole are confused for evidence that negates either the existence of the entire system (or of
any systemic process at all) or denies the possibility of a general theory on resource management (e.g., Black, 1990; Forsyth, 2003).
There are other epistemological repercussions from such small
locality-specic analyses and small-to-large scale approaches.
One is treating places (or regions) as isolatable (often implicitly,
by not paying attention to wider systemic processes), which enabled political ecology to circumscribe the range of social and environmental contexts to those far away from most political
ecologists homes (McCarthy, 2002; Robbins, 2004). The underlying problem was reected in the exclusion of places outside rural
third world areas from the purview of political ecology (countries in the former state-socialist camp are still mostly ignored).2
Recent attention to wealthy industrialised capitalist societies and urban ecosystems is a helpful rst step in moving political ecology
away from a relatively narrow focus3 and into more promising
2
When they are even considered, state-socialist societies are treated as partially precapitalist relics relatively disconnected from the capitalist world economy (see, for
example, the case of Albania in Blaikie and Brookeld, 1987, p. 18). That is to say, a linear
evolutionist model of society intruded into early regional political ecology approaches
in such a way as to make state-socialist systems theoretically unintelligible.
3
Hopefully, the ideological categories bequeathed from the US Truman administration will also be nally dropped in favour of analytical classication that speaks to
what is actually being investigated (one idea could be using terms from the worldsystems approach or modifying them, if they are disagreeable).

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S.E.-D. Mauro / Geoforum 40 (2009) 116125

cross-comparative terrain that can generate more systematic analysis (see works guest edited by Heynen and Robbins, 2005; Paulson
and Gezon, 2005; Schroeder et al., 2006).
These latest turns have yet to lead to an alternative comparative
framework that would overcome the limitation created by a microscale oriented analysis. Walkers proposal to employ an amended
concept of region that entails analysing larger-scale structuring
factors would helpfully direct political ecology towards such a
framework (Walker, 2003, p. 8, 1213), provided the region not become the analytical starting point. Such a neo-regionalist approach
can avoid the above-discussed pitfalls by considering the interconnectedness intrinsic to the current world-system that shapes (discursively contested) environmental processes and region-specic
peopleenvironment relations.
For instance, Walker identies substantive shifts in the local
environmental politics in the rural areas of the western US as intimately associated with changing regional capitalist relations
(2003, pp. 1621). However, to cite one example, such regional
processes have been predicated on, among other factors, world
capitalist shifts, including the ability of US oil rms to secure vast
quantities of fossilfuel energy through US imperial might. Were
the US national state not to have attained global economic and military supremacy, especially since the 1950s, the ex-urban, petrolguzzling commuter behind the rural-residential economy and local
landscape preservation simply could not exist. Such historical
developments, furthermore, are predicated on the creation and
enforcement of exploitation zones (of lesser paid and unpaid workers and resources like oil, heavy metals, etc.) within and outside
the US that reach the household level. In other words, systemic
and relational changes at the world capitalist scale shape regional
peopleenvironment relations and should be closely analysed to
shed light on how regions (as combinations of social and environmental characteristics) even come into being.
Another example that would benet from a world-systems perspective could be in explaining regional differences in biocide production and use, which has recently been studied at the world
scale (Robbins, 2007). Increasing biocide use in one place cannot
be fully explained without considering what occurs in another,
often far-away place. To add to Robbins large-scale analysis of
agro-chemical industries and their repercussions, there could be
a systemic and relational view of what is produced and used
where. For example, uneven wages and capital ows between
places, in accordance with pre-existing relations among different
regions or countries, create conditions for some places to become
rife with biocide use and/or characterised by agrochemical industry operations through the economic destabilisation (resource
extraction, underdevelopment) of other places, with often negative, if differentiated environmental effects in all places concerned.
Something similar can be said of the recent expansion of natural
preserves (see Zimmerer, 2006) with the simultaneous worldwide
reduction in biodiversity (increasing habitat destruction). Such a
contradictory movement remains poorly explained without analysing world capitalist nancial networks, centred in wealthy
countries, which enable the expansion of urban/industrial and resource-extraction areas worldwide and the changing roles of national states in the evolving capitalist world-system (e.g.,
legitimation functions, changes in capital-accumulation strategies
and incentives).
Another weakness in political ecology, due to omitting systemic
and relational processes at the world scale, is evident in the understanding of discursive processes in policy-making circles, such as
the treatment of ecological modernisation theory. Blaikie
(1999, p. 138) offers, along with other political ecologists, a very
carefully considered critique that avoids any implications of
romanticised pre-modern human impacts. He points out the lack
of analysis of social power relations and the curious absence of

