Environment and Planning A 2008, volume 40, pages 131 ^ 152

DOI:10.1068/a3999

Neoliberalising nature: the logics of deregulation and

reregulation

Noel Castree
School of Environment and Development, Manchester University, Manchester M13 9PL,
England; e-mail: noel.castree@man.ac.uk
Received 8 August 2005; in revised form 21 March 2006; published online 17 August 2007

Abstract. This and a companion paper examine a new and fast-growing geographical research
literature about neoliberal approaches to governing human interactions with the physical environ-
ment. This literature, authored by critical geographers for the most part, is largely case study based
and focuses on a range of biophysical phenomena in different parts of the contemporary world. In an
attempt to take stock of what has been learnt and what is left to do, the two papers survey the
literature theoretically and empirically, cognitively and normatively. They are written for the benefit of
readers trying to make some sense of this growing literature and for future researchers of the topic.
Specifically, they aim to parse the critical studies of nature's neoliberalisation with a view to answer-
ing four key questions posed, variously, in many or most of them: what are the main reasons why all
manner of qualitatively different nonhuman phenomena in different parts of the world are being
`neoliberalised'?; what are the principal ways in which nature is neoliberalised in practice?; what
are the effects of nature's neoliberalisation?; and how should these effects be evaluated? Without such
an effort of synthesis, this literature could remain a collection of substantively disparate, theoretically
informed case studies unified only in name (by virtue of their common focus on `neoliberal' policies).
Though all four questions posed are answerable in principle, in practice the existing research
literature makes questions two, three, and four difficult to address substantively and coherently
between case studies. While the first question can, from one well-established theoretical perspective,
be answered with reference to four `logics' at work in diverse contexts (the focus of this paper), the
issues of process, effects, and evaluations are currently less tractable (and are the focus of the next
paper). Together, the two pieces conclude that critical geographers interrogating nature's neoliber-
alisation will, in future, need to define their objects of analysis more rigorously and/or explicitly, as
well as their evaluative schemas. If the new research into neoliberalism and the nonhuman world is to
realise its full potential in the years to come, then some fundamental cognitive and normative issues
must be addressed. These issues are not exclusive to the literature surveyed and speak to the `wider'
lessons that can be drawn from any body of case study research that focuses on an ostensibly `general'
phenomena like neoliberalism.

1 Introduction
Why are human interactions with the nonhuman world being `neoliberalised' across the
globe? In what principal ways does nature's neoliberalisation operate in practice? What
are the effects of this process? And how should these effects be evaluated? These are
live and profound questions. Neoliberal policy has, for some time, been de rigueur in
many parts of the `First', `Second', and `Third' worlds as a means of managing natural
environments and biophysical resources. As controversial as it is widespread, such
policy is ripe for detailed understanding and assessment. The four questions posed
above can, if addressed systematically, offer us the tools to examine comprehensively
nature's neoliberalisation in light of twenty-plus years of policy experimentation in
areas such as water management, commercial fisheries, logging, mining, and `green-
house gas' emissions (to name but a few).(1) However, until very recently, the critical
(1) There are direct links between these four questions, even though some of them can be asked and

answered in isolation by researchers. For instance, knowing why specific biophysical resources are
`neoliberalised' does not tell you quite how it is achieved in practice. However, knowing the effects
of nature's neoliberalisation is crucial to evaluating the phenomena.
132 N Castree

mass of research necessary to construct informed answers to these questions did not
exist. In human geography and cognate subjects, examinations of neoliberal ideas and
practices tended to focus on issues such as (un)employment, welfare provision, indus-
trial policy and trade. Apart from a handful of academic studies (eg Bauer, 1997; Ibarra
et al, 2000) and some `grey literature' issuing from think tanks, nongovernmental
organisations, and the like, anyone seeking reasoned answers to the fundamental
questions of logics, processes, outcomes, and evaluations had relatively few places to
look for inspiration.(2)
Fortunately, this has changedöand it has done so in a very short space of time.
Of late, numerous theoretically informed but empirically grounded studies of neo-
liberalism and nature have appeared in scholarly journals and as monographs.(3) These
studiesöundertaken by researchers across the social sciences, including human geog-
raphyöconstitute a vital resource. We now have a body of credible (sometimes brilliant)
research that both critics and champions of neoliberalism can refer to in assessing
its environmental credentials. This research, as we will see, covers both cognitive
and normative issues. Surveyed systematically, it thus allows us to fashion potentially
robust ö albeit provisional and revisable ö answers to the four questions posed
above.(4)
In geography, the bulk of the new research into neoliberalism and the nonhuman
world is broadly unsympathetic to the project of `market rule'. Karen Bakker, Gavin
Bridge (my colleague), Jessica Budds, Jeffrey Bury, Graham Haughton, Nik Heynen,
Roger Keil, Nina Laurie, Alex Loftus, Becky Mansfield, Simon Marvin, James
McCarthy, Tom Perreault, Scott Prudham, Paul Robbins, Morgan Robertson, Kevin
St. Martin, Erik Swyngedouw, and Wendy Woolford are among those who have called
the neoliberalisation of nature into question in some way, shape, or form.(5) Though
many critical accounts of neoliberalism have employed a `governmentality' approach
indebted to Michel Foucault, the above-named analysts prefer to interrogate nature's
neoliberalisation in another way.(6) Adopting what Gavin Bridge and Andrew Jonas
(2) This statement must be qualified in one important respect. While it is true in the sense that
literature on the natural environment and a thing called `neoliberalism' is very new, it is false in
another sense. For well over a decade, published literature on the nonhuman world and `privatisa-
tion', `markets', `commodification', structural adjustment, free trade, and other cognate phenomena
has been widely available. This raises the question of whether `neoliberalism' is merely a synonym
for these now well-known phenomena or something different quantitatively or qualitatively. None
of the authors whose work I review here answer this question systematically and nor, therefore,
will I. One reader of an earlier version of this paper argued that I needed to review geographical
literature on neoliberalism along with that on so-called ecological modernisation. I reject this
argument because if ecological modernisation is exactly synonymous with neoliberalism when it
comes to nature, then one wonders why the authors whose work I am reviewing here have rarely
explored the two simultaneously [for instance, it warrants only a passing mention in McCarthy's
and Prudham (2004) introduction to a whole journal issue on neoliberalism and nature].
(3) Rather than list all these studies in the introduction, I will discuss many of them later as an

essential element of this and the next review paper. For now it is sufficient to note that a range of
case studies has appeared in special issues of Geoforum 2004 35(3), Capitalism Nature Socialism
2005 16(1), Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 2004 25(3), and Environment and Planning A 2002
34(5); 2005 27(2).
(4) These questions, phrased differently, are those of: why?, how?, with what effects?, and by what

criteria of value judgment to what moral ^ practical ends?

(5) One might also add the inspirational Patrick Bond to this list (a former David Harvey doctoral

student), except that he has no formal affiliation with a geography department today, and rarely
publishes in geography journals. This is why (tenuous a reason though it might seem) I exclude his
work from consideration here.
(6) Indeed, few if any geographers currently employ a governmentality approach to analyse nature's

neoliberalisation.
Neoliberalising nature: the logics of deregulation and reregulation 133

