Eco-spatial materialities of inequality: a critical socio-ecological, narrative and 'object'-based exploration of food, water and livelihoods

在南非西开普省，粮食主权、水资源短缺和干旱、气候变化、对养护的看法、环境政策和治理结构、与当地生态有关的非法经济以及在此背景下被剥夺权利的社区所经历的贫穷和生态不公正之间存在着复杂的相互关系。南非是世界上收入不平等程度最高的国家之一，其特点是种族隔离的空间性和随之而来的社会政治影响，但也通过资源不平等和不公正。要纠正不平衡，需要的不仅仅是改变地方政策，因为存在一系列复杂的相互竞争的经济、政治、文化和社会历史影响，这些影响使不平等和边缘化继续发挥作用，并与占主导地位的全球贸易、通信、技术和现代化体系错综复杂地联系在一起。要实现民主转型，就必须更充分地掌握和理清这一系列复杂的相互关系，然后才能制定战略行动。在相互竞争的话语和现代痴迷的复杂环境中，这种战略行动需要政治意愿。这些问题是围绕自然资源利用、保护和“粮食安全"政治、主导经济发展话语在延续而不是减轻不平等和生态破坏方面的作用以及社会生态观点对人类世中被剥夺权利的社区可能意味着什么的辩论的核心。作为研究的社会生态/社会唯物主义框架，通过西开普省内发现的特定生态物体的运动，以及通过那些与它们接触的人的影响和具体叙述的网络，可以部分地追踪到所注意到的复杂性。在寻求了解他们作为生态政治节点的影响，研究集中在四个相关的对象的食物和植物，并跟踪他们的路线从原来的“家”到最终目的地。这些物品引出了伴随它们的叙事和话语，并与那些处理、使用、转移或与它们交易的人的具体旅程有关。生态目标和相关叙述作为节点参考，与土地，空间，治理，保护，自然资源利用和分配，以及非正式和正式经济的发展复杂性。这些食物和植物作为隐喻的对象，促进参与高度有争议的政治，社会，生态和经济话语，围绕这些对象如何移动，交易，使用，管理，并被不同的演员在当地的非正式定居生活的背景下，在开普敦。他们还谈到了生计的政治和种族隔离遗留下来的持续不平等，以及新的气候变化和人类世的相关生态压力。

Within the Western Cape of South Africa, there is a complex interrelationship between food sovereignty, water shortages and drought, climate change, perspectives on conservation, environmental policies and governance structures, illicit economies relating to the local ecology, and poverty and ecological injustice experienced by disenfranchised communities in that context. This has been exacerbated by the legacy of apartheid overlain with new forms of global inequalities structured within the Anthropocene.South Africa has amongst the highest levels of income inequality in the world, which is marked out by apartheid spatialities and concomitant socio-political effects, but also through resource inequalities and injustices. It would take more than changing local policies to correct imbalances, as there is a complex set of competing economic, political, cultural and socio-historical influences that keep inequality and marginalisation in play, and that are intricately related to dominant global systems of trade, communications, technologies, and modernism. For democratic transformation to prevail, this complex set of interrelationships would need to be more fully grasped and unpicked before strategic action could be formulated. Within the complex of competing discourses and modern-day obsessions, such strategic actions require political will. These issues are at the nexus of debates around natural resource utilisation, the politics of conservation and 'food security', the role of dominant economic development discourses in perpetuating rather than alleviating inequality and ecological devastation, and what a socio-ecological view may mean for disenfranchised communities within the Anthropocene.As socio-ecological/socio-materialist framing for research, the noted complexity can be partially traced through the movements of specific ecological objects found within the Western Cape, and through the webs of influence and embodied narratives of those who come into contact with them. In seeking to understand them as eco-political nodes of influence, the research focusses on four related objects of food and plants and traces their routes from original 'homes' to final destination. These objects draw out narratives and discourses that attend them and relate to the embodied journeys of those that handle, use, transfer or trade with them. The eco-objects and attendant narratives serve as nodal referents with which to engage with development complexities of land, space, governance, conservation, natural resource utilisation and distribution, and informal and formal economies. These foods and plants act as metaphorical objects that facilitate engagement with the highly contested political, social, ecological and economic discourses that surround how these objects move, are traded, are used, are governed, and are viewed by different actors in the local situated context of informal settlement life in Cape Town. They also speak to the politics of livelihoods and the ongoing inequalities that are the legacies of apartheid, compounded by newer climate change and related ecological stresses of the Anthropocene.