T
hreatening Dystopias presents a startling dissection of the climate adaptation regime in Bangladesh. Through in-depth research at a range of different scales – and with an unusually wide range of research participants – Paprocki parses out the different processes and relationships shaping the socio-ecology of the Ganges Delta. The book is firmly positioned against dystopian framings of the region, visions that portray agrarian livelihoods as destined to fail, and that position rural-urban migration and shrimp aquaculture as the necessary response to rising sea levels. As Paprocki demonstrates, perversely, discourses around human-induced climate change have naturalised that change, presenting the loss of agrarian livelihoods as an inevitable consequence of processes outside of human control. In contrast, Paprocki is clear that socio-ecological change is situated within – and produced out of – complex relations of power. This denaturalising impulse and the effort to identify unequal relations of power help to produce what is surely the quintessential political ecological study of “the climate adaptation regime”.
Following an Introduction in which the “climate adaptation regime” is introduced, the book moves on to discuss colonial “prehistories” of dystopian climate politics in the Sundarbans. It then turns to the adaptation regime and the politics of uncertainty, extending this analysis to a broader discussion of “the social life of climate science”. The text then shifts focus to a village-level analysis of Kolanihat in Polder 23, an analysis that extends outwards to Kolkata and the migrant labourers who have left the village. A penultimate chapter details the different ways in which social movements have organised against shrimp aquaculture, seeking to oppose dispossession and rebuild agrarian livelihoods. The final chapter brings these many threads together while simultaneously sketching a politics of possibility.
Many things stand out within the book. First, the depth of research is remarkable. Rather than settling on one single window through which to observe the climate adaptation regime, the book shifts focus: different moments provide different insights into the power relations at play. At the same time, the text combines an in-depth understanding of policy discourses with an ethnographic sensitivity to agrarian livelihoods. Necessarily, understanding socio-ecological change in the Sundarbans means bringing together a geomorphological understanding of river flows, sedimentation and soil salinity with a detailed analysis of the colonial and post-colonial “development” interventions in the region.
The struggle between shrimp aquaculture and rice production becomes central to the narrative arc within the book. Nevertheless, Paprocki refuses to fall into a simplistic account of “good” vs “bad”. Nor does she romanticise rice production, being careful to point to the fraught and delicate processes that farmers will continue to have to negotiate. The apparent inevitability of shrimp aquaculture, along with the assumption that villagers will necessarily have to relocate to cities in both Bangladesh and India, is challenged by an understanding of other possible socio-ecological futures. The struggles of landless movements open up these possibilities, even if much more work will need to be done if those futures are to be realised more widely. A repeated refrain is that some will gain from processes of socio-ecological change while others will lose out.
For me, the key strengths lie in the rich historicization of socio-ecological change as a means of better understanding potential futures within the Sundarbans. Drawing on Lefebvre, Hart (2018) refers to this kind of historicization as a regressive-progressive method, one that Hart goes on to situate alongside her broader understanding of conjunctural analysis. Threatening Dystopias exemplifies this method brilliantly. Furthermore, it does so in a way that simultaneously emphasises the biophysical processes – the geomorphological in particular – that are always bound up in the production of space. The book thereby combines a critique of everyday life with a broader analysis of the global politics of climate change.
Although it has become an unfortunate cliché, the book is also a brilliant example of how an intellectual pessimism need not foreclose an optimism of the will. While Gramsci’s resuscitation of the motto was intended to counter a more naïve sense of “the revolution being just around the corner”, thereby highlighting the painstaking work needed to bring about genuinely revolutionary change, this challenge becomes even more serious when we confront the socio-ecological transformations being wrought through human-induced climate change. One can’t help but feel a little sickened by some of the more gratuitous forms of disaster capitalism being pursued by certain development NGOs. Again, Paprocki’s analysis is sensitive to differences between development practitioners, between different policy makers and international organisations, but it is always clear where she sees any hope – in the situated practices of landless movements, and the forms of ecological understanding produced out of their grounded work.