poorer countries or their particular contexts in ecological modernisation discussions (interestingly, Zimmerer and Bassett,
2003, p. 5, overlook the power relations aspect of the critique).
But these critiques fail to consider the relational aspects that enable
ecological modernisation even to exist as a discourse and as a set
of regionally viable policies (i.e., the world-scale social relations
and material conditions). When viewed through a world-systems
lens, it becomes clear that such modernisation is often predicated on the maintenance of unequal exchange, through which less
powerful national states expand internal territorial domination at
the expense of local inhabitants and the most powerful national
states establish greater direct or indirect control over conservation
areas through loan contingencies (e.g., debts for nature swaps) and
technocratic dictates on management priorities through NGOs and
international political and economic institutions (e.g., the World
Bank, the UN, Sierra Club, WWF), and the expansion of resource
exploitation in poorer countries to allow for improvements in environmental quality in the wealthier countries (see Goldman, 1998).
The above illustrations show how adopting world-systems theories and methodologies can enhance the practice and explanatory
reach of political ecology perspectives. World-systems research
concentrates on investigating large spatio-temporal scales to dene the contextual units of analysis (e.g., long-term economic
and hegemonic cycles) and mesh them with smaller scale phenomena (for works specically related to environmental issues, see, for
example, Barham et al., 1995; Bunker, 1985; Chew, 1999;
Goldfrank et al., 1999). As exemplied in Dale Tomichs work on
plantation slavery systems in Martinique, micro-scale processes
are not necessarily elided through large-scale (world-system) focus; on the contrary, as long as the emphasis is on the systemic
and relational, they can be better understood and explained and
contribute to understanding the making of larger-scale processes.
... although the object of inquiry ... is slave production in
Martinique during the period 18301848, the unit of analysis
is not Martinique itself. Rather, attention is paid to processes
of commodity production and exchange beyond these boundaries ... to reconstruct the temporal and spatial frameworks
that are constitutive of relations of slave production and
exchange in Martinique in the historical process of development of the world economy. Thus, the world market and the
French colonial system are not treated as external context
or background for processes and relations in Martinique, but
are taken to be formative of them. Conversely, Martinique represents a particular concatenation of diverse world processes.
Each such process is revealed in the others, but none is reducible to any other. (Tomich, 1990, p. 7)
By seeing the local in the global to invert a tendency
exemplied in Gezon (2005) world-systems perspectives could
productively divert political ecology research away from its highly
problematic propensity to favour micro-scale (or meso-scale)
empowerment as the solution to anthropogenic environmental
degradation (Brown and Purcell, 2005, p. 608).
3. The early rise and rapid fall of world-systems analysis in
political ecology
Movement in this direction was actually evident in Blaikies
early writing. He understood Nepali peasants activities on steepslope soils in terms of larger-scale political economic process. His
remarks on the matter of theoretical approach are worth quoting
at length:
[The] main thrust [of radical critiques of rural development]
has been to attack the view that the state is an impartial
arbiter, and see the institutions of state as well as virtually

S.E.-D. Mauro / Geoforum 40 (2009) 116125

everyone in lesser developed countries being drawn into the

process of world capitalism. Some of the leading authors
include Frank ...; Wallerstein ...; Amin ...; George ...; Warren ...;
de Janvry ... The approach to soil erosion and conservation
taken here is within this broad critique. [It] emphasises relations of surplus extraction as a cause of erosion, and a conict model of the state, where policies are selectively
formulated and implemented (or allowed to languish)
according to the interests, balance of power, and tactics of
competing classes and groups within the institutions of
state. (Blaikie, 1985, p. 152)
Borrowing from world-systems perspectives is then hardly new
in political ecology (Walker, 2005, p. 74) or human geography
generally4. In fact, economic and political geographers have accomplished much in theory development since the 1980s by using
world-systems perspectives (Flint and Shelley, 1997; Klak, 2004;
Knox and Taylor, 1995; Straussfogel, 1997; Taylor, 1988). Some
geographers have even helped shape world-systems approaches
through critique and theoretical exposition (Blaut, 1993;
Straussfogel, 2000; Taylor, 2000).
Unfortunately, such active engagement with world-systems
theories ended before making any impact in the development of
political ecology. Part of the reason is that Blaikie failed to apply
basic principles of world-systems approaches in his own work.
He did not analyse the general and specic connections between
surplus extraction at the micro-scale and the evolving capitalist
world economy that creates conditions for and reinforces relations
of exploitation in multiple ways and levels. Instead, he prioritised
micro-specic processes and intra-institutional heterogeneity, in
the process building wonderfully complex models of multiplescale relations that regrettably never went further than from
household to national state (see especially chapters 6 and 7 in
Blaikie, 1985). This is despite the recognition that even wider
and historically long-term political economic processes are at work
that could explain land use change at the smaller scale, such as in
the peasant communities of Nepal (Blaikie, 1985, p. 137). Even in
this case, Blaikie constrained his analyses to the meso-scale (the
regional) by, for instance, mentioning Gurkha recruitment by the
Indian government as inuencing Nepali society, but then never
investigating the international dynamics behind this recruitment
scheme (e.g., political tensions over territory and outright warfare
with Chinese and Pakistani national states, abetted by interventions, both overt and covert, by the US and the USSR governments
as part of inter-imperial rivalry). Surely, the effect of militarisation
and military recruitment, in the context of and spurred by shifts in
the relationship between national states within the capitalist
world economy, would have had major effects at the household
level, and hence on land use. The opportunity for a truly multiple-scaled analysis of soil erosion in Nepal was thereby missed.
In contrast, to explain variability in land management practices,
he examined different social systems (peasant and pastoral, feudal,
etc.) as if they could be treated in isolation from each other. Consequently, he lost sight of the inter-societal linkages within the same
capitalist world economy and of world-scale dynamics, which
hardly ever conform to local or institutionally specic ones (just
as in the case of biogeophysical processes).
Any further chance for integration of political ecology and
world-systems theories was dashed, a mere two years following
Blaikies book on soil erosion, with the 1987 publication, with
Brookeld, of a more inuential edited volume entitle Land degradation and society. In that work, Blaikie and Brookeld reduced
world-systems theories to a core-periphery model (see below

