Scott Prudham

My research interests lie at the intersection of a critical, pluralist political economy on the one hand, and the dynamics of environmental change on the other. I am particularly interested in capitalist metabolisms, that is, how the distinct political and economic character of capitalism shapes and is shaped by environmental change and the politics of environmental justice. I think of this interest in succinct terms as a political ecology of capitalism.

These general interests tend to be expressed through empirical investigation. I am particularly interested in the ways in which discrete (or ostensibly discrete) elements of biophysical nature (including human and non-human life) are produced, circulated, exchanged, and come to be understood or take on meaning as commodities, along with how these activities are regulated. How is it that nature is commodified and with what attendant political and ecological consequences? In what ways are such tendencies ever truly complete (i.e., is commodification an outcome or a process?) and how and why is commodification advanced? Can commodification processes be reversed and, if so, how? What are the limits and contradictions of the commodification of nature? How do these questions and the processes to which they refer intersect with the politics and experiences of everyday life? Most recently, I have been working on a collaborative project exploring a longstanding and ongoing shift from generic, industrial wine production to quality wine production in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France, and how this transition is informed by a movement toward more sustainable agronomic and wine-making practices and the articulation of independent and collective modes of vinification.

Publications

Prudham, S., K. I. MacDonald, and S. Caillon. Shifting to quality wine production in France’s Midi: Ethnographic notes from the Department of the Hérault. Journal of Rural Studies 109 (July 1, 2024).

Doncieux, A., O. Yobrégat, S. Prudham, S. Caillon, and D. Renard (2022). Agrobiodiversity dynamics in a French wine-growing region. OENO One 56(4): 183–199

Prudham, S. (2022). Food relief deliveries and urban topologies of pandemic risk in Toronto. Dialectical Anthropology 46: 327–345.

Prudham, S., & MacDonald, K. I. (2020). Qualifying tradition: Instituted practices in the making of the organic wine market in Languedoc‐Roussillon, France. Journal of Agrarian Change, 20(4), 659–681.

Ekers, M., & Prudham, S. (2017). The Metabolism of Socioecological Fixes: Capital Switching, Spatial Fixes, and the Production of Nature. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1-19.