Finally, and this is a point only too obvious for anyone reading Threatening Dystopias, the book is a deeply careful work. The analysis builds layer upon layer: different determinants of socio-ecological change are brought together within a reconstruction of the concrete in thought. But this is done in a way that takes the reader along on the journey. The writing is clear and concise, the rich ethnographic work illuminates rather than obfuscates, and the conclusion draws all the threads together brilliantly.
There’s no way I could have even begun to write this book, so my role as “critic” is diminished from the start. Rather than fabricating a weakness as part of my review, it seems more useful to consider new pathways that the book suggests we might explore. First, I’m fascinated by the implicit – but rarely explicit – scalar analysis presented. In many ways the book is a brilliant example of a political ecological study focused on “the site” while showing – as the best works of political ecology do – how that site can’t be understood outside of political economic relations at a range of other scales. The book embodies an extroverted sense of place, as Massey (1991) might have it. If Priya Rangan and Christian Kull (2009) are right to argue that scale is what makes ecology political, the decision to focus on one scale over another is what enables researchers, activists and scholar-activists to identify certain paths forward over others. I’d like to know more about whether scale could be discussed more explicitly in relation to the politics of climate change adaptation in Bangladesh, and whether doing so might provide further resources for critical action.
Related to the above, Threatening Dystopias is surely the most brilliant example of what can be achieved by bringing together political ecological research with agrarian studies. A form of institutional ethnography sits alongside the more detailed village-level ethnographies elsewhere in the book. And a repeated claim made is that the denaturalized aspects of the adaptation regime need to be challenged. Because of this multi-sited approach, the book provides a welcome riposte to the oddly decontextualised claims within Dipesh Chakrabarty’s (2021) recent forays into the politics of climate change. Perversely, just when it is most needed, Chakrabarty seems to abandon his sensitivity to subaltern perspectives in a largely uncritical veneration of Earth System Science. Paprocki’s research shows not only that the science of climate change matters, but that such science – the politics of certainty and uncertainty, and the policies that emerge as a result – does not exist in a vacuum. And, perhaps more importantly, subaltern perspectives are central to configuring alternative possibilities. Because of the importance of Threatening Dystopias, I’d like to see this conversation with Chakrabarty being staged more prominently. There is so much here that would challenge more simplistic leaps to “the planetary” and more simplistic paeans to Earth System Science: this seems an important conversation to develop further.
Finally, and perhaps related to the above two points, I’d like to pick up what I think is an odd asymmetry in the treatment of “common sense”. Gramscian readings of “common sense” feature at several points within the book, but these are most often in relation to the unspoken assumptions of the adaptation regime. I’m intrigued as to why common sense isn’t also used in relation to the situated practices of the landless movement, in the experiences of those struggling to maintain long-established drainage practices, or, indeed, in the anatomy of the village in Polder 23. Common sense for Gramsci remains the basis from which an immanent critique of an existing state of affairs might emerge. It always contains a kernel of good sense. His philosophy of praxis always, therefore, sees the possibility for making that fractured and incoherent common sense into a coherent – and potentially world-changing philosophy. While I see little potential for such an immanent critique within the adaptation regime, the book shows huge potential within the situated practices of those struggling to craft a livelihood in Khulna.
There is so much more to explore within Threatening Dystopias. It will be discussed, debated and built upon in numerous studies over the coming years. It shows us ways forward in considering the climate adaptation regime. And the book opens the possibility – a glimmer of hope among the dystopian – for better socio-ecological futures.
References:
Chakrabarty, D. 2021. The Climate of History in a Planetary Age, University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL.
Hart, G., 2018. Relational comparison revisited: Marxist postcolonial geographies in practice. Progress in Human Geography, 42(3), pp.371-394.
Massey, D., 1991. A Global Sense of Place. Marxism Today, June pp24-29
Rangan, H. and Kull, C.A., 2009. What makes ecology ‘political'?: rethinking ‘scale’ in political ecology. Progress in Human Geography, 33(1), pp.28-45.
Alex Loftus is Professor of Political Ecology at King’s College London. He is the author of Everyday Environmentalism, co-editor of Gramsci: Space, Nature, Politics and has co-authored introductory texts on both Political Ecology and Water and Society.
