Research at the department aims to contribute to the understanding of the interaction between society and the environment and examines the consequences of human actions.

Environmental research provides a framework for theoretical debate and development surrounding environment and climate change in societal, cultural, and global perspectives. Research at the department aims to contribute to the understanding of the interaction between society and the environment and examines the consequences of human actions. Researchers study the impact of climate and environmental change on the conditions for a functioning social life and how individuals and communities adapt on various organisational levels and through their actions. The political-ecology of environmental issues is a central concern. Themes explored include indigenous peoples’ struggle for independence, sustainable urban development, the environmental impact of big data, and multi-species ethnography.

While political ecology has so far been concerned mostly with matters of power relations, exploitation and the unequal exchange of resources under the present conditions of global capitalism, more recent anthropological work on nature has taken the environment as intrinsically entangled and co-evolving with society. This turn to multispecies and more-than-human anthropology has posed new ontological, epistemological, and methodological questions. For instance: What does it mean for anthropology and social sciences more generally to think of the society-environment interface through the lens of trees, fish, mushrooms or earth beings? In order to engage these complex webs of multispecies interactions along with the political ecology’s concern with social matters, we suggest a radical remake of political ecology which brings in nature in a new way and at the same time makes the category of the political more inclusive.

Contact person:
Bengt (Beppe) Karlsson