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Geoforum 39 (2008) 765–772

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Epilogue: Towards a future for political ecology that works

Piers Blaikie
School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom

Received 6 June 2007; received in revised form 5 July 2007

Abstract

Political Ecology (PE) has been retrospectively created from a history of wide ranging work of different disciplines, cultural settings
and epistemological foundations. Its conceptualization was and remains expansive, eclectic and inclusive which has brought both inno-
vative thinking and charges of incoherence. A review of these paradoxical views on the quality of knowledge and its effectiveness in pro-
moting justice and other aspects of political progress concludes that PE can fulfil these criteria in spite of challenges involved in
understanding an exceptionally wide range of different disciplines in the natural and social sciences, technical detail and cultural settings.
Also, the production of PE both shapes and is shaped by the structures of the academy and daily practice of teaching and research in a
reflexive way. There are particular rewards and penalties in academic production which make it difficult to undertake long term PE
research, to write overall integrative PE work other than edited and multi-author works, and to engage with wider audiences outside
the academy. There is also an enduring stand-off between PE and policy matters. The growth of PE courses in anglophone universities
is encouraging more comparison, coherence and communication between political ecologists and promises increasing stabilization and
legitimacy of the field.
! 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Development studies; Interdisciplinarity; Policy; Political ecology

1. Introduction
To write an epilogue to a Themed Issue devoted to one’s
life work is a chance of a lifetime. There is no time for
afterthoughts, conceived in l’esprit d’escalier (literally the
‘‘spirit of the staircase’’), as one retires from the arena of
geographical discourse, as I am. As the contributions to
this collection clearly show, political ecology remains a
dynamic and rapidly evolving field. Therefore, this epilogue
has more reason than most journal articles to enjoy the
only benefit l’esprit d’escalier can offer, and to have the last
word, but also to acknowledge its transience and to leave
the future of the fields of Political Ecology (PE) and Devel-
opment Studies (DS) to others.
First of all, I would like to thank all the contributors for
their work in this issue. I learnt a great deal about my own
E-mail address: p.blaikie@uea.ac.uk
work that I did not know either at the time of writing nor
even in retrospect. In some cases, such as in Forsyth’s
chapter, I felt like the Blind Watchmaker (to misuse a book
title by Richard Dawkins). How could I have developed my
work epistemologically so knowingly, while at the same
time being under-informed and half blind about epistemol-
ogy itself? I suppose the answer was that there were other
more roundabout and implied routes to epistemological
awareness which were available from Development Stud-
ies, until Forsyth (2003) and others presented an epistemo-
logically rigorous critical Political Ecology. Also, woven
into discussions of my work were substantial reports of
the authors’ own original research which were contribu-
tions in their own right (for example, Dove and Bambang
Hudayana’s research on the Merapi volcano, and Roche-
leau’s on Feminist Political Ecology). Finally, a warm
thank you to Joshua Muldavin who, with the help of Alex
Clapp, originally set up the sessions at the Annual Meeting
of the Association of American Geographers at Denver in

0016-7185/$ - see front matter ! 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.07.004
766 P. Blaikie / Geoforum 39 (2008) 765–772
2005 with characteristic verve and efficiency, and thereafter
acted as Editor, go-between and overall designer of the
Themed Issue in Geoforum.
2. Inventing Political Ecology
This Themed Issue inevitably has a strong retrospective
element to it, as well as a review of present trends and
engagements with the future (see Muldavin in this issue).
Some of the works quoted by contributors were written
twenty years ago or more, and while many have relevance
for contemporary PE and DS, the focus of this epilogue is
upon an evaluation of the past in terms of its relevance to
present and future concerns – particularly those discussed
in this volume. Therefore, I shall briefly link my own trajec-
tory through these fields over the past thirty-five years to
the wider history of PE and DS, because aspects of this tra-
jectory are common to many who have worked in these
two fields and therefore are relevant to the future of PE.
By about 1983, I found myself on a research course which
seemed to be aligned with others who would also be
labelled political ecologists at a later date. Most of the
authors of that time were to be identified ex post with PE
but did not use the term themselves or at least did not
strongly identify with it as an approach. To take two from
many examples, Hewitt, 1983 edited a path breaking book
in 1983 entitled Interpretations of Calamity from the View-
point of Human Ecology and Anderson and Grove in 1987
edited Conservation in Africa: People, Policies and Practice.
