Ruins and Ruination in Political Ecology: An Introduction to the Special Issue

ABSTRACT

A ruin infers ruination, a process that led to the site’s demise and that also gives a glimpse into the site’s story: who or what lived there?; how long did they live there?; where did they go?; where are they now? Implicit in this line of questioning is a link between the past, present, and future, an understanding that ruins and ruination are never quite absolute or complete. In this short article, we theorize with the concepts of ruin and ruination to consider how capitalism both depends upon and is held hostage by its own making. We aim to bring two trends in political ecology together–one that sees ruins as sites of dispossession and one that sees ruins as sites of hope–to develop what we see as a dialectic of ruination with the intention of highlighting where, how, and what kinds of resistance to capital take place within its machinations. This article serves as the introduction to a special issue on ruins and ruination in political ecology, which we see as a critical field for not only resisting capital’s hold on nature-society relations but also for providing pathways towards a post-capitalist future.

KEYWORDS:

• Resistance
• post-capitalism
• hope
• crisis
• nature-society

Acknowledgements

This special issue grew from a session we organized at the 2020 Dimensions of Political Ecology (DOPE) Conference at the University of Kentucky. We want to thank all the organizers, presenters, and attendees of the conference, and we are especially grateful to the panelists who helped shape the conversation that ultimately led to this special issue.