Aporias of North/South political ecologies

Abstract

In this intervention, we explore the impacts of geopolitical bifurcation on the field of political ecology, specifically the divide between political ecology from the Global North and political ecology from the Global South. We argue that this divide perpetuates categorical essentialisms, flattens authors’ standpoints, and reproduces inequities in how scholarship is valued and circulated based on where it is written from. These issues are not limited to political ecology alone but can be relevant to environmental geography as well. Through our analysis of the perpetuation of aporia in political ecology, we challenge the normalcy of this North/South differentiation and advocate for recognizing the agency and capacity of political ecology practitioners, regardless of their geographic location, language, or nationality, to shape the field. Drawing from our experiences as Latin Americanist political ecologists, we argue that transhemispheric and polylingual projects that challenge power dynamics, create inclusive research processes, and recognize colonial legacies are crucial for more equitable and just approaches to addressing environmental and social justice issues. Furthermore, we examine the coloniality of institutions and technologies that move environmental knowledge as a commodity, such as universities, indexed journals, publishing houses, and research funding criteria.

Keywords

Latin America North/South divide communities of practice environmental knowledge production political ecology co-laboring aporia transhemispheric knowledge

1. Introduction

Environmental geography, the study of the interactions between the biogeophysical environment and human societies, is not a politically neutral field. Environmental knowledge has geopolitics: it reflects place-specific conceptions of how the world is ordered politically, influenced by the positions, experiences, perspectives, and social relations of researchers, the cultures of what counts as valuable research, and the institutions that reproduce it as a field of knowledge. This essay reflects on the geopolitics of knowledge production in one environmental geography subfield, Latin Americanist political ecology, where the growing use of terms such as “political ecology from the Global North” and “political ecology from the Global South” suggests not only that knowledge has a geography but also that environmental “imaginative geographies” (Said, 1978) have epistemic communities with distinct concerns and politico-ethical viewpoints (e.g. Ecología Política del Sur, 2022; Neumann, 2005; Paulson, 2014; Robbins, 2002; Walker, 2003). What motivates this geopolitical divide and what are its potentials and risks?

This article emerged from a collective examination of our respective encounters in the domain of political ecology and from our concern with calls for North-South geopolitical epistemic enclosures in Latin America. Flattening and simplifying authors’ viewpoints into North-South camps can perpetuate inequities in scholarship valuation and circulation based on their location. Emphasizing North-South regional divides disregards shared challenges, commonalities, and the transboundary nature of environmental knowledge. Finally, this separation hinders the potential of transhemispheric and polylingual projects and the exchange and integration of ideas and ways of knowing. We do not aim to establish the superiority of one position or another but to explore what problem this geopolitical enclosure seeks to resolve and to underscore the ability of political ecologists to influence the field, regardless of their location, language, or nationality.

Although we center debates regarding the North-South divide in Latin Americanist political ecology specifically, our concerns are relevant to environmental geography more broadly, regarding the geographies and genealogies of environmental knowledge production. The distinct attributes of environmental geography—including the importance it places on environmental and ecological science, its integrative, historical outlook toward theoretical approaches, and landscape analysis, with emphasis on hybrid long-term historical perspectives (Zimmerer and McSweeney, 2020), make it ripe for critical analyses of the sort we propose.

Before we start, we need to situate ourselves. “No one lives in the world in general” (Geertz, 1996: 262). Our critique of political ecology's geographic divide arises from the specifics of our scholarly trajectories, which are rooted in transhemispheric travel. As tenured scholars specializing in political ecology research in Latin America (specifically the central Andean and western Amazonian regions), we conduct extensive multi-sited field-based research, operate in diverse multilingual environments, and collaborate with partners across the Americas and Europe. Collectively, we have advised numerous graduate students from Latin America, the United States, and beyond, and regularly publish in Spanish and English. Beyond these commonalities, our identities and positions vary across the structures that organize us socially, professionally, and personally, shaping our individual approaches to political ecology. Valdivia, a cisgender mestiza raised in Lima, completed her education in Europe and the United States and now resides in the U.S. South. Prieto is a white cisgender scholar who completed his undergraduate degree in Santiago, Chile before earning his PhD in the United States. He currently works at a state university near Peru and Bolivia's border. Perreault is a white, male, cisgender scholar educated in the U.S. public school system. He currently lives in the United States and works at a U.S.-based private university. We each navigate the effects of colonialism, assimilation, and exploitation, according to the structural privileges afforded to us and to the circumstances of our personal and professional trajectories. If political ecology is what political ecologists do (Robbins, 2020), then our trajectories and positionalities matter to the sort of political ecology we do.