But none of these authors alludes to the term PE or uses it
as a self-proclaimed approach, while undoubtedly their
material in retrospect would be claimed by others to be
centrally situated within PE (see also in the same context,
Ellen, 1982; Dove, 1983, 1984; Abel and Blaikie, 1986;
Shiva, 1989 as other examples of ‘‘PE-retrospective’’
authors). By the end of the 1980s PE as a self-conscious ref-
erence point began to appear and authors such as Blaikie
and Brookfield (1987), Bassett (1988), Black (1990), Bryant
(1992), Neumann (1992), Moore (1993), Escobar (1996),
Muldavin (1996), Bryant and Bailey (1997), Stott and Sul-
livan (2000) amongst many others, began to use the term
and thereby proclaimed themselves as operating in and
thus defining, the field. In the 1990s many others contrib-
uted both to the definition of PE and undertaking substan-
tive research including significant book-length texts such as
Zimmerer and Bassett (2003), Peet and Watts (2004) and
Robbins (2004), thereby creating and elaborating a newly
defined field, but one which had been historically long
established (a similar conclusion to that of Neumann,
2005:41). A number of authors have been more careful in
delineating it. As early as 1994 and further elaborated upon
in 1995, Zimmerer (1994, 1995) identified five different
ways in which human geography has used ecological con-
cepts and PE was only the most recent. Neumann (2005)
outlines his own approach to PE and traces in detail its ori-
gins and more recent development, and like many others in
the field grapples with the same problem of inclusive claims
(‘‘unmanageably complex and theoretically incoherent’’).
Reading these overview accounts, which come out of a syn-
thesis of chosen authors judged to be in the field, it seems
easier to say what PE is, than what it is not. To illustrate
this, a reading of Environmental Sociology, a textbook by
Hannigan (1995), finds no mention of PE and yet most
of its contents might well be claimed as PE. One of the
problems has been that few have paid much attention to
those who have contributed frameworks for theoretical
coherence or defined boundaries of PE anyway. It has been
a matter of trying to herd cats!
It must also be said that this activity of retrospectively
formulating and integrating a field over a considerable per-
iod of time and from many different and hitherto disparate
disciplines may have contributed to the problems which PE
currently faces, but it was also a profoundly exciting and
liberating time. These words are used advisedly – exciting,
because PE opened up a mass of new material from differ-
ent social science disciplines (for example, Anthropology,
Sociology, Environmental Sociology and Political Science
of the environment) and created the possibility of a new
organising framework where natural sciences and social
sciences could re-negotiate their subjects. It was liberating
because, with broader epistemological shifts taking place
in social science, the incoming tide of post-structuralism,
post-modernism and post-colonial studies had lifted the sti-
fling restrictions created by old fixed scientific truths and
teleological models of social change and provided new
worlds to be explored. It is certain that the discursive turn
in Geography in the 1990s assisted PE greatly to reformu-
late the understanding of society-nature relations. While
there was certainly a move by some PE authors to explore
the social construction of nature, multiple meanings and
the sociology of science before the mid-1990s (recognised
too, by Forsyth, this issue), the opening up of critical per-
spectives liberated by epistemological critique (Castree and
Braun, 2001; Demeritt, 1998; Forsyth, 2003) catalysed
much of PE from the mid-1990s onwards.
During the 1990s, other interests than the development
of PE per se as a self-proclaimed and self-conscious field
induced this author to research and engage with institu-
tions outside the academy on HIV/AIDS in Africa; risk,
vulnerability and disasters; and environmental policy in
South Asia and central and southern Africa. A more widely
defined PE and DS informed much of this work, but, apart
from some invited review articles – ‘‘PE for PE’s sake’’-
(Blaikie, 1995, 1999, 2000), PE became less important in
a self-conscious, ‘‘ I am doing PE’’ way. There are a num-
ber of PE writers who also focus on specific issues, often
involving field work in similar ways to myself. One day, I
was asked by two distinguished geographers, well known
in the PE field, to contribute a chapter to a book on PE.
I (thought I) did but the chapter was politely but firmly
rejected. (The chapter in modified form was published as
a journal article in 2007, but few would claim it to be an
example of contemporary PE). The lesson learnt was to
take my bearings anew, look carefully at current writings
 P. Blaikie / Geoforum 39 (2008) 765–772
on PE and realise I had been pursuing a sub-parallel and
divergent course to mainstream PE for some time. It is pos-
sible that there are other ‘‘political ecologists’’ too who
have followed similar courses – away from ‘‘PE for PE’s’’
sake, while still informed by its burgeoning development
and towards engagements with social and environmental
issues and those involved with them outside the academy
altogether.