4
It is unfortunate that Walker ignores Blaikies (1985) volume when discussing the
emergence of political ecology, as does Watts, (2000, p. 259).

119

for a summary of world-systems theories) and excised most of the

Marxist radicals cited above, along with most of their incisive critiques (Blaikie and Brookeld, 1987, see especially pp. 18, 7881).
No further attempts have since been made by Blaikie or anyone
else to rene or elaborate on a world-systems approach or to engage more directly with world-systems research.
The misunderstanding and eventual abandonment of such a
perspective severely weakened the regional political economy approach Blaikie and Brookeld propounded. For example, Michael
Watts rightfully critiqued their inability to nd any substantive
differences between state-socialist and advanced capitalist societies (Watts, 1990)5. Had the authors retained Blaikies initial perspective and used contemporary works in world-systems research
on state-socialism (Chase-Dunn, 1982; Frank, 1980), then they
would have been able to explain state-socialist environmental practices within world-scale capitalist processes. As Wallerstein had
underlined even earlier, the capitalist world economys persistence
is due to having within its bounds not one but a multiplicity of
political systems (Wallerstein, 1974, p. 348). Explanations of environmental practices in state-socialist societies are much more intelligible if viewed in terms of political systems that are constitutive of
and constituted by a larger world economy. Instead, to this day,
political ecologists (see especially Pavlnek and Pickles, 2000) remain
equally incapable of discerning the transideological enterprise
(Frank, 1980, p. 178) behind the extent of environmental degradation that is common to both centrally planned economies and advanced capitalist countries (see also Engel-Di Mauro, 2002a;
Gare, 2002; Rink, 2002).6
4. The world-systems paradigm
Given the above and the recent push for greater appreciation of
macro-scale processes, as well as the analogous theoretical levels
and original political motivations in both approaches, it is about
time to reintroduce world-systems and political ecology perspectives to each other. Like political ecology, world-systems perspectives emerged as an anti-capitalist critique founded on Marxist
ideas and political commitments. Both approaches also constitute
paradigms (analytical frameworks), sets of assumptions guiding
research questions and theoretical development and accommodating multiple and sometimes conicting theories (Robbins, 2004;
Walker 2005, 2007; Wallerstein, 2001, pp. 237256).
A main assumption in the world-systems paradigm is that a
wider inter-societal system or world-system is the most important unit of analysis and general explanatory variable for social
change, especially in the long-term. Crucially, the world-system
cannot be treated as operating independently of its multiple-scale
and scale-producing components, which create the world-system
in the process of their interaction. The analytical framework is
therefore both systemic and relational. Extending the scope of
works such as those of Frank (1966), Amin (1974) initially developed this kind of approach to explain the historical emergence of
capitalism, unevenly experienced in different parts of the planet.
Capitalism developed as a system and expanded territorially as
other societies were gradually integrated, often by force, into its
5
This problem also traceable to Blaikie originally following the predominant
ideological separation between centrally planned economies and advanced
capitalist countries (Blaikie, 1985, p. 34), which, aside from analytically disabling
any notion of interconnectivity within one world economy, eschews the political
economic similarities (highly militarised national states with expansionistic tendencies) and environmental management practices (resource extraction for capital
accumulation for the sake of a small elite) shared by both types of political regimes
(Frank, 1980; Seager, 1993).
6
In a now decade-old exchange over the merits of that foundational book, it
appears that neither Blaikie nor Watts have come to appreciate this problem (Blaikie,
1997; Watts, 1997), and they are regrettably far from alone.

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periphery. Mainly focusing on what became the core of the world

