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I am interested in nature-society relations, the political economy of capitalist societies, and the intersections between the two. I was drawn to geography precisely by the discipline's long tradition of theorizing nature-society relationships. I situate my work in this tradition, which ranges from research on classical antecedents to environmental problems and analyses, to modern analyses derived from political economy, to current work on the social construction and production of nature and the implications of poststructuralist and postcolonial theory for environmental politics. My research and teaching focus on the following areas in particular:
My research projects and publications, described below, illustrate how I explore these topics through theoretically informed empirical research.
I am an associate or participating faculty member in two diverse, interdisciplinary programs here at Penn State: the Science, Medicine, Technology and Culture Program and the Social Thought Program.
Office address: 313 Walker Building, University Park PA 16802
Phone: 814-863-1782
Contact Dr. McCarthy by e-mail.
View Dr. McCarthy's curriculum vitae for a full list of publications, courses taught, fellowships, prizes, grants, presentations, guest lectures, and professional services and affiliations.
First world political ecology. Much of my research has been shaped by a continuing desire to bring the tools and theories of political ecology—an approach predominantly associated with research in 'Third World' locales—to bear on environmental conflicts in industrialized countries. I have published and lectured widely on this approach, and am currently guest editing a special issue of Environment and Planning A on, 'First World political ecology,' at the request of the journal's editors. In this domain, I am particularly interested in the imbrications of claims to nature with nationalism and racialized and gendered identities, themes I explore in an article forthcoming in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, co-authored with Euan Hague at DePaul University.
Neoliberalism and environmental governance. My research has increasingly focused on the relationships between neoliberalism and environmental governance. This has been an area of collaborative research with W. Scott Prudham at the University of Toronto, leading to our organizing and guest editing a forthcoming special issue of Geoforum on this theme. My own research in this area focuses on multilateral trade agreements as critical mechanisms of environmental governance, involving reconfigurations of property rights and challenges to the scalar strategies of environmental organizations, as explored in a forthcoming article in Geoforum.
Community forestry. I have conducted extensive research on the rapid growth of community forestry in the United States over the past decade. With support from the Ford Foundation, I have investigated the extent to which community forestry has succeeded in its attempts to reconcile competing land management goals by devolving management to the local level. My conclusions emphasize the congruencies between community forestry and neoliberal policy reforms in other domains. In this research, I am particularly interested in how environmental policies and models move and change as they travel through international networks. I am currently expanding this research to Canada in order to provide a broader comparative perspective.
Working landscapes. In a project funded by the Ford Foundation's Community and Resource Development unit, I am conducting research on the idea of 'working landscapes.' At its best, this conceptual and policy approach, currently gaining support in conservation biology and land management circles, attempts to move beyond the characteristic spatial separation of production and consumption under capitalism and to respond to criticisms that environmentalism has placed too great an emphasis on the protection of 'wilderness.'
Ecoterrorism. Finally, I am just beginning an essentially Foucauldian investigation of 'ecoterrorism.' While I am interested in the actions that take place under this label, my primary focus is the creation and proliferation of the juridical category itself.
[2007] Neoliberal Environments: False Promises and Unnatural Consequences. Co-edited with Nik Heyen, Paul Robbins, and Scott Prudham. Routledge. Scheduled for publication in spring of 2007.
[2007] “States of nature: theorizing the state in environmental governance.” Forthcoming in Review of International Political Economy.
[2007] “Marxist geography,” “Uneven development,” “Social movement,” “Common pool resources,” “Limits to growth,” “Carrying capacity,” and “Crisis.” Forthcoming in Gregory, D., R. Johnston, G. Pratt, M. Watts, and S. Whatmore, eds., The Dictionary of Human Geography (Fifth Edition). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
[2007] “Territoriality.” Forthcoming in M. Bevir, ed., Encyclopedia of Governance. London: Sage.
[2006] “Rural geography II: Alternative rural economies the search for alternatives in forests, fisheries, food, and fair trade.” Forthcoming in Progress in Human Geography.
2006. “Neoliberalism and the politics of alternatives: community forestry in British Columbia and the United States.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96 (1): 84-104.
2005. “Hurricane Katrina and state abandonment.” Editorial (with Bruce Braun, Department of Geography, University of Minnesota). Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 23: 802-809.
2005. “Multifunctional rural geographies: reactionary or radical?” Progress in Human Geography 29 (6): 773-782.
2005. “Scale, sovereignty, and strategy in environmental governance.” Antipode 37 (4): 731-753.
2005. "Devolution in the woods: Community-based forestry as hybrid neoliberalism." Environment and Planning A 37 (6): 995-1014.
2005. “Commons as counterhegemonic projects.” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 16 (1): 9-24.
2005. “First World political ecology: directions and challenges.” Environment and Planning A 37 (6): 953-958.
2004. “Race, nation, and nature: the cultural politics of ‘Celtic’ identification in the American West” (with Euan Hague, Department of Geography, DePaul University). Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94 (2): 387-408.
2004. “Privatizing conditions of production: trade agreements and environmental governance.” Geoforum 35 (3): 327-341.
2004. “Neoliberal nature and the nature of neoliberalism.” (with W. Scott Prudham, Department of Geography, University of Toronto). Introduction to special issue on “Neoliberalism and environmental governance. Geoforum 35 (3): 275-283.
2002. “First World political ecology: lessons from the Wise Use movement.” Environment and Planning A 34 (7): 1281-1302.
2001. “Environmental Enclosures and the State of Nature in the American West,” In Peluso, N. and M. Watts, eds., Violent Environments. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Johnston, R., Gregory, D. and Smith, D., eds. (Fourth Edition). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
1998. “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Environmentalism, Wise Use, and the Nature of Accumulation in the Rural West,” In Braun, B. and N. Castree, eds., Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millennium. London: Routledge.
1998. “Nature and Capital in the American West.” (with Julie Guthman) Antipode 30 (2), Spring. Introduction to special issue on the theme of nature and capitalism in the American West.
1997. “Nature as artifice, nature as artefact: development, environment and modernity in the late twentieth century,” (with Michael Watts), In Lee, R. and J. Wills, eds., Geographies of Economies. London: Edward Arnold.
Introductory-level courses:
Introduction to Human Geography
400-level courses:
The Political Economy of U.S. Environmental Politics
Property and the Global Environment
Graduate seminars:
Introduction to Political Economy (co-taught with Melissa Wright)
Contested Conservation: Nature, Governance, and Territoriality in the Modern Era
Current doctoral students: Michael Rios, Reuben Rose-Redwood, Kolson Schlosser.
Current master's students: Nicola Horne, Hans Meyer.
I am also on the committees of twenty other graduate students. I have served on the doctoral committees of students from geography, rural sociology, history, English, tourism and leisure studies, and media studies. Two students have completed master's degrees in the department under my direction and continued on to the doctoral level.
Web page last updated March 29, 2005