A political ecology of scaling: Struggles over power, land and authority

This paper integrates insights from political ecology with a politics of scaling to discuss the construction and transformation of scalar topographies as part of the politics and power dynamics of natural resource management. The paper details two case studies from Community Based Natural Resource Management in the forest and wildlife sectors of Tanzania to: (1) analyse the devolution of power from the state to the local level; and (2) investigate the constant renegotiations and scalar transformations by actors across multiple levels in attempts to manipulate the governance system. The paper highlights the sociospatial aspects of the struggles and politics of natural resource management, and emphasises that whilst these processes of scalar negotiation and struggle are distinct between the two examples, they both revolve around the same political struggle over power. This indicates an important structuration element of power and scale as they are shaped by both the structural configuration of power within each sector alongside the agency of different actors across multiple levels.