capitalist economy, Wallerstein (1974) further elaborated the
mechanisms whereby capitalist relations took hold historically
and whereby enduring economic inequalities among places were
established through such relations. He achieved this by considering
places as part of world-systems, so that what occurs in one area
cannot be assumed to be independent on processes happening
elsewhere. According to Wallerstein, a world-system is dened
as an entity encompassing different state-based and stateless societies that are systemically interlinked and integrated through a
division of labour. A minisystem is dened in the same way, but
is based on stateless societies (Hall, 2000, pp. 89; Wallerstein,
2000, pp. 129148).
A major theory in the world-systems paradigm is that over
long historical periods, there developed, out of multiple succeeding minisystems, world-economies, and world-empires, a capitalist world-system (with a single world-economy) that marks the
rst planet-encompassing world-system in human history
(Wallerstein, 2000, p. 140). The rise and fall of different worldand minisystems and related multiple-scaled social changes are
the product of the mutual constitution of societies (the parts)
and world-/minisystem (the whole). With this theoretical understanding, the insights of dependency theories are rened by
addressing the existence and maintenance of political economic
inequalities between and within countries. Wallerstein was especially interested in the long-term emergence, development, and
demise of self-contained world-systems (if state-based) and, to a
much lesser degree, minisystems (if stateless) in different parts
of the world. This long-term perspective, elaborated from the
works of Braudel and others from the Annales school, allowed
for an understanding of the specicity of the capitalist worldsystem and for the elucidation of the processes whereby wealth
accumulation could become concentrated in some regions at the
expense of others. The main mechanism, already considered by
dependency theorists, is unequal exchange, beneting the core
countries unevenly and largely the elites of the semiperiphery
and periphery7 (Amin, 1976; Frank, 1966; Wallerstein, 1974, pp.
347357).
The main premise of all world-systems approaches is that social change in particular societies cannot be explained through
internal dynamics alone, but by understanding how societies
are interconnected with others in changing ways within the
same world-system, as parts of a changing whole. This means
that scale (at least the social one) is not static, but made through
networks of social relations (Bridge, 2002, p. 372). In fact, the
scale of the specically capitalist world economy has increased
historically, unlike any other world-system, to cover the entire
physical world, as mentioned above. The large-scale that is often
referred to as global has been produced through capitalist
expansion. Consequently, world-systems research focuses on
both the effects of world-system dynamics on the internal processes of the societies (or subsystems) that compose it (ultimately, all the human actors within it) and the inuence of
change within societies (subsystems) in a world-system on the
overall characteristics of that world-system itself (Hall, 2000,
pp. 56).
Far from reducing social phenomena to macro-scale processes, world-systems approaches consider and attempt to inte7
Core, semiperiphery, and periphery are relational spatial categories used to
describe tendencies present in the capitalist world economy and the relative worldsystem position of places integrated therein. Core places are those characterised by
capital accumulation and attendant combinations of high economic, military, and
political inuence in the world-system. Peripheries are impoverished places of largely
(en)forced economic dependence on core regions and that may have marginal status
in the capitalist world-system. Semiperiphery describes an intergrade world-system
position.

grate potentially all possible scales and aspects of social

relations, cultural, political, economic (Tomich, 1990; Wallerstein, 2000). The historically informed accounts of world-system
processes accord with the recent understanding of scale in human geography as socially constructed, as the product of power
relations (Marston, 2000). The global, for example, is a recent
phenomenon wrought out of capitalist development and expansionism over the past 500 years or so and the construction of the
global scale has simultaneously involved multiple social processes, including non-capitalist relations (see also Smith and
Wallerstein, 1991).
Since the mid 1990s, world-systems analysts have increasingly
revised their fundamental concepts and frameworks and have
increasingly taken early scholarship on world-system and environment more seriously, such as Bunkers early work on the extractive
industry in the Amazon Basin8. As a result, many studies have
emerged that attempt to bridge the gap between macrosociological
and environmental issues. Recent advances in world-systems analysis therefore hold much promise in explaining the interrelations between larger-scale social and environmental dynamics and smaller
scale phenomena. The analysis of world-system dynamics, combined
with environmental sociology, has been increasingly adopted to explain shifts in global to local anthropogenic environmental impacts
(Adeola, 2001; Barham et al., 1995; Chew, 2001; Goldfrank et al.,
1999; Wallerstein, 1998).
At a general level of explanation, it has become clear that a capitalist world-system spawns a basic and potentially fatal contradiction between the ecological basis of existence and the maintenance
of the system itself and is therefore inherently unsustainable, even
though its unsustainability is not necessarily transparent or may
even be contradicted at smaller scales. This was pointed out earlier
by many scholars from a variety of perspectives, including worldsystems ones; however, as in the case of most social science, a fuller appreciation and incorporation of context-specicity of social
and environmental dynamics as other than passive, external, if
not omitted factors, has only arrived within the last decade and a
half (Chew, 1999; Foster, 1999; Grimes, 1999; Merchant, 1980;
OConnor, 1994; Pepper, 1996; Roberts and Grimes, 1999, pp.
6062; Seager, 1993; Williams, 2003).
5. Imagined and real weaknesses in world-systems approaches
The above-described developments in world-systems theories
have largely gone unnoticed within political ecology, perhaps
due partially to Blaikies early abandonment. Probably more effective has been the treatment (and caricaturing) of world-systems
perspectives as a single theory. As shown above, world-systems
theory involves multiple theoretical perspectives and it is really
a paradigm, perhaps less internally variegated than political
ecology. The few political ecologists that have considered worldsystems approaches typically charge a ctitiously unied worldsystems theory with functionalism/tautology or economic/
structural determinism (Cole, 1999, p. 197; Forsyth, 2003, pp.
117120). Forsyth, engaging in synechdoche, rst collapses all
world-systems theories into Wallersteins original ideas and reduces world-systems approaches to all other (neo)Marxist perspectives. Then he claims that all such approaches unhelpfully
reduce environmental problems to the destructive nature of capitalism. Besides evincing internal reasoning problems, such critiques reect earlier debates in sociology and anthropology in
the 1970s and 1980s that have been incorporated and surpassed

8
Bunker found that extractive economies tend to be more constrained in the
world-system as a result of cumulative negative effects on both social structure and
environment (Bunker, 1985).