However, as with all discoveries of new worlds and
epiphanies, came new disillusionments and challenges (to
re-use Robbins’ and Bishop’s terms in their article in this
issue entitled ‘‘There and back again: epiphany, disillusion-
ment and re-discovery in political ecology’’). The latter
often were intertwined and they concerned coherence, dis-
ciplinarity and bibliographic overload, and secondly the
issue of engagement of PE within and outside the academy.
First, the new intellectual eclecticism of PE may simply
have become ‘‘ a cover for anarchic development’’ (Bryant,
1999:148). Multi-disciplinarity while frequently recom-
mended is also critiqued for tendencies to inconsistency,
mixed metaphors and crossed interpretations. Others are
less willing to debauch their discipline with any eclecticism
at all. Economists particularly, have little time for any
scholarship which is not rigorous, rationalist and . . . well,
right! There is a range of views in the current collection.
Rocheleau states that ‘‘hybridity’’ in research (giving exam-
ples of her own research) is judged on the merits of its out-
puts, implicitly defined as successfully engaging with
advocacy, ‘‘policy makers’’ (a term to be examined below)
and institutions in civil society in a way that gives margina-
lised people a voice. In this way, Rocheleau continues, PE
can make space and time for social and environmental jus-
tice and local initiatives. Of course, the arrival at such a
happy outcome runs the gauntlet of charges of careless
eclecticism, and epistemological inconsistency (which For-
syth does much in this issue to defuse). At the other,
though not extreme end of the range of views is Walker
(2006), who describes PE as huge and diverse, like the ele-
phant in the room of blind people told in a Buddhist par-
able, each touching a different part of the elephant, unable
to see the connections which make the whole animal and
therefore locked in endless argument over whether the part
they have got hold of signifies the whole. Also, he makes
the charge that PE has neither a strong and unified
approach to current environmental debates nor big popu-
lar stories, compelling narratives to match for example,
Hardin’s ‘‘Tragedy of the Commons’’. In this case, eclecti-
cism is associated with such metaphors as the elephant
(which no one can make overall sense of), the ‘‘everything
pill’ (again, Robbins and Bishop’s metaphor in this issue),
and attacked as having a lack of unity and strength, and
being ‘‘all things to all people’’ (Blaikie, 1999:p. 31).
Perhaps the way to explore these healthy and challeng-
ing criticisms is not to ask whether they are ‘‘true’’ in some
verifiable way, but whether they matter. The ways in which
these challenges may matter are twofold. The first is the
quality of knowledge produced by PE in terms of such indi-
767
cators as logical coherence, innovativeness, clarity and an
elegance of economy in presentation. The second is the
effectiveness in the promotion of an ethical and political
agenda which in some way can claim to be progressive
(the issue of political purpose). Of course, these two aspects
are related since an incoherent, clumsily presented PE will
fail to promote knowledge in a politically progressive man-
ner. As discussed above, PE has established itself through a
process of claims-making across and into other disciplines
(‘‘disciplinary transgression’’ as Bryant, 1999 has it), across
a bewildering range of topics, with a dynamic epistemolog-
ical sense of the production of PE knowledge. To use
another metaphor, it has become a ‘‘border product’’ (Alex
Clapp, pers. comm.). Therefore, unity of purpose, agree-
ment over definitions and boundaries, and a collective
coherence in the same way some disciplines claim for them-
selves, are unlikely to be found in the self-proclaimed terri-
tory of PE as a whole. All these qualities, it can be noted,
are collective qualities produced through social interaction.
Instead, tests of the quality of knowledge and political pur-
pose are perhaps more relevantly applied on a case-to-case
and individual basis.
There are however, particular difficulties in producing
high quality PE using the criteria suggested. The sheer vol-
ume of literatures about such a wide range of source disci-
plines, technical ecological details, culturally specific
environments and theoretical models is a necessary charac-
teristic of PE – and a source of the constant danger of ama-
teurism and the accumulation of ignorance. (The author is
not writing from any illusion of standing on high ground
here, and is faced as many others must be (and should
be) with the certain knowledge of relevant paths still
untrodden). Thus, sheer bibliographic overload of ade-
quate research necessary for PE can be problematic in
maintaining its intellectual quality, both at an individual
and collective level.