Next, we dive into our analysis of political ecology's geopolitical divides in knowledge production. First, we characterize what we call “aporias” of political ecology and our method of analysis, which draws on feminist border-crossing consciousness, to examine the function of the North-South geopolitical separation. Then, we focus on the institutions and technologies that disseminate environmental knowledge, including universities, journals, publishing houses, and research funding criteria to outline how this geopolitical divide may perpetuate socio-environmental essentialisms. Finally, we argue for practices of colaboring in transhemispheric political ecology that move us toward more inclusive research and beyond the colonial legacies that prevent more equitable and just approaches to addressing environmental issues.

2. Placing Political Ecology

Political ecology examines how the historical organization of power in capitalist societies perpetuates socioenvironmental inequities. Its theory, methods, and assumptions “travel” (Said, 1983) with people, between spaces of research (“the field”), professional gatherings, and academic instruction, and according to the political economy of academic and other channels of dissemination. Political ecology, as a field of study, is fragmented, in theory and method (Robbins, 2002), as well as by epistemic communities and locus of enunciation, as occasional calls for a North/South divide suggest. We understand this latter border-making practice as a strategy used to solve a problem of incommensurable claims or aporia, a logical impasse resulting from contradictions related to which knowledge is privileged, specifically, who authors this knowledge and from where.

Political ecology, and environmental geography more broadly, often grapples with aporias of representation in efforts to repoliticize ecological relations and challenge dominant environmental narratives. Examples include: analyzing environmental determinism (Peet, 1985), deconstructing myths such as the “Noble Savage” and “pristine myth” (Denevan, 1992), exploring issues like the “environmentalism of the poor” (Martínez-Alier, 2002), and examining the concept of “slow violence” in relation to environmental degradation (Nixon, 2013). This epistemic questioning of the why, how, and what of dominant environmental narratives indicates that the problem of representing agency, voice, and authorship in political ecology is fraught and inevitable, and must force us to “… confront how we are shaping others through those representations so to reinforce the images and fantasies of the colonial as well as the not-yet-decolonized imaginary” (Cornell, 2010: 100).

What sort of problem does a North/South divide seek to resolve for political ecology in/of Latin America? Placing a political ecology of the Global South and Global North is a refusal of what is habitually ignored in academia: theory and method are not solely generated within privileged centers of calculation but also come from the “flesh”—the social, emotional, and psychological realities of our lives, “our skin color, the land or concrete we grew upon, our sexual longings—all fuse to create a politic born out of necessity” that becomes the soil of consciousness and thought (Moraga and Anzaldúa, 1981: 23). As a recent intervention on the relationship between LatinX and Latin American feminist geographies states, “where (and how) we are located has everything to do with our answers” (Zaragocín et al., 2022).

Naming political ecology as coming “from the Global South” characterizes the field as an explanatory framework emerging from living the Global South “in the flesh.” Thus, the bifurcation of political ecology into variants of Global North and South is a response to the aporia of the “locus of enunciation” (Mignolo, 1999), a statement of positionality in knowledge production that also has a geographical form. It is, in a fundamental way, the recognition that ideas about the region originate in place, with someone, somewhere. In its crudest, most deterministic forms, the locus of enunciation can resemble spatial bounding. Nevertheless, given the constant flux of migration and the endless patchwork of historically conditioned social differences, we must understand the locus of enunciation as being in place but not necessarily bounded to it (Porto and Byrum, 2022; Ulloa and Zaragocin, 2022). That is, the “locus” can be dynamic and emergent, reflecting “Latin America” (and the Global South more generally) as a polyvocal subject position (Rodríguez, 2018), an entanglement of European colonialism, U.S. imperialism, Indigenous and settler influences. Attempts to categorize it as homogeneous within geographic boundaries are futile. In Latin America, placing the locus of enunciation in the South not only reclaims it as a polyvocal center of knowledge production but also recognizes the genealogy of this emancipatory move as originating from within regions often referred to as the Global South (CLACSO, 2022; Fabelo Corzo, 2014; Machado Aráoz, 2017).