(2002, page 764) call (in the broadest sense) an ``institutional political economy
approach'' to the biophysical world, these and like-minded geographers have deliberately
positioned themselves outside the domains of neoliberal thinking and practice being
analysed.(7) This contrasts with other researchösome of it by geographers (eg Klepeis
and Vance, 2003), most of it not (eg Pagiola et al, 2005)öthat accepts the fundamentals
of neoliberal thinking while aiming to (re)design and calibrate the environmental policies
that derive logically from it.
Another key difference arises from the geographical sensibility of the authors listed
above. Unlike many studies of nature's neoliberalisation by political scientists or
traditional political economists (say), those now being published by critical geographers
have three strengths. First, they often pay close attention to the materiality of the
nonhuman world: nature in its various forms figures as a biophysical actor not a tabula
rasa or neutral `backdrop'. This is important because nature can be shown to alter
the workings and outcomes of neoliberal governance ideas, rules, and mechanisms
(see, for example, Bakker, 2005). Secondly, close attention is also often paid to issues
of scale-crossing and scale-jumping: the links between different socially constituted
geographical scales in terms of logics, processes, and outcomes (less so evaluation,
as we will see in the next paper) are often strongly accented, so that one or other scale
of environmental governance is not hypostatised or fixated upon as if others can be
conveniently bracketed out (see, for example, McCarthy, 2005a). Thirdly, critical geo-
graphical research into nature's neoliberalisation covers a remarkable array of places,
regions, and countries. This, potentially at least, offers readers of the literature and
future researchers of the topic a fairly comprehensive sense of why and how neoliberal
environmental governance operates today and with what effects.
In light of all this, the wider value of the evidence-based critiques of nature's neo-
liberalisation by critical geographers is, it seems to me, twofold. First, by analysing
neoliberal environmental policies `on the ground', they present us with the volume and
depth of evidence necessary to give the architects of those policies pause for thought.
Secondly, evidence-based critiques also keep those of us instinctively opposed to
the neoliberal project both honest and optimistic: for they concretise, modify, and
complicate broad theoretical claims about neoliberalism. After all, in the absence of non-
anecdotal findings, critics' explanations and complaints would remain purely abstract
with the attendant risk of becoming dogmatic.
In this and a follow-on paper (Castree, 2008) I aim to sift and sort the recent (and
already quite large) critical geographical literature on neoliberalism and nature with a
view to addressing the issues of logics, processes, outcomes, and evaluations. (8) While,
at one level, this inevitably makes my efforts derivative, at another I aim to `add value'
to readers' understanding of what the research I survey here is telling us about its
objects of analysis. When these two papers were first conceived, the intention was to
parse the literature and so perform the useful function of providing systematic answers
to the questions of cause (why and how ?), effect, and assessment. My aim was to
identify commonalities and differences among the published case studies so that a
wider understanding of nature's neoliberalisation could be achieved en route to further

(7) Specifically,
the authors whose work I review in this and the follow-on paper look to critical
political economy (Marx and Polanyi in particular), state theory, regulation theory, and new
economic sociology as the main sources of inspiration. This does not mean that they reject each
and every element of neoliberal environmental governance. It does, however, mean that they
are unconvinced by the totality of arguments for this mode of governance as adumbrated by its
advocates in the academic and policy worlds.
(8) Because these two papers were accepted for publication in mid-2006 I have inevitably missed

several papers on my theme published in the last year and a half.

134 N Castree

grounded analyses and policy prescriptions in the future. That aim lives on in the pages
below and the paper to come. It is, I think, a worthy one for the simple reason that the
literature reviewed covers a potentially befuddling array of natural resources and socio-
economic contexts examined at different geographical scales. Given this fact, it is not
easy to identify signals in the noise (supposing, of course, that such signals actually
exist upon closer inspection). For readers of the literature an effort of both conceptual
and empirical mapping is required that can identify lessons learnt to date and so
inform future research on (and teaching about) nature's neoliberalisation.(9)
However, this paper and (especially) its successor have another objective that was
not part of my original intentions but which I now regard as being equally important.
As I surveyed the new case-study literature on neoliberalism and nature produced by
critical geographers, I came to realise that constructing systematic and substantive
answers to my four questions (especially the last three) was surprisingly difficult to
do. This revealed a seeming paradox. The literature I was reading by the authors
named above was conceptually lucid and empirically rich: in short, full of insights
about neoliberalism's environmental `logics', modes of operation, outcomes, and evalu-
ations. Yet, for all this, comparing across individual pieces of research proved to be a
major challenge. The root of the problem, I will argue, is that the authors whose work I
review here are using the same termsö`neoliberalism' and `neoliberalisation' öto refer
to and judge phenomena and situations that are not necessarily similar or compar-
able.(10) At one level, this is unsurprising and not a `problem' at all. After all, `actually
existing neoliberalism' is, as Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore (2002) argue, comprised
of many different but often interconnected neoliberalisations in the plural that are
organised at a variety of spatial scales. One would hardly expect `neoliberalism' to
operate uniformly across the globe and so the fact of heterogeneity, path dependency,
and divergence should be neither a surprise nor a profound analytical issue. Indeed,
the point of research should, precisely, be to account for what Mansfield (2004a,
page 566, emphasis added) calls ``the geographical constitution of neoliberalism''.
But this raises two key issues. First, where one is dealing with transnational neo-
liberal governance mechanisms that impact on otherwise different biophysical and
socioeconomic settings, it is important that their operation and relative causal efficacy

(9) There is an important issue here, identified by one reader of an earlier version of this paper.

It relates to the issue of how a reviewer decides what (and what not) to include in any review essay.
There is a risk that if one casts the net too wide one is reviewing literature that may share only
apparent rather than real commonalities. In the present case, I have focused (i) on geographical
research where a thing called `neoliberalism' is formally analysed in relation to the biophysical
word and, more specifically, (ii) on research by `critical geographers' only, wherein I have taken it
as read that these geographers regard their work as part of a larger field of debate and discovery.
If the latter point did not apply then the work of specific researchers would, implausibly in the
present case, be conducted as if `neoliberalism' were not a reality beyond the case study in
question. This would be `idiography' in a narrow, stereotypical sense that few contemporary
geographers would find defensible or much of a basis on which to erect an academic career.
(10) This, if you like, is an ontological problem: the problem that what constitutes `neoliberal'

environmental governance is highly variable either in reality or in terms of how different analysts
represent reality in their research. But there is also an epistemic and theoretical problem that is not
(and should not be) readily resolvable. This is the `problem' of different analysts having subtly and
often not-so-subtly different frameworks of analysis within the broad area of `institutional political
economy'. It is not so much that the frameworks are incommensurable when one comes to compare
the results of research conducted using them. It is rather that `translating' between them is a major
task for readers and users of the research, such as myself. The use of different concepts to organise
the analysis, different scales of resolution, and different levels of abstraction, and so on pose major
problems for any attempt at synthesis. I discuss these issues at greater length in Castree (2006;
2008).
Neoliberalising nature: the logics of deregulation and reregulation 135

are carefully specified by analysts. If researchers with specific biophysical, local,

regional, and national interests are examining the same `global' ideas, rules, and
mechanisms but doing so in very different ways conceptually and methodologically,
then it becomes a major challenge to compare or relate their analyses. Secondly, where
one is dealing with sui generis forms of neoliberal environmental governanceöat the
national or local scale, sayöthe hoary question of how far one can compare from case
to case in geographical research arises.(11) Ostensibly similar, but causally or substan-
tively unconnected, forms of national and local governance can be meaningfully
compared only if there is real clarity and consistency in the specification of the `neo-
liberal element' of the situations. Otherwise, one might be comparing apples and
oranges while labelling them all pears or peaches. Even then, there is an issue of how
far the context in which neoliberal policies operate affects or alters those policies so
that they are not, in practice, strictly comparable to ostensibly similar ones elsewhere
[see Castree (2005; 2006) for a capsule elaboration of the above arguments].(12)
These extended introductory comments having been made, the topical difference
between this and the follow-on paper can now be described. In the pages to follow I
address the first of the four questions posed at the outset. In Castree (2008), I focus
on the issues of process, outcome, and evaluation. In this paper, therefore, I aim to identify
the principal logics that underlie all manner of different neoliberal policies relating to
different aspects of the nonhuman world in different parts of the globe. It is structured
as follows. In section 2, I explain the need for an overarching critical account of why
nature is being neoliberalised. I then (in section 3) explain why such an account has
not, to date, been forthcoming. I argue that a synthesis of the ideas of Karl Marx, Karl
Polanyi, and certain eco-Marxists(13) öas used separately by a subset of the authors
whose work I am reviewingöoffers one such account and a powerful one at that

(11) By sui generis I mean forms of neoliberal governance that are applied locally or nationally (even

if the inspiration for them came from elsewhere). These `bespoke' forms of governance are thus
relatively or absolutely autonomous from those involving transnational governance rules and
mechanisms which crosscut otherwise different socioeconomic and ecological contexts.
(12) As some geographers have maintained going back decades, `context' might be seen as

constitutive `all the way down' so that substantive (as opposed to merely formal) generalisation
or comparison is impossible. From this perspective there are no `general' answers to my four
questions, only ever multiple, contingent, locally specific ones that are, strictly speaking, incom-
mensurable or only partly commensurable because of the qualitative differences of the situations
involved. (And this could well be the `lesson' readers should take from the literature reviewed
here.) However, from another perspective, comparative analysis of case studies is both possible
and highly desirable but only practical when (i) empirical researchers are scrupulous in defining
their objects of analysis for both transnational and sui generis governance mechanisms, and when
(ii) the `translation rules' for comparing across apparently similar but substantially different cases
have, so far as is possible, been established. As will be seen in this and the companion paper, many
of the authors whose work I review strongly resist the `idiographic' argument that their `local'
findings have little or no translatability to something beyond themselves. I argue that, while this
position is entirely defensible and desirable in principle, in practice more work needs to be done
to make case analyses conducted at various geographical scales talk to one another. This argument,
I believe, extends beyond my immediate topic of concern to include other areas of research where
putatively `general' phenomena (for example, `post-Fordism', `postmodernity', `the network society', or
`the information age') are actualised in and through diverse, though often empirically connected,
spatiotemporal contexts. Therefore, and though I cannot demonstrate the claim here, I think my
arguments in this paper apply also to much research on nature's neoliberalisation by nongeographers.
(13) I use this term to mean Marxists who theorise capitalism ^ nature relationships using a range of

concepts and normative standards, not just those who are `pro-nature' in some way (whatever this
might mean).
136 N Castree