3. The production of academic knowledge and engagement of
PE
Academics are often less willing to be self-reflective
about the production of their own knowledge (even those
within other parts of the academy) than they are about that
of others. There are rewards and punishments in the aca-
demic careers of those who produce PE and DS (Bryant,
1999, Rocheleau and Muldavin, this issue). It is not so
much the theory and methodology which shapes academic
PE, though this is the assumption of most academics given
the prominence they give to theory in most articles in the
PE field. Rather, it is the other way around. It is the daily
practice in the academy which shapes theory and method-
ology (adapted from Mosse, 2002). The day-to-day prac-
tice of academics profoundly affects theory and
methodology of PE, DS and other disciplines as taught
and researched in universities more widely. There can be
made a strong case for a structuration approach to the
production of academic knowledge (Giddens, 1984) which
768 P. Blaikie / Geoforum 39 (2008) 765–772
recognises the reproduction of stable patterns of behaviour
in which the agency of academics and the structures which
impinge on them and their decision making in research, are
mutually reflexive (see also Dove and Bambang Hudaya-
na’s adaptation of Giddens’ theories in relation to PE sub-
ject matter in this issue).
The production of academic PE is shaped by particular
rewards and penalties which discourage a more applied and
engaged PE with ‘‘policy makers’’ in the widest sense.
Funding, rewards and penalties in academic career devel-
opment depend on innovative ideas, critique, radical
stances, and good value in terms of publications per unit
time of research. Yet engagement with research subjects
in promoting environmental and social justice, especially
if situated outside the researcher’s own country, may
require the learning of other languages, advocacy and rep-
resentations to government or other institutions which
make or shape policy (see also Rocheleau, this issue). These
activities are simply not a good investment for the research-
er’s publication record. This is becoming distressingly
true in British universities too, where the quinquennial
Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) cannot, in spite of
rhetorical gestures, reward time away from publication
and which may detract from the length of the list of publi-
cations, however worthy and effective engagement outside
the academy may be. Other European universities are also
going along a route of measuring research output as a cri-
terion for future funding which, in spite of considerable
effort to the contrary, still measures success of an academic
institution by the kilo of research papers. Engagement with
policy in the broadest sense is costly for the academic, and
becoming more so.
The importance of research in Geography in career
development also shapes the kind of outputs which serve
the academic best. Long-term research is at a premium
(unlike Anthropology), and fieldwork of the type often
required in PE and DS is becoming increasingly squeezed
in terms of time and funding. Also, large scale PE work
which may require data collection over a period of many
months or years is difficult to arrange between teaching
commitments. Therefore, a book which focuses on PE,
based on fieldwork and written by one author (or even
co-authored) becomes a rare occurrence. Instead, shorter
articles often based on a rapidly researched field site and
treated as a case study, become more attractive to the aca-
demic author, and maybe this is a contributory factor in
the tendency of published PE articles to report a case study,
and end up theorising and generalising upwards to claim
more universal attention. At the same time, the ‘‘embedd-
edness’’ of many PE case studies could be claimed to be
a virtue and provides insights into diverse, local and subjec-
tive worlds. Synthesis of multiple case studies and theorisa-
tion then becomes the material on which books on PE are
based, the authors of which can remain at the university
without special financial and replacement arrangements.
In a few cases of course, it is the same individuals who
do both short-term collection of primary data as well as
write longer books synthesising their own and others’
research, but this is comparatively rare compared to the
volume of articles on PE. This outcome helps to explain
why PE does not have the ‘‘big narratives’’, compared with
others who do but who do not call themselves political
ecologists (Walker, 2006). The other reason has already
been discussed above and it is that the invention of PE
was so all-inclusive that it became difficult to create an inte-
grated core of PE theories. While these difficulties affect
much research in Geography as a whole (outside GIS), they
pose them a fortiori for PE research.
Finally, as Rocheleau reminds us in this issue, academic
tenure in the United States is also a ‘‘dirty place’’, and
creeping legislation to muzzle criticism of both political
and philosophical/religious critique which may be judged
to be ‘‘unbalanced’’, further reduces the space for critical
PE to influence both students (who may be able to sue their
lecturers who give ‘‘unbalanced’’ views) and other institu-
tions outside the academy. In short, the space for critical
engagement is circumscribed both by the daily practice of
academic life as well as by censorship.
