Complexity, Dynamism, and Agency: How Can Dialectical Biology Inform Geography?

Royle, Camilla

Abstract

Dialectical approaches, variously interpreted, have been advocated for by geographers for several decades. At the same time, critical environmental geography has recently become dominated by vital materialist strands of thought, the advocates of which have sometimes framed their own work in opposition to dialectics. Critics perceive two major problems with a dialectical framework; that it cements a nature–society dualism and that it insufficiently accounts for the agency or vitality of non-human life. This paper seeks to address these criticisms by engaging with work by biologists who have been influenced by dialectical ideas. I outline two examples, Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins’ understanding of the way organism and environment mutually construct each other and research by Ivette Perfecto and John Vandermeer that offers a non-dualist approach to wildlife conservation in agricultural ecosystems. The article discusses some of the ways in which these understandings might inform contemporary debates in political ecology.

Citation

Royle, C. (2017). Complexity, Dynamism, and Agency: How Can Dialectical Biology Inform Geography?. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 49(5), 1427-1445. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12332

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 19, 2017
• Online Publication Date: May 22, 2017
• Publication Date: 2017-11
• Deposit Date: Dec 6, 2023
• Journal: Antipode
• Print ISSN: 0066-4812
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-8330
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 49
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 1427-1445
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12332
• Keywords: Earth-Surface Processes; Geography, Planning and Development
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1983238