Embodied urban political ecology: five propositions

This commentary makes a case for a more rigorous treatment of the body as a material and political site within the sub-field of urban political ecology. I propose an embodied urban political ecology grounded in a feminist, anti-racist and postcolonial approach consisting of five orienting propositions. They include attention to metabolism, social reproduction, intersectionality and articulation, emotion and affect, and political subjectivity. Although applicable to political ecology broadly, I focus on the urban because of how often the body is mobilised in conceptualisations of cities and infrastructure despite the fact that material embodiment remains under-studied and disparately theorised in the subfield. I suggest that theoretical and empirical attention to embodiment in these five key arenas can deepen understandings of the terrain of environmental politics and potential transformation within the subfield of urban political ecology.