ABSTRACT
This is, indeed, an increasingly felt need of those working at the intersection of environment, culture and development, despite the fact that the development experience has meant for most people a sundering of local life from place of greater depth than ever before. Not only are scholars and activists in environmental studies confronted with social movements that commonly maintain a strong reference to place and territory, but faced with the growing realization that any alternative course of action must take into account placebased models of nature, culture, and politics. While it is evident that “local” economies and culture are not outside the scope of capital and modernity, it also needs to be newly acknowledged that the former are not produced exclusively by the latter; this place specificity, as we shall see, enables a different reading of culture and economy, capitalism and modernity. The inquiry into
and the relationship between social mobilization, development, and the environment. Selected other publications include Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1994), Cultures of Politics/Politics of Culture (co-edited with Sonia Alvarez and Evelina Dagnino, 1998), and “Beyond the Third World: imperial globality, global coloniality, and anti-globalization social movements,” in Third World Quarterly 25, 1 (2004): 207-230.