4. Engagement of PE
There is often a stand-off between academic PE and pol-
icy matters, due to fears of incorporation, compromising
terms of reference for policy work and abandonment of cri-
tique and ideological purity. As Walker (2006) noted, a
prominent political ecologist said at the Annual Associa-
tion of American Geographers meeting in 2005, ‘‘I feel
no obligation to be useful’’ (one wonders what this speaker
would be obliged to be – useless?) Walker also noted that
there is a widespread impression that ‘‘policy [is] an
uncouth and distant cousin (ibid:p. 384, 387)’’. However,
by remaining uninfected and unreflective of the contamina-
tions which affect the production of knowledge within the
academy too, university authors remain safe from respon-
sibility for what they say – they can talk nonsense without
being held to account outside the academy – even if policy
makers or the wider informed public ever get to read their
work. This is what was meant by ‘‘responsibility’’ which
Neumann points out in this issue. Nonetheless, academics
who shun engagement outside the academy can make the
good point that they can still ‘‘make a difference’’ within
the academy by inspiring later generations of students,
who may engage in ways their teachers did not.
There are some persuasive arguments against any
attempt to engage with audiences outside the academy.
To undertake research financed by soft money from institu-
tions which dictate their own terms of reference can be seen
as cooptation. ‘‘He (sic) who pays the piper calls the tune’’,
and usually the academic is not paid to be too critical even
within tightly prescribed terms of reference, nor too radical
and to probe wider and deeper concerns. Financial patrons
are usually not willing to risk a critical piece of commis-
sioned research and foreign governments can (and fre-
quently do) forbid researchers entry into their countries if
 P. Blaikie / Geoforum 39 (2008) 765–772
they are recognised as ‘‘troublemakers’’. My own experi-
ence is a case in point. The publication of a book strongly
criticising the existing feudal order in Nepal led to the three
co-authors being banned from entering the country (and
the sale of the book itself within Nepal being prohibited)
for a number of years until a more democratic form of gov-
ernment had been installed.
PE has particular strengths to be able to contribute to
policy debate, but the route of ‘‘truth talking to power’’
(Wiladvasky, 1979), of PE or DS academics talking to pol-
icy makers and influencing them with PE truths, is a tortu-
ous one – and many say, entirely illusory. Environmental
policy does not run on ‘truth’ as in ‘one truth’ anyway.
In most policy-making, multiple actors, often with diver-
gent versions of the ‘truth’ and competing objectives, are
involved in negotiating formal policy. In many cases, out-
comes of policy and what happens on the ground may bear
little resemblance to the intentions of those who shape and
draft policy documents of various types (Blaikie and Mul-
davin, 2004). Some authors have taken a highly sceptical
view of the conventional rationalist view of the policy pro-
cess altogether. Apthorpe and Gasper (1996), for instance,
say that ‘the plainer and clearer a policy is painted, the
more it is driven by evasion and disguise’. The material
produced by academics for their patrons is frequently used
instrumentally by the commissioning agents of the consul-
tancy or research to legitimate courses of action that serve
their own political agenda. To give one illustration from
countless others (also mentioned by Forsyth (this issue)
and Rocheleau et al. (1996), the Government of Botswana
commissioned research to be undertaken by foreign envi-
ronmental scientists and economists to provide a-political
and objective evidence of the degradation of the livestock
range under common property systems. On this evidence,
grounds for the privatisation of the range and the eradica-
tion of the small cattle herder, giving accumulation oppor-
tunities for those in government and their relatives, were
laid through the provision of higher and authoritative sci-
entific truths. These ‘truths’ can be claimed to be beyond
politics, produced by foreigners who are immune to special
pleading and undue influence and whose sources are unim-
peachable (Abel and Blaikie, 1989; Magole, 2003; Blaikie,
2007). This too is an example of the politics of science
where (the then current) equilibrium theories of environ-
mental change immediately identified anthropogenic causes
of degradation and the only culprits around were the small
herders and their common property resource management
systems. Eliminate these, privatise the range and introduce
large, commercial ranches, oddly enough to be owned by
the policy elite and its influential relatives. This illustrates
the possibility of patrons of commissioned research (mis)-
using academic research and actually selectively publicising
the researchers’ material to counter the latter’s progressive
political intentions. On the other hand, this criticism of
how engagement with the best of intentions may end up
being manipulated in a direction contrary to that intended,
can also be turned on its head and treated as a promising
769
PE research field in itself. Environmental policy, it seems,
need not be such an ‘‘uncouth cousin’’ after all.