S.E.-D. Mauro / Geoforum 40 (2009) 116125

with the renement and multiplication of world-systems perspectives9 or that had entirely misidentied the problems and characteristics of world-systems analysis (Peet, 1991, pp. 4953).
The critique of functionalism really confuses analytical categories used in world-systems theories for explanatory statements.
Core, semiperiphery, and periphery and accumulation processes
are analytical categories used not to explain, but to describe the
specically capitalist world-system. The content of these analytical
categories has recently been challenged for their social reductionism, but they have not been abandoned. They remain useful if
understood through context-specic spatio-material mechanisms
(Bunker, 2003, pp. 238239). As stated above, world-systems theories attempt to explain the evolving characteristics of and rise and
fall of different world-systems, requiring careful and detailed historical analysis at many scales, including micro-social. This theory
is also contested in that some maintain that such a global worldsystem emerged much earlier and/or is not as Europe-centred as
once thought (Chase-Dunn and Hall, 1998; Frank and Gills,
1993). However, in all these perspectives, the starting unit of analysis remains at the world-system scale (a historically variable unit
in terms of Earth surface area and time period covered).
The imputation of determinism is similarly misplaced.
Wallerstein (1974), for instance, made it very clear from the beginning that world- and mini-systems develop and change as a result
of shifts within and between their components. The characteristics
described and explained in world-systems research involve the
understanding of co-determination of all forms of social relations,
including cultural, political, and economic aspects of ethnic, class,
and gender relations (Hall, 2000). World- and mini-systems are
also open systems, tending to be thereby dynamic, complex, and
unpredictable (Straussfogel, 1997, 2000). The world-systems paradigm emphasis on the complex and mutual constitution of components and systems stands in contrast to the above-described
mischaracterisations within political ecology.
There are nevertheless some fundamental shortcomings in
world-systems perspectives. On the social side, there is a woeful
paucity of studies that consider the processes of gender and heteronormativity in the making of world-systems (Dunaway, 2001;
Mies, 1986; Moghadam, 1999). Hence, the human agency behind
anthropogenic environmental degradation remains under-theorised, along with the many anti-systemic movements arising in response to the environmental crisis.
Despite early works on environmental degradation (Adams,
1982; Bunker, 1985)10, world-systems researchers largely continue
to be remiss on biogeophysical processes at different scales. In fact,
as Moore (2003) has most perceptively pointed out, Wallersteins
theory of capitalist world-system emergence and expansion rests
to some extent on understanding the interplay between social relations and ecological processes (Wallerstein, 1974). The current
resurgence of studies linking world-system dynamics to environmental change remains a minority endeavour, seemingly reinventing
Wallersteins earlier intentions. Most questions guiding world-systems research still exclude ecological analysis and retain a primacy
of the social in postulating causation (e.g., Hall, 2000, p. 7). This is
despite Wallersteins call not only for a greater appreciation of the
importance of ecological dynamics, echoed by environmental sociologists (Redclift and Benton, 1994; Schnaiberg and Gould, 1994), but
9
Some of these critiques seemed to have been misdirected during the debate itself,
such as Laclaus denial of the possibility of articulation of modes of production and
insistence that capitalist systems must have a largely proletarian presence, which
would mean effectively that most of the world is not capitalist, since wage
employment is increasingly a privilege even in the most industrialised countries
(see also a rebuttal in Wallerstein, 1974, p. 127).
10
These studies were interestingly coeval with the emergence of regional political
ecology, but it appears that the main people involved in the development of worldsystems and political ecology perspectives were largely unaware of each others work.

121

also for an ecologically based successor to the world-systems paradigm that takes seriously the prosaic fact that human systems are located within wider ecological processes (Wallerstein, 1998).
Yet some of the problem may lie in the framework itself. As
Bunker (2003) points out, the socially-based, analytical categories
of core-, semiperiphery, and periphery must be dened according
to context-specic spatio-material mechanisms (e.g., the highly
uneven spatial distribution of metalliferous ores and the variable
material conditions for their extraction, processing, use, and transport). He has therefore called for a new historical materialism.
Work is being done within the world-system paradigm to redirect
the explanandum towards ecological entities with human worldsystems as component parts of major interest, but the work has
really just begun (Barham et al., 1995).