Placing political ecology is also a reminder that “Political Ecology,” without a geographic qualifier, ignores the coloniality of Eurocentric theory and method in its canon. The preponderance of introductions, handbooks, and edited volumes devoted to defining political ecology reveals a preference for Eurocentric concepts of social and political organization as all-encompassing frameworks for studying environmental concerns, including our own contributions (e.g. Bryant, 2015; Perreault et al., 2015; Robbins, 2020; Zimmerer and Bassett, 2003). Thus, while political ecology in the Global North may advocate for decolonizing knowledge production, it often fails to center historically marginalized and Indigenous standpoints. The use of categories and concepts reflects settler practices and although intentions may be politically progressive, they do not fully embrace a decolonial or anti-colonial approach.

Placing a geographic locus of enunciation in political ecology thus responds to an aporia of representation: wishing to establish the authorship of knowledge but depending on others’ systems of validation and expression to do so. Let us not forget, however, that aporias are also generative sites; “what takes place, what comes to pass with the aporia” (Derrida, 1993: 32–33) is a borderland of possibility. As Porto and Byrum (2022: 408) argue, “engaging critically and reflexively with alternative rationalities and knowledge frameworks … does not mean total de-linking from Western thought. On the contrary, speaking epistemically from the South necessitates deep knowledge of the frameworks to which it wishes to become an alternative.” Here, we find Gloria Anzaldúa's concept of border thinking useful (Anzaldúa, 1987; see also Mignolo and Tlostanova, 2006). Border thinking involves dwelling in the borderlands of thought and being to enunciate the inside from the outside, drawing on alternative languages and epistemologies, rather than relying on geopolitical enclosures of fundamentalism, nativism, and nationalism (Zindabazezwe, 2019).

Next, we analyze two aporetic sites in the geopolitics of environmental knowledge production in Latin Americanist political ecology: the bounding of epistemic communities and the institutionalization of knowledge production.

2.1. Bounding Communities

Latin American political ecology is often depicted by Spanish-speaking authors as a tradition separate from the political ecologies of academic centers in the Global North (Alimonda, 2016; Gudynas, 2014; Martínez-Alier, 2014). These authors contend that Latin America's distinct histories, cultures, and languages give rise to a unique approach to political ecology, and that this tradition sets it apart from political ecologies developed in scientific centers of the Global North. For example, Joan Martínez Alier asserts that Latin American political ecology serves as both an academic pursuit and a means of active political resistance against domination and exploitation in the region. Political ecology, he writes, “designates a broad social and political movement for environmental justice that is stronger in Latin America than in other continents […]. In Latin America, political ecology is not so much a university specialization within departments of human geography or social anthropology (in the style of Michael Watts, Raymond Bryant, and Paul Robbins) as a field of thought of its own international relevance, with authors very attached to environmental activism in their own countries or on the continent as a whole” (Martínez-Alier, 2014: 2).

Such a statement on spatial bounding is problematic. It overstates differences between global North and South while minimizing intra-regional disparities, and it suggests that political ecology is untranslatable beyond its geographical borders. This perception is exemplified by the debate between Uruguayan scholar Eduardo Gudynas and Ecuadorian scholars from the Centro Nacional de Estrategia para el Derecho al Territorio (CENEDET), which focused on the translation of “Northern” intellectual frameworks for environmental conflicts in the Global South. The suitability of these frameworks was debated in relation to geopolitical location, nationality, and language. Gudynas (2015) contended that the widely accepted concept of accumulation by dispossession, linked to Marxist geographer David Harvey, amounts to “friendly colonialism,” and asserted that leftist governments in the Global South use this concept for anti-capitalist support. Moreover, he criticized Harvey and his supporters for the failure to acknowledge nuances unique to the Global South and for neglecting similar concepts developed by Latin American scholars. CENEDET members responded by accusing Gudynas of misunderstanding the applicability of Harvey's ideas in Latin America.¹ This acrimonious debate highlights contradictions, centered on the imposition of ideas developed in the Global North on the Global South and emphasizing cultural specificity and geopolitical context in interpreting and applying political ecological concepts. What we find most problematic is that these tensions uphold the Cartesian belief that spaces are independent, self-governing, and disconnected from one another, suggesting that a political ecologist's identity is determined by criteria akin to those employed in granting citizenship, such as jus soli and jus sanguinis. This simplification overlooks the global systems’ impact on local experiences and perspectives as well as power dynamics intersections.

