Urban Political Ecology tends to focus on ideas around ‘Greening the City’ or liberating ecological spaces within dense political urban settings, such as ‘Guerilla Farming’. Murray Bookchin famously argued in favour of urban densification as a social ecology means of political emancipation, avoiding the socially disconnected and land-hungry urban sprawl of US suburbs and its Western emulators. Centre-periphery unevenness, or even conflicts, have taken centre stage, whereby progressive urban elites have evolved either at the expense or at least in contradistinction to an assumed rural backwardness. This is also reflected in the analysis of violent conflicts, whereby disaffected rural workers only become political, or revolutionary, once within dense urban settings. While violence within cities is, thus, frequently (and rightly) seen as politically motivated forms of ‘urbicide’, it is dissociated from other forms of mass violence, such as the burning of olive trees, which are forms of ecocide.
Тhis analytical isolation of urban spaces as sites of political progression as distinct from an apolitical, rural periphery risks discounting local and global rural interconnectedness. It reproduces a problematic binary separating an urban socio-nature which is metabolically inseparable from its rural periphery. First, both are subject to the same broader global forces, for example rent-seeking behaviour by global capital, or mass violence. Second, while the urban is a centre of demand, it is dependent and, hence, inseparable from the rural infrastructure and socio-nature it relies on for its supplies, whether that’s the water supply from rivers, food production, or the global supply chains to maintain its digital infrastructure. This also means, third, that there’s no basis for politically separating distinct spaces of social reproduction and, hence, political transformation. We’d be ill-advised to look for the sources of political progress or politics exclusively within urban environments. Using examples from various conflict settings, this presentation will argue the case for an analytical and political overcoming of the urban-rural divide to arrive at a more holistic understanding of the socio-ecological metabolisms that underlie violent conflict, as well as the potential for political transformation.
Clemens Hoffmann is a Senior Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Stirling. His research interests include Political Ecology, Political Economy and Historical Sociology of International Relations. He currently explores the “Geo-Political Ecology of the Middle East”, developing a critical understanding of nature-society relations, focusing on energy developmentalism and decarbonisation infrastructure projects as part of a broader socio-ecological metabolism. At Stirling, he co-leads the research cluster on Environmental Justice and Low Carbon Transitions and the Centre for Environment, Heritage and Policy. Prior to coming to Scotland, Clemens held positions in Ankara, Turkey and the University of Sussex.