ABSTRACT
The political economy literature, which focuses more on explaining the socioeconomic causes of environment-related conflicts, has equally been shaped by the conventional understanding of environments. Essentialist conceptualisation of conflict over the environment is a symptom of a deeper malaise, the tendency to reduce the State merely to a political, economic and physical organisation. As a result, instances of the State's projection of symbolic power are obscured. Symbolic power largely facilitates the exercise of political, economic and physical power. The literature on the conflict has underlined the causative role of environmental crisis, economic crisis, and political instability. What has been neglected is the role of culture in the emergence of the conflict. Culture has been treated as insignificant background to the conflict. Thus, the conflict is seen as emergent and disconnected from its institutional contexts. The chapter also presents an overview of the book.