Ulloa and Zaragocin (2022) writing as feminist geographers from the Global South (Colombia and Ecuador), and thinking about the relationship between Latin America and Spain, also claim that where we think from and where concepts are born, lived, and practiced (e.g. territory, cuerpo-territorio, and relational ontologies) matters to the sort of political ecology we do. Their approach and goal are radically different, however, focusing on productive possibility rather than boundary-making. Importantly, they name the risks of doing political ecology unreflexively, for example, when a fashionable name or concept in environmental debates is prioritized at the expense of analysis, method, and practice. The academic gaze can become coopted by identity-bounding, as in “I am a feminist political ecologist, or from Abya Yala” (2022: 489), they write, and are critical of the blindspots, gatekeeping, and limited creativity that accompany such certainty. Ulloa and Zaragocin refreshingly do not center antagonistic positions and logical contradictions, as the previous examples do, but the affirmation of place and the possibilities for “horizontality” in intra- and transhemispheric exchanges. What such exchanges might look like, beyond respectful conversations, however, remains unclear. The next section expands on the institutionalized aspects of this point.

2.2. Institutionalized dominance

The limited formation of intra- and transhemispheric alliances reflects a broader set of institutional, personal, and logistical barriers that militate against such efforts. These barriers are not just the result of practical considerations, but also reflect the politics of knowledge production and circulation. English dominates as the global lingua franca for over 95% of scholarly journals (Paasi, 2015). The proficiency gap is influenced by social class and nationality, hindering cross-border knowledge exchange (Fregonese, 2017). This language disparity is a hurdle that disproportionately impacts nonnative English speakers, who must allocate extra resources to publish in a second language. Article submissions from nonnative English-speaking scholars are disproportionately rejected owing to errors in syntax and grammar or the failure to cite what are perceived by peer reviewers to be outdated or incomplete literature reviews. While some journals assist with editing and translation after acceptance, challenges persist during the review and editorial process. Consequently, leading environmental geography journals are invariably dominated by authors from the United Kingdom, United States, and other Anglophone countries, perpetuating the hegemonic role of English in knowledge production and dissemination.

These barriers are tied to the practices of epistemic communities. The production and dissemination of knowledge reflect the interests and priorities shaped by social, economic, and political factors. The dominance of English in academic publishing, for example, is not simply a technical or linguistic issue but rather reflects the political economy of knowledge production and circulation. By understanding the social and political context in which these barriers emerge, we can better appreciate the work that they do in reinforcing existing power relations and exclusionary practices in academia.

Moreover, English language dominance reinforces the perpetuation of the canon. It dictates which works are deemed legitimate, which in environmental geography is overwhelmingly published in English. The politics of citation greatly influences and replicates what is considered authoritative scholarly work (Mott and Cockayne, 2016). Insufficient citation of recent publications or failure to reference key works will result in manuscript rejection by peer reviewers and editors.

English is also frequently used as the lingua franca in international activism due to communication challenges in multilingual settings and the limited linguistic abilities of many U.S.-based scholars and activists. However, this practice tends to privilege individuals with elite education while excluding those who are not fluent or do not speak English at all. Global North scholars often disregard publications in non-English languages or nonindexed journals when considering academic promotion. The majority of top-tier indexed journals publish exclusively in English, with a handful of exceptions such as Antipode, ACME, Journal of Latin American Geography, and Journal of Political Ecology. This discourages collaboration and hinders the dissemination of research in the countries where it was conducted. Latin American scholars similarly encounter this issue when assessed using identical standards, resulting in a potential lack of readership within their home countries. The scientific preference for monolingualism aligns with the modernist goal of language as an unbiased medium for sharing knowledge. The dominance of English in scientific knowledge is seen as essential, but it also eliminates linguistic diversity and standardizes worldviews. This leads to an impoverishment of scientific creativity, which should be the driving force of transhemispheric research.