(but not the only conceivable account).(14) Section 4 sets the scene for this synthesis by
explaining what, in abstract terms, constitutes `neoliberalism'. Section 5 then links
various of the empirical case studies theoretically by exploring what a comprehensive
and integrated Polanyian ^ Marxian explanation of nature's neoliberalisation looks like.
This leads in section 6 to the identification of four `environmental imperatives' that can
be shown to underlie several of the case studies reviewed here. A brief conclusion then
follows in section 7.
As should by now be clear, I aim in this and the follow-on paper to act as an
`underlabourer' for the research being reviewed. In so doing, I hope to set future
research in this vein on a stronger cognitive and normative footing by reflecting on
some fundamental issues that crosscut the individual studies that will comprise it in the
years ahead. The specific contribution of this first paper relates to both researchers of
nature's neoliberalisation in general and that subset who draw centrally upon Polanyian
and Marxian ideas. For the former audience the utility of a theoretical, empirically
relevant synthesis regarding the issue of logics is shown, even if not all researchers will
ultimately be persuaded by its substantive content. For the latter audience, the con-
struction of a coherent, comprehensive, and conceptually specific argument with
empirical origins and applications is attempted that might inform future research in
a Polanyian ^ Marxian vein.(15)

2 Neoliberalising the nonhuman world: the need to specify political economic (il)logics
Why `neoliberalise' the governance of the nonhuman world? As the recent research by
critical geographers shows so well, the last thirty years have seen an ever greater
variety of biophysical phenomena in more and more parts of the world being subject
to neoliberal thought and practice. To offer some examples: Mansfield (2004a; 2004b)
has investigated new fisheries quota systems in the North Pacific as a form of market-
isation and enclosure; Bury (2004; 2005) has examined the sell-off of mineral resources
in Peru to overseas investors; Bakker (2004; 2005) has scrutinised the post-1989 privat-
isation of British water supply and sewage treatment, and also water mercantilizaciön
in Spain (Bakker, 2002); Robertson (2000; 2004; 2006) has looked at the recent sale
of wetland ecological services in the mid-western USA; Nik Heynen and Harold
Perkins (2005) have explored why and with what effects public forests have been
privatised in `post-Fordist' Milwaukee; McCarthy (2004) has investigated the new
`right to pollute' among certain firms in the NAFTA area, and also community forest
projects in North America (McCarthy, 2005b; 2006); Prudham (2004) has traced the
(14) I say one critical perspective for good reason. As mentioned above, a good deal of the recent

geographical literature about neoliberalism and nature adopts an institutional political economy
approach. However, this is a broad designation that covers several specific theoretical approaches
that are distinct, whatever their family resemblances. Since it is no easy task (and perhaps
impossible) to synthesise all these approaches in other than very general terms, I focus on just
one of them to show the explanatory value of parsing the case study research that deploys it. The
approach in question weds together certain ideas of Polanyi with those of Marx and several
Marxists who have theorised capitalism ^ nature relationships (such as Jim O'Connor, Ted Benton,
and Neil Smith). Because these ideas appear selectively in different case studies by a subset of the
authors named earlier, a consistent, overarching theoretical account of why nature is neoliberalised
is missing (or, more accuately, latent). What is more, I also argue that two recent `overview' papers
on neoliberalism and natureöwritten by advocates of perspectives informed by Polanyian and
Marxist ideasöfail to capture theoretically the causal differentia specifica of this mode of govern-
ing access to, and use of, the nonhuman world. This leads to an identification of four main reasons
why different aspects of nature in different parts of the world are currently being neoliberalised.
(15) I feel comfortable using this couplet for reasons to be explained. In short, several of Polanyi's

arguments about a free market economy resonate powerfully with a Marxian critique of political
ecology.
Neoliberalising nature: the logics of deregulation and reregulation 137

dire consequences of `regulatory rollback' in the area of drinking water testing in

Ontario; Kathleen McAfee (2003) has examined corporate attempts worldwide to
commodify the genetic material of plants, animals, and insects; Haughton (2002) has
examined the differential character of national neoliberal water governance frame-
works globally; and Laila Smith (2004) has explored the effects of implementing cost
recovery measures in the management of Cape Town's water supply. These and several
other recent studies provide rich, context-specific answers to the question posed
immediately above (and the other three to be addressed in the companion paper).
This is very much in keeping with the drift of geographical research on neoliberalism
more generally. In urban, economic, and development geography (the main disciplinary
subfields where neoliberalism has been examined to date), it has become axiomatic
among researchers that they are investigating a spatiotemporally variable process (`neo-
liberalisation') rather than a fixed and homogenous thing (`neoliberalism'). `Actually
existing neoliberalisms' are not the same as textbook `neoliberal ideology'. As Brenner
and Theodore (2002, page 353) observe, ``an adequate understanding of ... neoliberali-
zation processes requires not only a grasp of their politico-ideological foundations but
also, just as importantly, a systematic inquiry into their multifarious institutional
forms, their developmental tendencies, their diverse socio-political effects, and their
multiple contradictions'' (see also Larner, 2003). This is echoed by Bakker (2005), who
recently emphasised the need to elucidate specific variants (or modalities) of nature's
neoliberalisation, in part by attending to the biophysical influence of nature in the neo-
liberalisation process. The strengths of Bakker's and other like-minded geographers'
attention to what Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell (2002, page 383) call ``the non-trivial
differences ... between actually existing neoliberalisms'' are two fold, as noted in the
introduction. First, such attention invites both critics and supporters of neoliberal
ideas to move beyond abstract argument and universalist rhetoric. While one can
usefully speculate about why and with what effects neoliberalism will impact on the
nonhuman world (and vice versa), such speculation is no substitute for concrete
analyses of ``both the geographical constitution of neoliberalism and its geographically
distinct outcomes'' (Mansfield, 2004a, page 566). Secondly, for critics of nature's neo-
liberalisation, contextual studies help to ``overcome the fear and hopelessness generated
by monolithic accounts of the `neoliberal project' '' (Larner, 2003, page 512). As
Mansfield (2004a, page 569) notes, ``it is [too] easy to treat neoliberalism as ... unified
and coherent ... [, as] ascendant around the world.'' If empirical studies can demon-
strate the path dependency, variability, and contradictions of specific neoliberalisations
of specific aspects of the biophysical world then critics have a strong hand to play.
They can show how and why certain neoliberal policies fail (or not) when they move
from the drawing board to the `real world'; and these critics thus have strong grounds
on which to argue for alternative modes of governing access to, and utilisation of,
the physical environment.
However, there is a danger that diverse investigations of nature's neoliberalisation
(in the plural) will obscure the common `logics' and processes operating within or between
otherwise different spatiotemporal settings (Peck and Tickell, 2002). True, there is no such
thing as a generic `neoliberalism' (Barnett, 2005; Peck, 2004)öeven though some propo-
nents and critics of neoliberal ideas and practices often talk as if there is. But this does not,
in principle at least, mean that we are unable to abstract from different contexts in
order to see the proverbial wood for the trees. Nor does it detract from the fact
that transnational rules and mechanisms of environmental governance are impacting
upon otherwise distinct places and biophysical resources and so creating commonality-
within-difference. Theory, in one well-understood sense of the term, ``give[s] us a
grasp of one kind of complexity by abstracting from another'' (Sayer, 1995, page 5).
138 N Castree