6. Integrating world-systems and political ecology paradigms

These theoretical weaknesses can be surmounted by nding
complementary (and supplementary) grounding and theoretical
contributions in political ecology. Much could be accomplished
through the integration of the two paradigms, whose differences,
in my view, attest mostly to differences in units and spatio-temporal scales of analysis. Overall, I see many of the main theoretical
propositions in political ecology as elucidating on nonhuman
agency and the social relations often missing in world-systems
analysis (e.g., gender), but largely at smaller spatio-temporal
scales. World-systems theories provide explanations of phenomena of systemic regularity or cyclicality that are often treated as
background or as given realities in political ecology (e.g., national
states). I can herein discuss but some examples, briey and far
from exhaustively, to show how the integration of the two paradigms could be done to improve explanations of peopleenvironment relations.
Diverse phenomena at multiple social scales can be linked to
improve on current understandings of what forces are behind environmental degradation. Global competition for protability
(wealth accumulation) through the interstate system and the
reproduction of unequal exchange relations (the maintenance
and expansion of core-periphery inequalities) create the pressures
on resource users often highlighted by political ecologists. They
also shape the processes of access and control over resources as
micro-scales. As noted in some political ecology studies, shifts in
the structure of the world economy additionally enables and informs the political activities and environmental practices of actors
at smaller scales (see, for instance, Bebbington and Batterbury,
2001; Chapter 11 in Blaikie and Brookeld, 1987; Carney, 1991;
Grossman, 1998; Robbins, 1998; Schroeder, 1999; Scoones, 1997;
Shields et al., 1996). World-system dynamics enable some local actors to take advantage of multiple-scale processes, such as through
the relationship between changes in global nancial ows and
tourism destinations of largely core country consumers. Processes
at world-system scale, moreover, inform the deployment and
implementation outcomes of particular forms of environmental
policies in specic places. This can be evidenced in reforestation
programmes in the periphery and semiperiphery guided through
core-country development agencies and international nancial
institutions (e.g., funding for debt for nature swaps or the introduction of parks through expropriation, largely in the periphery).
General trends in the current world-system noted by worldsystems researchers can be further studied for their environmental
implications in diverse geographical contexts covered by political
ecologists. These global realities include the co-occurring processes
of commoditisation, proletarianisation, population growth, accelerated technological change, and the expansion and scalar reach
of state and corporate power, all related to cyclical (though not

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S.E.-D. Mauro / Geoforum 40 (2009) 116125

necessarily predictable) political (hegemony) and economic

(expansioncontraction) waves of varying amplitudes and frequency that can induce greater or lesser levels of total resource
consumption and shifts in resource types used (Grimes, 2000;
Roberts and Grimes, 1999). World-system position (at any spatial
unit), in particular, has been shown to be associated with increased
entropy (Frank, 2007; Hornborg, 1998), greater toxic waste dumping (Adeola, 2001; Frey, 1998), and less resource consumption in
the periphery (Jorgenson, 2003)11 and with higher CO2 production
intensity in the upper periphery and semiperiphery (Roberts et al.,
2003). Such trends cannot be fully grasped, however, without the
many political ecology studies (and exceptional world-systems
research, such as Tomich, 1990) that tease out the contextual and
conjunctural specicities that are too often glossed over by worldsystems researchers.
For instance, Bergesen and Bartley (2000) provide a useful overview of how world-system position and mechanisms help explain
the location and degree of deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions,
and mining (see also Chew, 2001) and of the development and
scale of environmental policies and treaties at different points in
time, as well as how ecological constraints can direct world-system
formation and trajectory. However, these world-systems studies,
because the explanandum is ultimately the world-system, often
fail to explain, for example, the social identities of the people involved in, say, human-induced soil quality change (e.g., Blaikie,
1985; Engel-Di Mauro, 2002b) or the social identities and antisystemic social movements that are forged through the process
of environmental degradation (but see Bunker, 2003; Wallerstein,
1999). These understandings, which are what political ecologists
have excelled in contributing, pinpoint the mechanisms whereby
processes such as deforestation or conservation through violent
expropriation are rendered possible at some localities and not others (e.g., Peet and Watts, 1993; Peluso and Watts, 2001; Ribot,
1998; Rocheleau et al., 1996).
Integrating these kinds of disparate studies (but parallel approaches) could be gainfully employed in explaining the most
environmentally devastating of environmental practices, which is
military activity and warfare (Seager, 1993). As Blaikie and
Muldavin have recently remarked, Writings about environmental
policy both on the national and international levels continue
addressing environmental issues as if there were no wars, no acute
security problems, and no lack of functioning forestry nor agriculture in affected areas at all (Blaikie and Muldavin, 2004, p. 524).
With few exceptions (Gardner, 2005; Le Billon, 2000, 2001; Peluso
and Watts, 2001; Simmons et al., 2007), the same could be said of
political ecology (Watts, 2000, p. 270)12. Though political ecologists
such as Peluso and Watts have made efforts to address issues of violent conict and see violence as a site-specic phenomenon
rooted in local histories and social relations yet connected to
larger processes of material transformations and power relations,
(Peluso and Watts, 2001, p. 5), there has been little attempt to explain how dynamics of violence in smaller areas are systemically related to larger spatio-temporal processes.
Nevertheless, there is here an opportunity to connect smallerscale ndings with studies on world-system patterns. For example,