This language dominance problem has worsened with the neoliberalization of academia, which places increasing importance on publication metrics. The use of quantifiable metrics to measure scholarly productivity hinders cross-hemispheric alliances and affects funding outcomes by altering what is deemed a valid result of alliance efforts. Faculty face increasing pressure to publish in high-impact journals indexed by transnational companies, such as Web of Science (WoS, owned by Clarivate) and Scopus (owned by Elsevier). These journals’ quality is determined through citation metrics like H-index, Journal Citation Reports, and SCImago Journal Rank. However, these metrics do not necessarily reflect the true quality or impact of the research insofar as they can be influenced by a number of factors, including the size and structure of the field, publication habits, and even resources available to the journal. Often, this pressure comes with financial or other rewards. Academic career promotions and funding decisions are increasingly dependent on these metrics, which prioritize English publications and journal articles over other forms of scientific production. This can exclude nontraditional mediums such as websites, booklets, posters, demonstrations, or artistic displays that may have greater influence among Latin American audiences, particularly the nonacademic and activist publics that political ecologists frequently align themselves with. Notably, this pressure, and the reliance on quantitative metrics, is geographically uneven and tends to be greater in the United Kingdom, Europe, and some universities in Latin America (Chile is a prime example) than in the United States and Canada.

While transhemispheric practices are based on sharing and colaboring, the political economy of metrics is reproduced through selection and competition between journals, researchers, and universities. Efforts to improve access to scientific literature in Latin American countries have led to the development of bibliographic databases such as SciELO. This open-access publishing platform was integrated into Clarivate's WoS content package in 2014, but has also faced criticism and been labeled a “favela publication” for potentially producing substandard research content (Beall, 2015). Some journals opt for maintaining their OA status by migrating to Elsevier or Springer, albeit at an added cost.

Citational practices that favor global North experts over their counterparts in the global South hinder transhemispheric collaboration. Nonprofit Open Access publication is an effective way to promote cooperation and overcome this obstacle by providing equal access to scientific literature. However, relying solely on peer-reviewed articles as a credible means of communication presents challenges for a dynamic and fluid transhemispheric political ecology aiming to address environmental and social justice issues at multiple scales.

A second set of barriers to forming transhemispheric alliances include constraints of funding and institutional support. Academic funding—including research grants and doctoral fellowships—shapes and constrains scholarly praxis. However, funding structures also provide opportunities and openings for counter-hegemonic research, teaching, and activism. Academic research is overwhelmingly funded by governments and foundations. In the United States, the primary funding streams include the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright, and state agencies such as the Department of Agriculture or the Environmental Protection Agency. Many of these funding streams originated during the Cold War to expand the U.S. “soft power” abroad. The Fulbright Program is an archetype of this sort of educational funding and cultural exchange. Created by the U.S. Congress in 1946, it was named after Senator J. William Fulbright. The State Department manages this program, with the assistance of cultural attachés stationed at U.S. embassies overseeing local initiatives. A similar program is the Title VI National Resource Centers (NRCs), which fund area studies programs at U.S. universities to enhance foreign language skills and international knowledge. These centers were created under the 1958 Defense Education Act, reflecting Cold War geopolitics and a rigid regional division of world geography. Another example of Cold War-era research funding is the Inter-American Foundation (IAF), created in 1969 under the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act. As an autonomous agency of the U.S. government, it oversaw doctoral research with a focus on grassroots development in Latin America and the Caribbean from 1974 to 2019. The program supported numerous doctoral students, including many from Latin America and the Caribbean. Funding in Europe, the United Kingdom, Canada, and other regions of the global North is typically state-managed but varies in geopolitical history. EU funding emphasizes international cooperation due to the continent's history of colonialism and two World Wars. Foundation funding is no less problematic. The Mellon, Carnegie, Ford, Guggenheim, MacArthur, and other organizations, including the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, were built on the fortunes of extractive and industrial capitalism (Rockefeller, Guggenheim, and Ford, in particular, have notorious histories in Latin America).