It ``illuminate[s] ... particular structures or relationships by holding-off contingencies

that generally accompany them in concrete situations'' (page 19). Can we, then, discern
theoretically a set of fairly widespread `logics' underpinning nature's neoliberalisation
in its many concrete forms?
As I will show later in the paper, it is possible to identify in the diverse studies of
several geographical analysts of nature's neoliberalisation a set of fairly common
rationales that help explain why specific neoliberal policies have been pursued in
relation to a range of biophysical resources. These rationales are specific to no one
geographical scale but can, rather, be seen to operate at any and all geographical scales
in both principle and practice. In other words, I think one can offer a `general' answer
to the first of my four questions öwith the rider that the answer is, by definition,
removed from the concrete particulars of any one situation (at whatever geographical
scale) and thus constitutively incomplete as an explanation of real world events. It is,
therefore, a strictly theoretical answer, albeit one arising from, as well as potentially
informing, the insights of concrete research now and in the future. What is more, it is a
theoretically specific answer in that it blends insights from the work of Polanyi, Marx,
and several contemporary `eco-Marxist' theorists. There are other theoretically specific
answers one could offer, but the one I provide emerges from a significant subset of the
`institutional political economy' literature surveyed here. As such, it illustrates (I hope)
the utility of making theoretical connections between case studies that have been
conducted in relative isolation despite their potential consonance.
Before I spell out this response, I want to do two things: first, to demonstrate
how few of the authors whose empirical work is being reviewed here have made the
theoretical connections themselves in other than partial terms; and, second, to offer a
working definition of `neoliberalism' even though this definition is not, by necessity,
adequate to any one `really existing' case of neoliberalisation.

3 Theoretical gaps
Some critical geographers doing empirical work on nature's neoliberalisation leave
their theoretical perspective implicit or relatively undeveloped in some or all of their
publications (eg Haughton, 2002; Hollander, 2004). However, much of the research
surveyed in this (and the next) paper is overtly theoretical without ever being theoret-
icist (that is, guilty of doing theory for theory's sake). That is, this research frequently
utilises in a formal and open manner sets of concepts designed to identify key logics
and processes operative in the specific real world contexts being investigated. In turn,
the explanations and expectations contained in theory may, iteratively, be confirmed or
modified in light of empirical findings. Though not all the geographers investigating
nature's neoliberalisation do so, many draw upon one or more of the three sources
mentioned above to construct their `institutional political economy approach'. Two of
these sources have been tapped for over a decade by human geographers wishing to
`bring nature back in' to their field: namely, the original work of Marx and of epigones
like Benton, O'Connor, and Smith. The third sourceöthe work of Polanyiöhas less of
a pedigree in human geography, having been important in the recent `institutional turn'
taken by economic geographers (see Hess, 2004). I attempt a theoretical synthesis of
this Polanyi-inspired and Marxism-inspired research here for two reasons. First, a
relatively large amount of the literature surveyed is covered by such a synthesis.
Secondly, the theoretical ideas are very abstractömore so, for example, than the
`regulation theory' favoured by several geographical analysts of market-led environ-
mental governance (eg Krueger, 2002). This means that they are potentially relevant
(for those who buy into them) to a very large number of real world cases of nature's
neoliberalisation and so are worth codifying.
Neoliberalising nature: the logics of deregulation and reregulation 139

In what sense are there theoretical `gaps' in the research I am trying to conceptually
parse in this paper? The answer is that different authors draw selectively upon Marx,
Polanyi, and recent Marxist theorisations of nature in their empirical analyses. This is
not so much a criticism as an observation. For instance, Mansfield (2004a) makes
much of Polanyi's critique of `laissez faire capitalism' but little of the Marxist
approaches to the nonhuman world that resonate with Polanyi's thesis of `the double
movement'. Bakker (2004; 2005), by contrast, draws inspiration from Benton's thinking
but makes little direct reference to Polanyi or to a figure like O'Connor [who has
greatly inspired some of McCarthy's (2004) research]. There are many other examples
I could offer.
Among the reasons for this selective use of otherwise connectable bodies of theory
is an obvious one: researchers use the specific concepts they need to analyse the
specific empirical issues that concern them. Other conceptsöwhile they might be
indirectly relevantöare thus cast into darkness so that the explanatory connections
are only implicit. Then there are the usual limitations that apply to all research: most
of us, for contingent reasons, inevitably fail to make connections between our work
and the ever-existing tranche of as-yet-unread or unknown research by other scholars.
We are all finite beings in this regard, drawing upon a fraction of the (often volumi-
nous) literature potentially relevant to our empirical inquiries. A third reason is that
the theorists that geographers like Bakker, Mansfield, and McCarthy draw upon for
inspiration have not themselves always made appropriate substantive links with the
work of like-minded theorists. The `green Marxist' O'Connor has not, for example,
established the logical connections between his own work and that of Neil Smith
(or vice versa).(16)
This failure of any one case study by those geographers drawing upon Polanyi,
Marx, or eco-Marxists to combine this trinity of influences in an overarching way, is
repeated elsewhere in the geographical literature on nature's neoliberalisation. Two
recent overview papers on ``neoliberal nature and the nature of neoliberalism'' (McCarthy
and Prudham, 2004; Heynen and Robbins, 2005) do not, in my view, summarise the
explanatory insights of the case-study literature at all well. While both offer very useful
road maps for readers new to the topic, they offer few essential insights into why the
nonhuman world should have become a major focus of neoliberal policy making and
practice. This is surprising because both papers are introductions to special journal
issues on nature's neoliberalisation that contain numerous contextual analyses by some
of the authors already mentioned.(17)
Heynen and Robbins (2005, page 2), in their contribution to a special issue of
Capitalism Nature Socialism, characterise nature's neoliberalisation in the following
terms:

(16) Indeed, with some notable exceptions (eg Boyd et al, 2001), few Marxist theorists of `capitalism
and the environment' have convincingly pieced together the abstract theoretical contributions of
Polanyi with those of Benton, Smith, O'Connor, and other like-minded authors. Others include
Elmar Altvater, Paul Burkett, and John Bellamy Foster. I have tried to forge some of these
connections in Castree (2000; 2002), while Benton's (1996) general and section introductions offer
some insights.
(17) As indicated in footnote (3), there are three other special issues of geography journals that

contain papers on nature's neoliberalisation and that fall broadly into the Bridge and Jonas
designation. However, none of these issues is explicitly about nature's neoliberalisation and hence
the introductions to them touch upon this issue only lightly. Indeed, the special issues of Geoforum
and Capitalism Nature Socialism are being repackaged and reworked as a book jointly edited by
McCarthy, Prudham, Robbins, and Heynen. The book will be called Neoliberal Environments and
published by Routledge in late 2007/early 2008.
140 N Castree

``[It comprises] ... governance, the institutional political compromises through which
capitalist societies are negotiated; privatization, where natural resources ... are
turned over to firms and individuals; enclosure, the capture of common resources
and the exclusion of the communities to which they are linked; and valuation, the
process through which invaluable and complex ecosystems are reduced to commodities
through pricing'' (emphasis in original).
As we will see, the four features identified are all relevant to understanding how nature
is neoliberalised. The problem is that they are characterised in such general and
descriptive terms that one is at a loss to know why it makes sense for certain actors
(eg firms or states) to push the neoliberal agenda in the environmental domain specif-
ically. In other words, Heynen and Robbins fail to explain the central reasons why
neoliberalising nature (as opposed to any other phenomena) is a `rational' or desirable
project for those who advocate and undertake it.
By contrast, McCarthy and Prudham (2004, page 277) make the strong claim that
``neoliberalism is ... an environmental project and ... it is necessarily so.'' They offer
several reasons to sustain this proposition, of which three loom large. First, they make
the point that `classical liberalism' öneoliberalism's direct ancestorömade the natural
environment centre stage. The normative arguments of figures like John Locke and
Thomas Malthus were articulated with reference to the enclosure, ownership, and com-
modification of land, forests, water courses, and other natural resources. Indeed, these
arguments helped to justify the spread of `free market capitalism' throughout the
Western world after the long period of feudal rule came to an end in 18th-century
Britain and Europe. Secondly, focusing on the present, McCarthy and Prudham rightly
argue that many neoliberal policies are explicitly about the nonhuman world: think, for
instance, of bioprospecting initiatives, ecotourism, carbon-offset schemes, and fisheries
quota trading. These, as they note, have been linked to the eclipse of the interventionist
state in many parts of the world. Thirdly, again focusing on the present, McCarthy
and Prudham observe that ``contemporary environmental concerns ... have, in many
respects, been the most ... effective political sources of response and resistance to neo-
liberal projects, contending with neoliberalism as the basis of post-Fordist regulation''
(page 278). Here, then, the argument is that neoliberalism is intrinsically environmental
because it has frequently sparked strong opposition among groups and organisations
dismayed by the mismanagement of the nonhuman world.
As with Heynen and Robbins's arguments, McCarthy and Prudham's are not so
much wrong as insufficiently penetrating as a summary of why the nonhuman world
has been the specific target of neoliberal policies worldwide these last two decades or so.
Their survey, in my view, fails to disclose the fundamental commonalities of purpose
that crosscut all manner of different neoliberal prescriptions regarding diverse elements
of the biophysical world. [They also say little about how different modalities of nature's
neoliberalisation might be identified, my subject in the second main section of Castree
(2008).] This is strange because, in their own empirical work, McCarthy and Prudham
(as we will see) offer deep theoretical insights (backed up by evidence) into some of these
commonalities of purpose. What is required is a specification of quite why a range of
actors and institutions worldwide have regarded the neoliberalisation of the nonhuman
world as a project of the first importance.