11
Recent ndings by York et al. (2004) that ecological footprints do not statistically
correlate signicantly with world-system position are an artice of erroneously using
development assistance between 1995 and 1997 to represent world-system position.
This rudimentary approach contrasts sharply with the statistical multiple-variable,
index-based, and long-term data models developed by world-systems analysts and
their application in correlating environmental impact with world-system position
(Babones, 2005; Jorgenson, 2003; Kentor, 2000; Podobnik, 2002; Roberts et al., 2003).
12
Political geographers have been at the forefront of explaining conict, but they
have not addressed the environmental and human health consequences of military
activities and have seldom ventured to understand the deeper causes of warfare, as
some world-systems theorists have attempted.

the historical periodicity of conict and the 1997 war in West

Kalimantan related to resource access and territorial (Peluso and
Harwell, 2001) is more clearly understood when also viewed as
part of shifting rates of ethnic mobilisation within the capitalist
world-system (Dunaway, 2003). The former claries the specic
circumstances and most important factors that the latter cannot
address. Dunaways ndings that regional conicts putatively
based on ethnic mobilisation peaked between the 1950s and
1990s contextualises the conict frequency in West Kalimantan
beyond national trends (e.g., the Suharto regime and its aftermath)
and posits the 1997 war as part of an overall decline in such regional conicts.
The causes of warfare are of course highly variable, but they are
not the sole product of regional or micro-scale circumstance.
Causes shift according to structural changes within the components of the capitalist world-system. Conict frequency within
the core is apparently synchronous with Kondratieff waves until
after World War II, when warfare frequency plummets, but spirals
in severity (Bornschier and Chase-Dunn, 1999; Goldstein, 1985).
Warfare and military build-up frequency have instead accelerated
in the periphery and magnitude appears to be gradually increasing
as well, as technological change allows for the spread of more
destructive weaponry, from which enterprises from mostly core
countries derive large prots (OLoughlin, 2005; Tilly, 1992). In
the case of current core-initiated wars, some recently argue that
a period of stagation is associated with greater propensity for
war by core powers on the periphery, as the example of
Afghanistan and Iraq might illustrate (Bichler and Nitzan, 2004).
Alternatively, this trend could be part of intensifying energyconsumption inequalities since the 1980s that are increasing the
likelihood of conicts or military escalation over energy supplies
between the ascendant upper semiperiphery and the core
(Podobnik, 2002).
In this research area, political ecologists have much to offer because world-systems analysts largely ignore military confrontations by actors other than national states and thereby
underestimate conict frequencies that can lead to altering
world-system level relations and possibly misidentify spatiotemporal patterns. There is also a lack of appreciation among
world-systems researchers for the role physical environmental
processes and conditions in the generation and outcomes of violent conict. For example, Columbium and Tantalum (coltan)
are critical to the military capacity of core powers and to the cell
phone industry (for making capacitors). The minerals occur in the
eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),
where a major international war erupted causing possibly four
million deaths (19972002, and possibly ongoing at lower intensity). No world-systems based explanation has been forthcoming
on the occurrence of this large-scale conict specically in the
DRC, compared to other places where such minerals are also
found, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Nigeria, and Rwanda
(Cunningham, 2000). World-system position can only partly explain the Congo War and it is the painstaking detailed analysis
of small-scale histories, social relations, and peopleenvironmental processes typical of political ecology (and the new historical
materialism in world-systems analysis advocated by the likes of
Bunker, 2003) that can help identify factors, likelihood, conduct,
and consequences of warfare.
Discursive analysis of environmental problems can also be fruitfully examined through a world-systems perspective without losing the specicity of regional discursive formations (Peet and
Watts, 1996) or even smaller-scaled discursive practices, for that
matter. The many studies on discursive constructs and their effects
on policy formation and environmental practices has been a rich
contribution to understanding how environmental issues evolve
and the conditions through which they become problems and

S.E.-D. Mauro / Geoforum 40 (2009) 116125

for whom (Blaikie, 1985; Goldman, 1998; Robbins, 2004;

Rocheleau et al., 1996; Zimmerer and Bassett, 2003; Watts,
1983). Yet the conditions that enable and constrain the emergence
of certain discursive complexes and knowledge systems are also
affected by dynamics in the world-system that could be studied
in conjunction and thereby attain a truly scale-sensitive analysis
of discursive formations. I have attempted to do this in my own
work (Engel-Di Mauro, 2006), though not explicitly in terms of
theory development, but Baber (2001) has ably linked the incorporation of South Asia into the capitalist world-system with the
development of novel forms of scientic practices and knowledge
through the colonial encounter in both core and periphery. Such
an approach promises to explain the larger contexts of environmental discourses, improving on what Robbins (1998), for example, undertook in exposing the hybridity of forest knowledge and
management systems in Gujarat.
Finally, existing political ecology studies of regional patterns
and shifts should be brought together through comparative analysis to bring about a clearer understanding of more general, largerscale systemic tendencies without any reductionism. For instance,
Walkers analysis of the rural western US could be combined with,
say, Watts recent work on the violence and imperialism involved
in oil extraction in the Niger Delta (Watts, 2000, 2006). In this
manner, the linkage of two disparate regions through mutually
inuencing outcomes (oil extraction, rening, and consumption,
cultural landscape constructs, etc.) could shed light on the shifting
characteristics of capitalism in both regions. It would simultaneously render explicit often hidden world-system connections
and potentially demonstrate how regional/local dynamics affect
processes at larger spatio-temporal scales (e.g., the entire capitalist
world-system).