The formation of transhemispheric alliances, and of critical international research more generally, is nearly impossible without sources of funding whose institutional histories run through the imperial projects of European states or the Cold War geopolitical calculations of the U.S. government. And yet the colonial logic of funding is filled with contradiction and is far from coherent. Indeed, Fulbright, IAF, and NRC funding have facilitated a wide array of critical research and counter-hegemonic activist scholarship, including our own research.

A third set of pressures militating against transhemispheric alliances are those of the tenure process and other administrative demands that academic researchers face. The tenure model, which originated in the United States and Canada, is increasingly common in Europe and Latin America. With the neoliberalization of the university, the publishing demands of tenure are closely tied to quantitative metrics, as noted above. In its most mechanistic form, scholars are confronted with a list of acceptable journals for publication and tenure evaluation is reduced to an exercise of collecting points from a menu, based on the journal impact factor.

Some version of this model has been adopted by many universities in Chile, the Netherlands, the UK, and elsewhere. In the United States and Canada, by contrast, reliance on quantitative metrics for tenure evaluation is less common, although it is steadily making inroads in some disciplines and at some universities. The extraordinary demands of the tenure process make it difficult for junior scholars to devote the time necessary for building transhemispheric alliances (or any other activity not directly related to publishing).

But professional demands do not end with tenure. Administrative responsibilities often only increase once a scholar is tenured, with pressure to perform major service within and beyond the scholar's home academic department, in directing programs or serving in administrative roles such as director of graduate or undergraduate studies or as department chair. The never-ending requests to review manuscripts, grant proposals, and tenure and promotion cases similarly bite into one's time. Women and scholars of color, who are underrepresented in academia but overburdened with university service duties, often face an additional workload due to the disproportionate amount of administrative demands they are asked to shoulder. They frequently also undertake the unacknowledged labor of mentoring students and junior faculty. While these tasks are essential for reproducing the academy collectively, their combined effect curtails the time available for forming alliances.

3. Toward Transhemispheric, Colaboring, Polylingual Political Ecologies

The North/South perspective in political ecology names the geopolitics of environmental knowledge by bringing attention to the where and who of authorship. However, this approach may inadvertently reinforce dominant geopolitical positions and binary thinking despite denouncing them (Asher and Wainwright, 2019; Wainwright, 2005). While a Political Ecology of the South validates the expression of self-determination and autonomy, exercised through the affirmation of the geopolitical boundaries of knowledge (i.e. North versus South), it also runs the risk of reproducing colonial relations of environmental exploitation.

Moreover, limiting political ecology to a continent or country ignores questions about the production of these areas as discrete spaces and ignores academic practices that reinforce their divisions. Additionally, this approach neglects power asymmetries perpetuated within these spaces, which may reinforce divides and lead to absences in environmental knowledge production, such as structural racism, and to the appropriation of localized concepts for their unreflexive consumption (Ulloa and Zaragocin, 2022). Political ecologists must consider the broader historical, social, and economic forces that shape the production of environmental knowledge.

Environmental knowledge aporias also present opportunities for transformation. In this final section, we turn to Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui's (2015) formulation of the concept-metaphor ch’ixi to offer our final thoughts on navigating the aporias of North/South political ecology. Ch'ixi stands for an articulation of contradictions—the simultaneity of things that under certain circumstances appear to be contradictory, even oppositional to each other, yet this contradiction does not capture all their relations. As a concept, ch’ixi avoids Western binarism and is different from hybridity: it is a texture of antagonisms and seductions, an image to think of the coexistence of heterogeneous elements that do not aspire to be fused or to produce a fuller and more encompassing new term (Rivera Cusicanqui, 2015). As a method, ch’ixi is performative, a way of doing things: a “walking the pathways of border consciousness or a consciousness of the border … a contact zone that permits us to live, at the same time, inside and outside of the capitalist machine, to use and demolish, at the same time, the instrumental reason born within it” (2015: 207, translated by the authors). Ch’ixi decenters the coloniality of Cartesian thought, thinking with the spatialities and temporalities of disjunctions, tensions, contradictions, and more, as ways of actually existing together. Rivera Cusicanqui proposes chi’xi to explore the aporias of transhemispheric knowledge circulation through the affirmation of existence and the impossibility of perfect translation. She criticizes the objectification and translation of value in academic spheres and instead proposes ch’ixi as multidwelling with liberating potential.