The production of policy-relevant work also is shaped
by different penalties and rewards. ‘Soft money’ to research
institutes and individuals guarantees a readership by spon-
sors at least, but also their subsequent withdrawal of funds
if they do not like what they are being told. As has been
claimed above, the assumption that research ‘‘talks truth
to power’’ is hopelessly unrealistic. Deals have to be done,
and it is often possible not to be compromised in any
reportage of unpleasant or scandalous results. Sometimes
it is not possible, and the usual co-production by academic
and sponsor becomes highly compromised. But policy
makers are a wide set of actors anyway (e.g. activist
groups, NGOs, BINGOs, charities, faith organisations,
certain sections of the media, research institutes, as well
as the more conventionally understood policy makers in
bureaucracies, policy elites and political parties). Working
with a variety of other engaged people outside the academy
can open up opportunities for learning and appreciating
multiple truths, finding, and listening to marginalised
voices and representing them to both formal and informal
networks in the policy process.
PE which engages with policy elites, senior bureaucrats
and politicians can put them in the frame for criticism
and, however richly deserved, does not make them inclined
to listen nor to be encouraged to renew a research contract.
On the other hand, a critical PE in the academy is a pass-
port to a rapidly acquired reputation, ever more than affir-
mation, confirmation, and hypothesis testing could ever be.
Policy makers, even if they are prepared to listen to criti-
cism, want to be given suggestions about ‘‘what to do’’
for the best in environmental policy, and do not want a
long critique of their past work expressed in (for them)
scarcely intelligible jargon (Marxist or post-modern will
produce equally irascible responses). Practical and feasible
suggestions in complex and difficult policy environments
are sought by almost all those institutions which fund
development research – and rightly so.
Therefore, engagement of PE with policy implies
addressing different audiences outside the academy, accept-
ing some possible penalties in promotion, working with
policy makers of all kinds (sometimes for time-consuming
periods), re-processing practical work into publication for
the academy, having some control over terms of reference
for commissioned research, preparing to take risks with
one’s job, negotiating the freedom to publish and to finding
a wide readership and accepting responsibility for what
engaged political ecologists actually do. This is a tall order.
Labels for PE work both in the academy and outside it
are important and the label ‘‘PE’’ itself, as well as current
PE language confuse even open-minded readers outside
the academy. I have recently co-edited and co-authored
with other contributors a book on the PE of forestry in
India and Nepal (Springate-Baginski and Blaikie, 2007),
and pressed for the title to include the words ‘‘political
ecology’’. It was only with the greatest difficulty that the
770 P. Blaikie / Geoforum 39 (2008) 765–772
series editor of the international publishing house could be
persuaded to include it. He saw the market for the book to
be bookshops who would decide which books they could
sell on in the retail market, professional foresters and
senior policy makers in India and Nepal, in-country activ-
ists and NGOs, INGOs and foreign donors – all of whom,
in the opinion of this most experienced editor of a large and
reputable publishing company, would be put off ordering
the book by having PE in the title. A compromise was
reached where the offending words were relegated to a
sub-title in smaller letters.
5. Prospects for PE
The discussion so far has highlighted some of the
grounds which argue that almost every bane of contempo-
rary PE can also be seen as a boon. On the one hand there
is its heterogeneity, diffuseness of theory, ‘‘developmental
othering’’ (Simon, this issue), eclecticism and virtually lim-
itless horizons which would fatigue the most energetic syn-
thesiser and theory builder. These descriptions of PE have
stimulated many academics to write or say that PE has a
‘‘limited shelf life’’ and even that it has had its day. In
1994 I wrote:
Since 1987 the increasing pace of re-invention has cre-
ated a new invention [. . .]. The whole political ecol-
ogy show is on the road, and has become
something of a bandwagon. Where is political ecol-
ogy going? Does it have the coherence and vitality
to transform itself, rather than remain a capacious
vehicle for academic hitch-hikers (Blaikie, 1994:p. 1).
Twenty years later these introspections continue. How-
ever, most of the critical descriptors above can be turned
on their head and also extolled as virtues. Heterogeneity
can imply the high degree of adaptability of PE to different
subject matter, and the ability to combine different scales
and appreciate both the local and the embedded as well
as global perspectives (see Muldavin, this issue). Eclecti-
cism and diffuseness of theory can be interpreted as an
attempt to occupy the most exciting and rapidly expanding
frontiers of knowledge that often lie between established
disciplines and entrenched epistemologies. The ‘‘limitless
horizons’’ issue, with the danger of literature overload,
amateurism and accumulation of ignorance has already
been discussed, but expansionist and inclusive labelling of
PE also creates opportunities.