4 The abstract and the concrete: defining `neoliberalism'

Having questioned whether the relations between neoliberalism and nature have yet
received a full and proper theoretical specification in the critical geographic literature, I
want now to lay the basis of that specification in relation to a subset of the literature.
Neoliberalising nature: the logics of deregulation and reregulation 141

This will allow me to spell out neoliberalism's environmental logics in the next
subsection from one (Polanyian ^ Marxian) theoretical perspective.
One shared feature of the two papers criticised above is their insistence that neo-
liberalism cannot be understood in abstraction from capitalism. Thus, Heynen and
Robbins (2005) talk about ``capital's neoliberal agenda'', while McCarthy and Prudham
(2004, page 281) note that neoliberalism makes manifest more than any other mode of
environmental governance capitalism's environmental contradictions. This conviction
that neoliberalism is one historically (and geographically) specific form that capitalism
can assume arguably explains the references to Polanyi and Marxism in much of the
geographical literature on nature's neoliberalisation. In The Great Transformation
Polanyi (1944), famously, offered a trenchant critique of liberal or `market' capitalism.
However, by fixating on relatively unregulated market transactions in more and more
areas of social and natural life, he failed to probe the deeper relationships these
transactions expressed. Marx and his successors, by contrast, have argued that `market
rule' is one possible `shell' for capitalism as an increasingly global system of making,
moving, selling, servicing, and disposing of commodities. The challenge then becomes
linking Polanyi's insights about `unmanaged capitalism' with those of Marx and his
environmentally minded successors about capitalism and nature. As already noted,
some geographical analysts of nature's neoliberalisation have made some of these links.
However, a comprehensive account has yet to be constructed in terms of why nature
qua nature should, in its various permutations, be a major focus of neoliberal practice.
Any such account must, of course, be explicit about what `capitalism' and `neo-
liberalism' are. The fact that neoliberalism is an `unreal abstraction' has already been
mentioned: only in the programmatic writings of authors like Milton Friedman,
Frederich Hayek, and Richard Epstein is it a single, coherent entity. Much the same
can be said about `capitalism' (hence the scare quotes). As J K Gibson-Graham (1996),
Tim Mitchell (2002), and several others have argued, it is one thing to abstract from
concrete contexts in order to identify economic processes and relationships common to
those contexts, but it is quite another to then assume (erroneously) that these processes
and relationships exist `over and above' these contexts as what one Marxist called ``an
invisible Leviathan'' (M Smith, 1994). As Bruno Latour has argued forcefully in several
oft-cited publications, putatively `general' phenomena (like `global capitalism') are con-
stituted differentially in and through concrete particulars. Marx, of course, expressed
this brilliantly in his later writings: the conceptual dualities of use and exchange value,
concrete and abstract labour, were precisely designed to show how commonality can
exist by way of sociogeographical difference rather than outside it. To rephrase this
in Althusserian terms, both `capitalism' and its `neoliberal' form of expression exist in
an overdetermined socioenvironmental world. This means that both phenomena are
constitutively `impure': the clean lines of their conceptual specification do not mirror
their messy imbrication in diverse real world situations.(18)
The authors who have drawn centrally upon Polanyi and/or Marx and/or sev-
eral eco-Marxists to inform their empirical work on nature's neoliberalisation are
Heynen, Perkins, Robertson, McCarthy, Prudham, Bakker, Swyngedouw, and Mansfield.

(18) What is the relevance of this discussion to answering the first of my four questions? It suggests

that we are forced to give a clear identityöand attribute causal powersö to phenomena that do
not, in fact, exist in the integral sense in which we specify them conceptually. In other words, the
precise rationale for, and operation of, neoliberal policies on the environment in a capitalist world
is only imperfectly captured in the abstract arguments that I will lay out in the next subsection.
Even so, because these arguments have been variously operationalised in the case research to be
discussed, they do tell us important things about how and why nature is being neoliberalised.
Their explanatory power is real, but it is approximate rather than specific.
142 N Castree

These authorsöwith the exception of Mansfield, who has drawn little inspiration
from Marxism to dateöare all Marxist in the `minimal' sense that they appear to
take the following well-known arguments to be axiomatic. `Capitalism', their research
for the most part presumes, is an economic system that is predicated on a class relation
(between those who own and those who do not own the means of production);
is growth-orientated (Marx's famous `accumulation for accumulation's sake'); and
depends upon interfirm competition; all of which, fourthly, spur a ceaseless search
for new products, markets, production techniques, and raw material sources (among
other things). If this inherently unstable system is to function in the long term then the
state (local, national, and supranational), and other `governance' bodies, must exert
some kind of regulatory influence.
How does `neoliberalism' relate to this way of producing life's material necessities
and luxuries? Even though Mansfield (2004a) is right that neoliberalism is not ``an
unchanging force that is applied in different contexts'', Bob Jessop (2002) is equally
right that its ideal-typical specification serves a useful purpose. As he puts it:
``Ideal types are so called because they involve thought-experiments not because they
represent some normative ideal or other. They are theoretical constructs formed by
the one-sided accentuation of empirically observable features of ... reality to con-
struct objectively feasible configurations ... . These configurations are never found
in pure form, but their conceptual construction may still be useful for heuristic,
descriptive or explanatory purposes'' (page 460).
Apart from Jessop himself, several critical geographers of a political economic persua-
sion have defined neoliberalism in ideal-typical terms (eg Brenner and Theodore,
2002; Peck and Tickell, 2002)öones that McCarthy and Prudham (2004, page 276)
appropriate in their overview paper on nature and the neoliberal project.(19) This
ideal-typical characterisation usually identifies the following things as constituting
`neoliberalism' when one abstracts from the multiple `neoliberalisations' extant in the
world (or, alternatively, when one consults the textbook arguments of the proselytisers):
. Privatisation (that is, the assignment of clear private property rights to social or
environmental phenomena that were previously state-owned, unowned, or com-
munally owned. New owners of hitherto unprivatised phenomena can potentially
come from anywhere across the globe).
. Marketisation (that is, the assignment of prices to phenomena that were previously
shielded from market exchange or for various reasons unpriced. These prices are
set by markets that are potentially global in scale, which is why neoliberalism is
often equated with geographically unbounded `free trade').
. Deregulation (that is, the `rollback' of state `interference' in numerous areas of
social and environmental life so that (i) state regulation is `light touch' and (ii) more
and more actors become self-governing within centrally prescribed frameworks and
rules).
. Reregulation (that is, the deployment of state policies to facilitate privatisation
and marketisation of ever-wider spheres of social and environmental life).
. Market proxies in the residual public sector (that is, the state-led attempt to run
remaining public services along private sector lines as `efficient' and `competitive'
businesses)
. The construction of flanking mechanisms in civil society [that is, the state-led
encouragement of civil society groups (charities, NGOs, `communities', etc) to
provide services that interventionist states did, or could potentially, provide for
(19) Strangely,
Heynen and Robbins list only some of the features detailed belowödespite a
loose consensus in the critical geographical literature that they comprise the `generic' elements of
neoliberal thought and practice.
Neoliberalising nature: the logics of deregulation and reregulation 143