What might a ch'ixi political ecology look like? If a hemispheric separation between North and South obstructs fluidarity, coalition building, and colaboring, then a ch’ixi political ecology starts with acknowledging the tension between geopolitical borders, emancipatory goals of political ecology, and its colonial origins. Adopting a “playful” attitude (Lugones, 1987) to travel across this aporia, we propose practicing a ch’ixi viewpoint: understanding the border between North and South political ecologies as a site of immanent performance and possibility rather than assuming permanent separation. To address ethical and political questions related to knowledge production and dissemination across epistemic hemispheres, it is necessary to learn from aporetic moments at this boundary. We offer the following paths:

3.1. Colaboring Communities of Practice

The artificial division of “political ecology from the North” and “political ecology from the South” may be a limiting and simplistic way of understanding political ecology, but it nevertheless presents opportunities for interrogation. The North/South division reinforces and perpetuates colonial and imperialistic power dynamics and suggests that the perspectives and practices of political ecologists are predetermined by their geographical location and nationality, rather than their individual experiences, viewpoints, and expertise. Imposing artificial spatial divisions also tends to erase differences of class, race, and ethnicity within regions while exaggerating differences between regions. With Porto and Byrum (2022: 417), we call for “the cultivation of an interculturalist criticality involving a mindset of equality, respect and cooperation.”

It is necessary to destabilize practices that fix a “political ecology from here” versus a “political ecology from there,” as if these exist in distinct, predetermined spaces. Political ecologies are not static or incompatible but instead are fluid and intersecting. By challenging these dichotomies, we can foster more inclusive and equitable approaches toward environmental and social justice issues. To transcend polarizing divisions, it is essential to recognize the diversity and complexity of political ecology while valuing global scholars’ experiences and perspectives.

It is crucial to go beyond binary and discrete political ecologies in transhemispheric debates. Instead, the focus should be on building a coalition or community of practice that values the diverse and dynamic perspectives and experiences of all partners involved. Colaboring is one way to move toward a ch’ixi space—a texture of diverse communities of practice. It involves actively seeking to dismantle the power dynamics that shape the global distribution of knowledge and resources and creating more inclusive and participatory research processes that value and incorporate the diverse experiences and perspectives of all partners involved. To colabor effectively, it is necessary to recognize and challenge the colonial and imperialistic legacies that have shaped the field of political ecology, some of which we have outlined in this paper, and to work toward creating more equitable and just approaches to knowledge production and dissemination. This may involve rethinking traditional models of academic publishing and distribution and finding ways to support and amplify the voices of scholars from marginalized or underrepresented communities. By colaboring, it may be possible to create more inclusive and effective approaches to addressing environmental and social justice issues. In this way, we can work toward more just and equitable approaches to addressing these issues.

3.2. Language and Translation

A transhemispheric, polylingual approach that incorporates diverse voices can help to overcome colonial power dynamics for just and equitable approaches to environmental issues. Publishing research in English by Spanish-speaking academics can enhance work visibility and accessibility, but it may also uphold the Global North-South division and power imbalances that impact knowledge and resource allocation. Instead of solely translating Spanish research into English, it is crucial to acknowledge how language shapes knowledge production and dissemination. A polylingual political ecology that values diverse languages and cultural contexts could promote inclusivity in shaping political ecological thought and practice.