However, the criticism of PE perpetrating a ‘‘develop-
ment othering’’, is more difficult to describe as a virtue.
Again, there have always been opportunities for enriching
PE with a current development studies that is still firmly
moored in the South and there is no particular theoretical
reason why PE had its origins in studies in the South. On
the other hand, most of these descriptors of PE could also
be argued to be virtues. There may be reasons why PE took
root in the South predominantly in the 1980s, but which
are not speculated upon here. Simon (this issue) calls for
a re-export of PE to the North and gives a number of illus-
trations, such as Hurricane Katrina, which exposed the
class and race-based patterns of vulnerability of the inhab-
itants of New Orleans, and the woeful lack of effective
disaster preparedness, which may be compared unfavour-
ably with those of Sri Lanka after the tsunami of 26
December 2005. Simon outlines other PE work focused
entirely in the urban North (Swyngedouw et al., 2002;
Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003), and Neumann (this issue)
has a long publication record of PE perspectives on
National Parks and Protected Areas in both the North
and South on the usually inappropriateness of the export
of ideas from the former. There are many other possibilities
for re-exportations from South to North, as well as South–
North comparative studies in many socio-environmental
fields. Many of the latest books on PE illustrate a rich
diversity of futures including environmental security, bio-
prospecting, biotechnology and biodiversity, original
inhabitant/settler ideational and material struggles over
nature (e.g. between the Sami and later settled Scandina-
vians, Inuit with later Canadian, Alaskan and Russian
populations).
Finally, an important and neglected aspect of the future
prospects of PE is the institutional setting in which PE is
produced. Many of the comments on the future of PE have
focused exclusively on its quality of knowledge (coherence,
unity, political purpose and so forth). These must remain
key criteria. However, they are necessary, but not sufficient.
The future of PE has been framed by many authors, some
of which are referenced in the issue in the same way as may
be used about an established discipline, such as Geography
or Sociology, and do not acknowledge that PE is not insti-
tutionalised in the academy in the same way and to the
same extent, with a very few exceptions. Established disci-
plines are taught within Departments and Schools, and the
permanence of what they teach is stabilised by curricula,
established lists of core texts, workshops and field visits.
Reading lists have an authority of their own. There will
be examinations and monitoring of teaching and academic
standards. Competition for funds and students forces these
institutions to present their subject in a coherent manner
and constantly extol the value of their what they teach. Stu-
dents are invited to participate in a common endeavour
and create their own shared PE through reading, research,
seminars and informal discussion. PE rarely enjoys the
advantages of this institutional setting as often as other
established disciplines. There are some individual, (usually
post-graduate) courses in some universities, or others may
make a gesture to PE within programmes in environmental
sociology, anthropology and policy studies. However com-
paratively little stabilisation and intellectual legitimacy
exists for much PE teaching and research compared with
established disciplines. In short, the label ‘‘political ecol-
ogy’’ needs not only to be attached to academic articles
but to degrees, programmes and courses as well.
The conclusion to the Epilogue is, I hope, paradoxical
rather than contradictory in a number of ways. PE tends
 P. Blaikie / Geoforum 39 (2008) 765–772
towards the anarchic and incoherent but is full of burgeon-
ing vitality. There are serious threats to the quality of
knowledge in such a demanding field as PE, but with them
come opportunities. There are penalties in engaging with
different audiences than those who decide upon promotion
in one’s career, but also opportunities in making differ-
ences, often small, ephemeral and sometimes not in the
intended direction. Of course, individuals must be free to
shun such an engagement but to speak as if for all PE
and academics in general in favour of academic purity
(and not to be obliged to be ‘‘useful’’) runs some serious
risks of intellectual elitism and coffee house talk. Yet, this
view, which has been expressed at a number of AAG
Annual Meetings also is instructive to those who disagree
in that it reminds us all of how incorporation, stifling of
critical thought and becoming slaves to agendas set by oth-
ers can (and does) take place. The one non-paradoxical
issue is the importance of stabilising PE through a more
aggressive institutionalisation at college and university
level. Then, we will see the future of PE more clearly –
and that it works.
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