citizens; these civil society groups are also seen as being able to offer compensatory
mechanisms that can tackle any problems citizens suffer as a result of the previous
five things listed].(20)
In ideal-typical terms, then, neoliberalism is simultaneously a social, environ-
mental, and global project. Socially it involves a (re)negotiation of the boundaries
between the market, the state, and civil society so that more areas of people's lives
are governed by an economic logic. Environmentally, even though neoliberalism's
major theorists (like Hayek) said relatively little about the nonhuman world, it is
implicit in the list above that neoliberalism has profound implications for access to
and use of that world. For it involves the privatisation and marketisation of ever more
aspects of biophysical reality, with the state and civil society groups facilitating this
and/or regulating only its worst consequences. Finally, in geographical terms, it is
implicit in the features of neoliberalism listed above that the `invisible hand' should
be as spatially expansive as it is socially and environmentally exorbitant. In principle,
neoliberal ideas can (and for its most fervent advocates should ) be implemented
worldwide, not just here or there.
Overall, neoliberalism sees the market as the best mechanism for allocating goods
and services to meet the diverse needs of actors across the globe. This is why critics
sometimes label it as `market triumphalism'. Though neoliberalism's advocates depict it
as nonpoliticalöthe market being portrayed as a neutral `social choice mechanism' ö
the reality is that it is politics by other means: what Ulrich Beck (2000, page 122) calls
a form of ``high politics which presents itself as completely non-political'' (emphasis in
original). The market is a specific and contentious way of distributing life's `goods' and
`bads' among multifarious actors who differ in their sociogeographic location, their
available assets, and their needs and wants (see O'Neill, 1998). To the extent that
neoliberalism wants the market to be the principal way in which people derive goods
and services, it is best understood as a comprehensive mode of governance not simply
as an `economic' philosophy and practice. It offers one, partial answer to the venerable
question: `how should we live?'; it offers one particular means of determining who
should pay (in the fullest sense of that word) for maintaining or altering certain states
of nature; and it does so by seeking to naturalise the market as a means for accessing
and distributing life's necessities and luxuries.

5 Environmental imperatives
We are now in a position to explain, by abstracting from and synthesising existing
case-study research, why neoliberalism is necessarily an environmental project: that is,
a project (whatever its other dimensions) that has the nonhuman world as a key part of
its rationale. By synthesising the various specific ways in which the ideas of Polanyi,
Marx, and eco-Marxists are used by the likes of McCarthy and Bakker in their
empirical research, we can offer an overarching account of the principal logics at
work. I will summarise and connect the work of Polanyi, O'Connor, Benton, and
Smith in turn and then identify four broad rationales for nature's neoliberalisation
on this basis. There are other ways that this can be done, but the arguments presented
below have the virtue of being both coherent and fairly comprehensive.
5.1 Karl Polanyi
Polanyi's ideasöwhich inform the recent research of McCarthy (2004), Mansfield
(2004a), and Prudham (2003; 2005) in particularöhave an obvious relevance to the

(20) Some commentators provide a much longer list (eg Peet and Hartwick, 1999, page 52), while
others (eg McCarthy, 2006) offer a much shorter one. Thus, even as an ideal-type, there is some
variance in how `neoliberalism' is depicted within the community of geographical political economists.
144 N Castree

topic of neoliberalism and nature. The Great Transformation charted the rise of free
market capitalism and explored what it did to various `fictitious commodities' (and vice
versa) (Polanyi, 1944). These latter are phenomena ölike water and treesöwhose socio-
cultural value, physical function, or biological needs exceed that which is registered
through market transactions of discrete commodities. By treating these phenomena
as if they are `true' commodities (that is, manageable purely through price signals),
Polanyi argued that market economies are inherently contradictory. They give rise to
consequences (such as the hyperexploitation of wage labour) that call forth sometimes
strong opposition to the `marketisation of everything'. Polanyi called this `the double
movement': attempts to expand the scope of the market meet with resistance from
significant sections of society and so ultimately place limits on market rule. Such
resistance, he argued, can be reformist or radical. In the first case, supporters of laissez
faire capitalism devise, for strategic reasons, the means to create what Polanyi called a
`market society'. This is a society that will allow a relatively disembedded `market
economy' to function without the threat of serious civic insurrrection. Such a society
can be created through discursive-cum-ideological means (for example, normalising
`individual liberty' as an ideal over against `social solidarity'). It also, as importantly,
requires an institutional infrastructure (for example, creating the organisational
capacity to ameliorate the worst consequences of market rule, like a social safety-net
for the long-term unemployed). As Polanyi argued, the `free' market is a myth: markets
always need regulating if they are to survive. In Mansfield's (2004a, page 571) words,
``In [one] ... sense, the double movement is not about fundamentally challenging the
market system, but it is about altering the market system in order to maintain it.'' In
some instances, however, a coalition of more radical forces may be able to precipitate
what Jessop (2002, page 458) calls a `regime shift' or, more profoundly, a `system
transformation'. We have recently witnessed such a radical coalition in Bolivia in
response to utilities privatisation and deregulation.
5.2 James O'Connor
Though Polanyi's arguments have strong family resemblances to those of Marx, they
fail to link market rationality to a theory of capital accumulation. As Andrew Sayer
(1995) argued, while the `blind' market with which we are now familiar is not reducible
to the capitalist mode of production, capitalism cannot function without an impersonal
form of commodity exchange. This is why some Marxists with interests in capitalism ^
nature relationships have used Polanyi's ideas in their theoretical work. Chief among
them is O'Connor, whose writings strongly inform those of McCarthy (2004) and
Prudham (2003; 2005), as well as Robertson (2004). O'Connor utilises Polanyi's argu-
ments about fictitious commodities, the double movement, and the paradoxical need
for `free' markets to be managed, in the context of the late Marx's critique of political
economy. In a series of now well-known publications, O'Connor (eg 1998) identified an
`ecological contradiction' inherent to capitalist societies that is potentially as important
as the `first contradiction' so famously identified in Capital. This `second contradiction'
arises because capitalist firms pass on the environmental costs of production to society
and the biophysical world even as, paradoxically, they rely upon the unproduced or
underproduced `conditions of production' that the biophysical world offers (for example,
a sufficient quantity of ground and surface water resources, or clean air). Thus, whether
they are direct inputs to production or waste sinks, firms, O'Connor argues, left to their
own devices, will exhaust or pollute their conditions of production. Without sufficient
self-regulation by firms or state management of their actions, O'Connor argues, capital-
ist societies will suffer `ecological crises'. These crises, he rightly observes, do not arise
`objectively' out of the biophysical problems caused by capital accumulation. Instead, it
Neoliberalising nature: the logics of deregulation and reregulation 145

is a contingent question whether the type and scale of these problems are sufficient to
generate real or perceived crises among firms, within the state apparatus, or in the
wider society. In any event, such crises will, in his view, call forth more-or-less radical
efforts to regulate capitalism ^ nature relationships at a variety of geotemporal scales.
The state is a key player in securing a regulatory fix for these crises, be its authority
national, subnational, or supranational in scale.
5.3 Ted Benton
McCarthy (2004, page 335) argues that Polanyi and O'Connor provide us with ``a
shared vision of highly periodized, punctuated trajectories of capitalist development,
in which regulation becomes necessarily more complex as capital becomes able to
appropriate and transform nature ... more deeply.'' Part of this regulation can involve
not shielding the nonhuman world from capitalism but, instead, using capitalism to
offer that world protection from the effects of previous rounds of accumulation.
Benton, an eco-Marxist arguably as influential as O'Connor, has tried to ascertain
`the difference that nature makes' to capital accumulation. Like O'Connor, he high-
lights the crisis tendencies built-in to the capitalist mode of production. What Benton
calls the ``naturally mediated unintended consequences of production'' (1991, page 266;
1989) arise from `economic rationality': it makes good commercial sense for capitalist
firms to externalise production costs and thus be `ecologically irrational' unless con-
servation and preservation can turn a profit. However, Benton is also interested in how
the material properties of the nonhuman world influence direct attempts by capitalists
to profit from these or other nature-based activities. This explains why Bakker (2002;
2004; 2005) has drawn quite heavily on Benton in her research into water supply
privatisation and marketisation in the UK and Spain (Mansfield, too, makes much of
nature's `materiality' in her research on fisheries reregulation). If certain fractions
of capital are to `save nature by selling it' (McAfee, 1999) and to benefit commodity
consumers in the process then, Bakker argues, we have to take seriously Benton's
point that the biophysical properties of the nonhuman world are often intransigent.
Firms must adapt to these properties if they are to conserve natural resources while
making a profit. Yet, this does not mean nature presents absolute barriers to, and
opportunities for, `green firms' or traditional nature-based ventures (eg agriculture).
As Benton (1989) insists, all barriers and opportunities are relative: they arise from the
articulation of the non human world with available technologies, modes of resource
appraisal, and so on.
5.4 Neil Smith
Together, Benton and O'Connor's work allow us to ground Polanyi's arguments in a
theory of capital accumulation. The production, circulation, and expansion of economic
value are, in their view, key to understanding what happens to nature in capitalist
societies. Markets are the means whereby commodity producers and sellers are brought
into a relationship. But they do not, contra Polanyi, go to the heart of why the problems
identified by Polanyi arise. This brings me, finally, to the work of Smith on `the
production of nature'. In Uneven Development, Smith (1984) presciently argued that
the natural world is, increasingly, being physically transformed `all the way down'.
Where Polanyi, O'Connor, and Benton depict nature as largely an external, non-
manipulable domain, Smith suggested it is being materially internalised by certain
fractions of capital as an accumulation strategy.
We can make sense of this by way of a very useful distinction between the formal
and the real subsumption of the nonhuman worldöone made by William Boyd,
Scott Prudham, Rachel Schurman (2001) in an excellent review paper on capital and
nature. The formal subsumption of nature refers to Benton's concern: situations where
146 N Castree

