A Planetary Political Ecology for Relict Species: The Abandonment of Societies and Environments

Abstract

This chapter is situated as a study of rural central New York, among a post-Vietnam generation, and under the force of land grabs following the United States farm crisis of the 1970s–1980s “consolidation” of farmlands into Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). This study unfolds these surroundings of this particular rural society and environment through critical theory and socioanalysis focused on a mute narrative of reified (thingified) species and beings. From a student of sociology this chapter is a response to the conditions of academic character formation and how a particular local milieu constituted the affinities for investigating society with the environment of nonhumans as political.

Citation

Bechtold, T.F. (2023), "A Planetary Political Ecology for Relict Species: The Abandonment of Societies and Environments", Dahms, H.F. (Ed.) Planetary Sociology (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Vol. 40), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 127-146. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0278-120420230000040007