7. Conclusion
World-systems theories are useful in explaining long-term
internal dynamics and interrelations of systems at different scales
and potentially connect shifting spacetime conjunctures at lower
scales with global social and ecological processes. Political ecology,
beneting from a long tradition in geography of studying and integrating biogeophysical and social processes can help redirect the
world-systems paradigm toward the ecologically centred science
Wallerstein has advocated. This will be possible if political ecology
rejuvenates its ecological roots and increases attentiveness to the
macro-scale, as it has recently.
Since political ecology offers more context-situated approaches
of scale (e.g., its production or construction) and greater sensitivity
with respect to micro-scale societyenvironment relations, it can
improve spatio-temporal resolution, reducing analytical losses of
detail of explanatory importance, such as may occur through a
world-systems paradigm. But the relative explanatory effectiveness of political ecologies will be contingent on political ecologists
looking for the local in the global and shifting their main unit of
analysis to large spatio-temporal processes. In this manner, the
plethora of political ecology studies linking social relations to environmental change will be especially useful in further developing
world-systems theories on environmental degradation, widening
their breadth of social relations considered, such as gender and discursive processes of production, representation, and contestation
of environmental truths (e.g., Blaikie, 1999, p. 134; Forsyth,
2003; Neumann, 2005; Paulson and Gezon, 2005; Robbins, 2004;
Rocheleau et al., 1996).
In particular, the recent angle emerging in political ecology to
examine nonhuman processes in the making of spatio-temporal
scales will help correct a major aw in the world-systems paradigm, if the active shaping of scale by nonhuman forces will nally

123

be brought out and theorised (Robbins, 2004; Walker, 2005;

Zimmerer and Bassett, 2003, p. 276). Greater attention to nonhuman agency will be crucial to the development of an integrated
paradigm that avoids the error of subsuming environmental systems under social relations.
There are some risks along the way. Since the aim of worldsystems research is to explain how and why a world-system
emerges, changes, and disappears, the study of the components
is geared to understanding the maintenance and alteration of the
foundations of a social reality, which is not coextensive with biogeophysical processes. This underlying focus, if researchers
borrowing from world-system paradigm are not careful, can be
at the expense of answering questions regarding the reasons for
environmental change, which is or should be the focus of political
ecology. In other words, while political ecology stresses both social
and ecological relations in order to explain anthropogenic causes of
environmental change, world-system theories emphasise social
relations and seldom ecological ones in order to explain the rise
and fall of social world-systems. The ultimate explananda are different both in scale and scope, so concepts, assumptions, methods
applicable to world-systems (as social systems) may not always be
applicable to the investigation of peoples relationship to biogeophysical environments.
In sum, the explanatory usefulness of world-systems theories as
a systemic and relational macro-spatiotemporal scale analytical
framework should be of interest to political ecologists trying to explain particular outcomes in peopleenvironment relations at specic spacetime conjunctures. Borrowing from and improving
upon the world-systems paradigm should help political ecology
become a global project (Walker, 2003, p. 11) without risking
incoherence and reinvigorate radical political commitments such
as alternative development and anti-capitalist critique (Brown and
Purcell, 2005; the works edited by Muldavin, 2008) without losing sight of world economy mechanisms and constraints and without social reductionism. In light of the above-described potentials
and existing theoretical tendencies, the two approaches complement each other and their merger should contribute to both
mutual enhancement and major advances in explaining people
environment relations.
It remains to be seen whether the combination of these approaches enables transdisciplinary research and a systematic and
context-sensitive analysis connecting processes and factors/variables occurring at different spatio-temporal scales (see, e.g., Abel,
2007; Adger et al., 2005; Barham et al., 1995; Bridge, 2002; Bunker,
2003; Cash et al., 2006; Le Billon, 2007; Rocheleau and Roth, 2007;
Rosa and Machlis, 2002; and the contributions in Zimmerer and
Bassett, 2003). For such to become possible, more efforts need to
be devoted in both paradigms towards studying the nonhuman
forces involved in the production of scale and scrutinising the connections of processes operating a various scales for possible
regularities.

Acknowledgements
It is thanks to Eric Perramond that I came to work on the issues
raised in this publication. The ideas developed out of his invitation
to join a session he organised for the 2005 Association of American
Geographers meeting, where we discussed prospects for the development of intermediate theories useful toward rening political
ecology approaches. Comments from Kendra McSweeney and Paul
Robbins during the session were also helpful in clarifying the possible linkages between political ecology and world-systems approaches. Finally, I wish to thank Peter Walker, three anonymous
reviewers and the Editor, Paul Robbins. Without their generous
attention, encouragement, constructive critiques, corrections, and

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S.E.-D. Mauro / Geoforum 40 (2009) 116125

suggestions for additional sources, it would not have been possible

to improve on an original manuscript fraught with problems.
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