capitalist firms make money from the natural environment by `circulating around'
its intractable material properties (be it an input to, or force of, production). For
instance, forestry companies have for many decades had to find ways to deal with
the long time periods needed to grow and harvest plantation trees once old growth
forests have been logged (see Prudham, 2003; 2005). By contrast, the real subsumption
of nature involves altering its biophysical properties so that it offers enhanced possibil-
ities for capital accumulation. This alteration can apply to either the conditions of
production or the forces of production. For instance, in agriculture and forestry,
hybridisation and now genetic modification are two key technologies in subsuming
nature to the demands of capitalist firms. Clearly, the real subsumption of nature can
occur only in biologically based economic sectors rather than in extractive ones, like
mining. Equally clearly, it comes without guarantees: for instance, the public opposi-
tion to genetically modified products worldwide and their as yet unknown ecological
affects may well undermine their long-term commercial viability. Smith tended to gloss
over important differences like this with his blanket announcement that all capitalist
nature is produced. Even so, his ideas remain an important reminder that capitalist firms
remake (`second') nature as much as they degrade or protect `first nature' (see McAfee,
2003).

6 Neoliberalisation and biophysical fixes

In light of this discussion of Polanyi's, O'Connor's, Benton's, and Smith's basic ideas,
we can now specify why it is `rational' for many different fractions of capital to take a
neoliberal approach to nature with the backing of state institutions, pro-business
political parties, and advocacy groups. If, as suggested earlier, we see neoliberalism
as one possible `shell' for the capitalist mode of production, then this shell offers firms,
state bodies, and sympathetic stakeholders a range of `environmental fixes' to the
endemic problem of sustained economic growth. I use the term `fix' intentionally.
Fractions of capital face the continuous challenge of achieving and then sustaining
accumulation in the face of countervailing forces that are internal and external to the
capitalist system (for example, interfirm competition, economic crises, or public oppo-
sition to certain commercial practices). Likewise, the state, though it has multiple
objectives, must find ways to discharge its duties effectively while avoiding fiscal,
rationality, or legitimation crises. In each case, a `fix' constitutes a way of achieving
strategically a core objective for capital and/or the state. The first three fixes specified
below all involve certain fractions of capital using specifically neoliberal measures to
gain commercial advantage in and through the domain of the physical environment.
The fourth involves state bodies using neoliberal environmental measures to solve
problems arising within the state apparatus or the wider economy and society. The
first three fixes all require state sanction and assistance at a variety of geographical
scales. However, I only focus squarely on the state in the fourth fix because that fix is,
as it were, `internal' to state institutions and basic state functions in capitalist societies.
[Note that all the fixes can ultimately be achieved only through consensual or coercive
forms of class power and may elicit responses with a strong class content (for example,
working-class rebellions) that halt these fixes in their tracks.]
6.1 Environmental fix 1
The first of these fixes is perhaps the best known. It is based on two arguments made
by those who believe in neoliberalism's capacity for superior ecological stewardship:
first, that the economy ^ environment contradictions which Polanyi, O'Connor, and
other critics identify can be ameliorated and even overcome; second, that this can be
achieved not by ring-fencing the nonhuman world (eg through state protection) but by
Neoliberalising nature: the logics of deregulation and reregulation 147

bringing it more fully within the universe of capital accumulation. What its advocates
call `free market environmentalism' is a set of ideas and practices that aim to conserve
resources and ecosystems by allowing them to be privatised and marketised.(21)
Together, state bodies and private firms strategise to `roll back' direct state responsi-
bility for environmental good and services and natural resource management. Where
such responsibility was not exercised in the first place (as in many very poor or war-
torn countries) measures are crafted so that the private sector can discharge it from
hereonin, not the state. Firms and other private interests then step into the vacuum
deliberately created. Where state bodies must, for whatever reason, retain control over
their use, these resources and ecosystems are to be managed in market-mimicking
ways. The case-study literature in geography is replete with examples of this first
neoliberal environmental fix. For instance, in three excellent papers, Robertson
(2000; 2004; 2006) has shown how wetland mitigation has fast become a commercial
opportunity for the private sector. Here mitigation firms create, and charge land
developers for, wetland replacement sites intended to compensate for wetland destruc-
tion on development sites many kilometres away. A similar logic can be found at work
in the cases studied by Mansfield (2004b) and Bakker (2004). Mansfield shows the long
history of market-based fisheries conservation in the North Pacific as a response to
overfishing, while Bakker shows how new private water companies in England and
Wales have sought to conserve scarce water resources and raise water quality from a
low base while earning a profit.
6.2 Environmental fix 2
Secondly, there are neoliberal measures that are not about environmental conservation
but very much about exposing hitherto protected or state-controlled aspects of the
natural environment to the full force of market rationality and capital accumulation.
In other words, these measures are about extending capital's formal and/or real sub-
sumption of nature without any overtly `ecofriendly' motivations. Here, then, the nonhuman
world simply becomes a means to the end of capital accumulationöperiod. Making more
of this world directly available commercial investors than heretofore overlaps closely with
what Harvey (2003) has called `accumulation by dispossession' (see Swyngedouw, 2005).
Bury (2004; 2005) offers one example of this second fix. He charts the privatisation of the
mining industry in Peru. Successive Peruvian governments have opened up the national
minerals sector to outside investors. Here, non-Peruvian multinationalsöresponsible to
shareholders and selling minerals on international marketsöhave exploited a new phys-
ical and commercial frontier. The Peruvian state merely sets the framework conditions
for this exploitation and receives a portion of the revenue generated. A similar logic is
at work in agricultural trade liberalisation. As Gail Hollander's (2004) study of Florida
sugar production shows, the removal of state protection for certain agrofood products
under a WTO-led free trade regime provides major commercial opportunities for some
farmers (not as direct investors but as competitors in this case). Sugar producers in the
global South see the removal of state subsidies in regions like Florida as an important
means of expanding market share (while ecofriendly Americans see the `return' of
the Everglades as one happy by-product of `big sugar's' demise in Florida). From the
perspective of Southern sugar farmers, it is incidental and contingent whether regional
or global environmental (dis)benefits follow from free sugar trade with the USA.

