Complexity, Dynamism, and Agency

How Can Dialectical Biology Inform Geography

Bibliographic Data

ID8098716
AuthorsCourtney Royle (0000-0002-2477-5973, corresponding author), Camilla Royle (Department of Geography King's College London London UK)
Year2017
Volume49
Issue5
Pages1427-1445
Publication date2017-05-22
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAntipode (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0066-4812 • E-ISSN: 1467-8330
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/anti.12332
OpenAlexW2610523780
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited41

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

Agency (philosophy · Biology · Development geography · Dialectic · Dualism · Dynamism · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Historical geography · Human geography · Integrated geography · Materialism · Opposition (politics · Political ecology · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Wildlife Ecology and Conservation · Ecology · Law · Philosophy

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