In ch’ixi political ecology, linguistic recognition becomes even more critical as it involves the exchange of ideas and knowledge across different regions and cultures. Multiple languages promote this exchange, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of the production of uneven natures. In ch’ixi terms, we are talking about subverted semiotic spaces: publications recognized not as a “pure icons” of intellectual production but as “palimpsest of collective praxis” (Rivera Cusicanqui, 2015: 231). A contextual translation approach, acknowledging language's situational nature and potential for cross-fertilization, is preferable within a polylingual political ecology framework. This involves considering the cultural and linguistic contexts of research to preserve and amplify Spanish-speaking academics’ unique perspectives. Through nonneutral translations and a polylingual perspective, we can bridge divides between Global North and South, creating more inclusive approaches to knowledge production and dissemination.

3.3. Networks of Praxis

Finally, we argue for networks of praxis involving scholars, activists, practitioners, and students from various locations in the global North and South who aim to generate new knowledge while de-centering power relations involved in knowledge production. Four brief examples illustrate this point.

The Riverhood and River Commons network (movingrivers.org), funded by the European Union and Wageningen University, is a group of academics who research rivers and river-based communities globally. Their work focuses on the cogovernance of river environments, political struggles over access to rivers, river-based livelihoods as well as advocating for the rights of rivers themselves. This project emerged from the Water Justice Alliance based at Wageningen University which grew out of preexisting transnational research networks with Dutch roots in international education, research, and development funding. The European Network for Political Ecology (ENTiTLE, politicalecology.eu) is a second network of praxis funded by the EU. It comprises 10 universities and NGOs across Europe, Chile, Turkey, and Palestine with scholars and students from these countries focusing on research and action from a political ecology standpoint. ENTiTLE advocates environmental justice, sustainability, and democratization of knowledge. A third example is the Climate Alliance Mapping Project (CAMP, climatealliancemap.org), a collaborative effort between scholars, activists, and archivists from the University of Arizona, Brazil, and Canada that promotes climate justice through ArcGIS Story Maps that integrate climate data with social analysis and storytelling. CAMP was formed by 53 organizations in five countries across the Americas. A fourth example of a transnational network of praxis is Transformations to Groundwater Sustainability (t2sgroundwater.org). It is a transnational network that includes scholars, students, and practitioners from six countries across the globe. It combines political ecology, feminist theory, and natural sciences such as hydrology and engineering to study the governance of groundwater. T2GS aims for grassroots action in achieving equity and justice with an emphasis on knowing, accessing, and sharing groundwater practices. The project has been funded by the EU-based IHE Delft Institute for Water Education. In addition to European and U.S.-based networks, recent initiatives in Latin America initiatives have favored transnational partnerships, such as the Millennium Initiative, which involves international scholars and is supported by the National Agency for Research and Development in Chile, which even provided funding for writing this article.

Though not without shortcomings, these models exemplify transhemispheric structures seeking to create solidarity based on connecting epistemologies across space. In discussing these four networks, our goal is not to hold them up as unimpeachable examples of transhemispheric engagement. Surely there are weaknesses in a model dependent on generous funding from large Northern-based universities and multilateral institutions. The leadership and academic agendas of these networks reflect the values and personnel of these institutions, and they are linked in various ways to fulfilling the academic objectives of those institutions (as measured by the number of high-impact publications, conferences attended, funding received, etc.).

We would argue, however, that these networks push against the confines of the neoliberal academy, even as they are products of it (and in so doing, work against the aporia of political ecology, even as they reproduce it). They constitute “reflexive bridges” (Rivera Cusicanqui, 2015: 295) building ch’ixi consciousness. In explicit recognition of the hierarchical nature of traditional knowledge production, these networks seek to produce horizontal relations of interchange and collaboration. In this sense, we view these networks as examples of “fluidarity.” As defined by the late Diane Nelson (1999), fluidarity—in contradistinction to the more static and hierarchical notion of solidarity—seeks to build “self-conscious alliances [that are] aware and respectful of difference while striving to find common ground as the basis for radical politics” (Nelson, 1999: 50, cited in Maruggi, 2012: 7). Fluidarity in this sense values flexibility and even uncertainty in international struggles, finding (or at least seeking) comfort in what Stuart Hall terms “a politics without guarantees” (Haider, 2021).

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by the Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (grant number ANID—MILENIO—NCS2022_009, ANID—FONDECYT—1201527, ANID—FONDAP—15110006).

ORCID iD

Manuel Prieto

Notes

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