(21) Increasingly,
free market environmentalism is being actualised in tandem with `corporate social
responsibility' measures. The result is so-called `triple bottom line' accounting by firms: that is,
accounting to shareholders, to workers (or society at large), and to the nonhuman world.
148 N Castree

6.3 Environmental fix 3

A third logic behind nature's neoliberalisation from the perspective of capital is that
actively degrading hitherto protected or proscribed nonhuman phenomena yields
profits. Here, the formal and/or real subsumption of nature is undertaken with little
or no regard for public or governmental perspectives on how the nonhuman world
should be treated. In effect, this third environmental fix is the opposite of the first.
Here neoliberal measures promise to intensify the contradictions that Polanyi and
O'Connor make central to their analyses. Only skilfully crafted ensembles of discursive
and institutional action can regulate environmental fixes of this third kind in the
medium to long term. Firms and groups of firms run the risk of serious public and
even state opposition if they are seen to make money with absolutely no regard for the
environment, public health, and the like. McCarthy (2004) has presented a startling
example of this `degrading nature for profit' strategy in his recent Geoforum paper. He
shows how the Canadian Methanex Corporation (CMC) successfully challenged the
state of California's attempt to ban its production of MTBE, a suspected carcinogen
that had leached into groundwater. Appealing to the terms of the North American
Free Trade Agreement and using the controversial idea of `regulatory takings'öwhich
is where a firm can sue any body whose regulatory actions are deemed to have reduced
the economic value of the firm's activities öCMC won the right to pollute or to be
compensated for so doing by the Californian taxpayer. Though McCarthy's study
relates to O'Connor's `conditions of production', environmental fix 3 can apply equally
to the forces of production. For instance, the state-sanctioned private cultivation of
genetically modified foods in various parts of the worldödespite much public opposi-
tionöis a clear example of the forces of production (for example, seeds and the lands
into which they are planted) becoming neoliberalised without proper assessment of the
environmental consequences having occurred. Overall, the third environmental fix is
about capitalist firms using neoliberal measures to extend their right to use nature
however it pleases themöa right Western firms have exercised for decades under the
more restrictive conditions of Keynesian-welfare regimes.
6.4 Environmental fix 4
If the three fixes discussed above all relate to the logics of capital, the fourth relates to
the logics of the state. The state cannot avoid taking some responsibility for the
relationships between the capitalist economy, civil society, and the natural environ-
ment. This is because the nonhuman world provides essential material, moral, and
aesthetic resources that sustain economic production and social reproduction. Given
the state's legal and financial power, it is normally incumbent upon the state to ensure
these resources are used appropriately (a point that both Polanyi and O'Connor stress).
This is not the place to rehearse Marxist and neo-Marxist theories of the state
[see Jessop (1990; 2002) for masterful surveys, and Martin Jones and Kevin Ward
(2002) for a pithy general account albeit in the context of urban policy]. Suffice to
say that the stateöespecially the national state, which remains a key regulatory body
in much of the world, notwithstanding claims about its `hollowing out' ömust nego-
tiate two sets of contradictions. The first are the kinds of contradictions that Marx,
Polanyi, and eco-Marxists identify: those arising from the `internal' logic of capitalism
and its `external' confrontation with a biophysical world that is only partly subsumable
to the requirements of capital accumulation. The state must successfully manage the
consequences of these contradictions for capital, labour, and the wider public while
maintaining its own fiscal stability and its credibility as a governing body. However, as
Claus Offe (1984) argued, the increasingly complexity of state regulatory actions can
lead to contradictions (both material and discursive) emerging within the state apparatus.
Neoliberalising nature: the logics of deregulation and reregulation 149

In Michael Dear and Gordon Clark's (1978, page 179) words, ``the expanded functions
of the state are themselves a source of dysfunction and crisis.'' Alternatively, in countries
where the national state wishes to facilitate economic development without intervening
heavily in the affairs of business, workers, or civil society, it can avoid the sort of
commitments that produce the problems Offe identified. The long-term risk, however,
is that the economic and environmental contradictions of capital will be inadequately
managed by firms and civil society groups when left to their own devices. The result
might be serious public unrest, leading to either regime change or system transforma-
tion. The state might thus, despite itself, be drawn inevitably into a more interventionist
role economically, socially, and environmentally.
In light of this, we can identify two neoliberal environmental fixes from the
perspective of any state body, but especially the national state. One fix is to address
contradictions internal to the state by off-loading responsibilities to the private sector
and/or civil society groups (the already-mentioned `hollowing out'). The other is to
avoid these internal contradictions altogether by adopting a `minimal state' stance in
the first place. Examples of both fixes are relatively easy to find in the geographical
research into nature's neoliberalisation. The first kind of fix is evident in formerly
Keynesian-welfare state countries like Britain. Once again, Bakker's (2003) research is
illustrative. Her book An Uncooperative Commodity (2004) shows how the British state
faced fiscal, rationality, and legitimation crises in relation to water and sewerage
management by the late 1980s. Bakker shows that, unable to afford the upkeep of a
decaying hydrological infrastructure, British governments were failing in their post-
1945 promise to offer all citizens a clean and affordable water supply [see also Bakker
(2002) on Spanish water management]. Similarly, Prudham's (2004) study of the con-
tracting out of water testing in Ontario illustrates the state strategy of passing on the
fiscal costs of regulatory functions on `efficiency' grounds. Ryan Holifield (2004) öto
offer a third exampleöfocuses more on state attempts to normalise neoliberal envi-
ronmental policies in civil society. He looks at attempts by the US Environmental
Protection Agency to redefine `responsibility' among those producing, regulating, and
suffering hazardous waste risks during the Clinton era. The second kind of fix is more
evident in developing countries with little or no history of state management on the scale
Western countries have experienced it. Tom Perreault (2005; 2006) and Jessica Budds
(2004) both offer the example of privatised water management in Latin America. They
chart the (contested) effort of national governments to avoid taking direct responsibility
for water supply and water treatment. Smith (2004), likewise, looks at new cost recovery
measures in water provision in Cape Town in the context of a postapartheid state
struggling to offer public services to whites, `coloureds', and blacks. (I should say that,
with the exception of Bakker, none of these authors frame their analysis in terms of a
`state-environmental fix'. However, I am arguing that their empirical analyses can plausibly
be linked to this theoretical proposition.)
In the case of both fixes, the state might make formal efforts to encourage citizens
to take personal or communal responsibility for the `goods' and `bads' that arise
from nature's neoliberalisation. Such efforts can help ensure that the state avoids or
minimises future legitimation crises in the environmental arena.
^ ^ ^

Together, the four fixes identified above cover a wide range of contexts in which
neoliberal policies on or towards the environment are enacted. These fixes are both
logically and substantively related, even though only some of them apply in any given
case of nature's neoliberalisation. Taken together, they offer us an abstract map of the
logics behind various attempts by capital and the state to manage the nonhuman world
150 N Castree

(and civil society groups with a direct stake in that world) in neoliberal ways. These
logics show that `neoliberalism' is, in environmental terms, an apparent paradox:
in giving full reign to capital accumulation it seeks to both protect and degrade the
biophysical world, while manufacturing new natures in cases where that world is
physically fungible. In short, nature's neoliberalisation is about conservation and its
two antitheses of destroying existing and creating new biophysical resources. It is not
reducible to one or other rationale alone.

7 Conclusion
In this paper, I have constructed an evidence-based answer to the question `why
neoliberalise nature?' I have done so by synthesising theoretically ideas and insights
drawn from a significant subset of the critical geographical literature on nature's
neoliberalisation. The answer provided is not the only one conceivable, nor is it
necessarily correct or uncontentious (though I happen to find it both convincing and
useful). However, it does constitute a constructive engagement with a potentially
disparate body of case study research in need of synthesis, lest the whole amounts to
much less than the sum of the often excellent parts. In a subsequent paper (Castree,
2008), I will address the second, third, and fourth questions posed in the introduction
to this paper. In so doing, I will argue that the barriers to synthesis are currently rather
higher than they appear to be for efforts to construct an answer to the question of
logics. This, in large part, is because the question of logics can be answered mean-
ingfully in fairly abstract theoretical terms once different case studies are parsed and
contextual differences intentionally bracketed. In other words, to the extent that other-
wise different cases of nature's neoliberalisation share a family resemblance, they can
be seen to express some common rationales. However, the questions of processes,
outcomes, and evaluations (as we will see) require `thicker' answers if they are to
convince: that is, ones where abstraction from, and comparison between, different
empirical cases is no mean feat. This raises fundamental issues of specificity and
generality, context and connectivity, that were broached in the introduction to this
paper and which will be explored in the successor paper.
Acknowledgements. This paper and its companion began life as one manuscript. I am grateful to
several people for identifying the major weaknesses in that earlier piece, most especially three
anonymous reviewers solicited by Karl Zimmerer, all of whose criticisms were acute. Scott
Prudham disagreed constructively, and audiences at York University (Canada), Oxford University,
and Rutgers University all helped me think through the knotty issues as best I can. Hearing
panelists' views on neoliberalismöcourtesy of Scott Prudham and James McCarthyöat the
Chicago AAG was also most instructive. I regret that it was too late for me to respond in print
to Nathan Sayre's important observations on the two papers. I thank the British Academy for
offering financial support. As usual, the remaining flaws are all mine and I take full credit for them.
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