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、缺水与干旱、气候变化、养护观点、环境政策和治理结构、与当地生态有关的非法经济以及被剥夺公民权的社区在这方面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和随之而来的社会政治影响，但也有资源不平等和不公正。纠正失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，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、技术和现代主义体系错综复杂地联系在一起。要使民主转型占上风，就需要更充分地把握和理清这一复杂的相互关系，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，这样的战略行动需要政治意愿。这些问题是围绕自然资源利用的争论的核心，保护和‘粮食安全’的政治，占主导地位的经济发展话语在延续而不是缓解不平等和生态破坏方面的作用，以及社会生态观点对人类内部被剥夺权利的社区意味着什么。作为社会生态/社会唯物主义者研究的框架，所提到的复杂性可以通过在西开普省发现的特定生态物体的运动，通过影响的网络和与它们接触的人的具体叙述来部分追溯。在试图将它们理解为影响生态政治的节点时，这项研究聚焦于四个相关的食物和植物对象，并追踪它们从最初的“家”到最终目的地的路线。这些物品引出了伴随它们的叙述和话语，并与那些处理、使用、转移或交易它们的人的具体化旅程有关。生态物体和伴随的叙述是涉及土地、空间、治理、养护、自然资源利用和分配以及非正式和正规经济等复杂发展问题的节点参照。这些食物和植物作为隐喻对象，促进了与围绕这些对象如何移动、交易、使用、管理和被不同行为者在开普敦非正式住区生活的当地情境中看待的高度争议性的政治、社会、生态和经济话语的接触。他们还谈到了生计政治和持续的不平等，这些不平等是种族隔离遗留下来的，加上较新的气候变化和人类世相关的生态压力。

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.