Learning and Teaching Critical Political Economy
Senior researchers at Nyan Corridor maintain that a meaningful understanding of the complex issues shaping the social world—both in Myanmar and globally—requires analysis grounded in Critical Political Economy. Engagement with Critical Political Economy is philosophically and analytically linked to Political Ecology, particularly in examining the interconnections among power, resources, environment, and inequality. Accordingly, Nyan Corridor adopts Critical Political Economy as a foundational methodological framework for its research. In addition, the institute is committed to strengthening the ideological and analytical capacities of social researchers and activists by facilitating learning and teaching in the key concepts and theories of Political Economy and Political Ecology.
Conceptual Foundation
At the heart of the critical political economy tradition lies a commitment to understanding how capitalist relations of production, exchange, and accumulation shape society’s relationship to nature. Unlike approaches that treat environmental issues as technical problems to be solved by market mechanisms or managerial expertise, critical political economy insists on situating ecological crises within the broader dynamics of class, state power, property relations, and global capital flows.
Political ecology draws heavily from this tradition by:
- Interrogating the historical and structural forces that drive resource exploitation and environmental change.
- Examining the uneven patterns of ecological degradation and conservation, often reflecting disparities in power, wealth, and access to resources.
- Highlighting how policies and practices of natural resource governance are entangled with larger struggles over territory, identity, and sovereignty, particularly in armed conflict areas.
This perspective rejects the notion that environmental problems are the product of individual failings or cultural deficiencies; instead, it exposes the ways in which capitalist development generates both ecological and social contradictions.
The Second Contradiction of Capitalism: Ecological Limits and Crisis
Building upon Marx’s analysis of the first contradiction—between capital and labour—the concept of the Second Contradiction of Capitalism, as articulated by James O’Connor and others such as Piotr Kropotkin, José Carlos Mariátegui, Radakhamal Mukerjee, Karl William Kapp and so on, adds a crucial ecological dimension. This theory posits that capitalism not only undermines its own conditions of production by exploiting workers but also erodes the “conditions of production” provided by nature: soil, water, air, and biodiversity.
The Second Contradiction manifests when the drive for profit and accumulation leads to the depletion or degradation of natural resources, threatening both ecological systems and the social reproduction upon which capital depends. In armed conflict areas, these dynamics are accentuated and distorted by violence, displacement, the breakdown of governance, and emergence of plural authorities competing for territorialization over natural resources crucial for survival as well as for claiming authorities and legitimacy, creating fertile ground for research that brings together political ecology and critical political economy.
Key elements include:
- Recognition that environmental degradation is not a peripheral issue but a central barrier to sustained capitalist development.
- Analysis of how capitalist societies respond to ecological crises, often by intensifying exploitation or shifting costs onto marginalised populations.
- Exploration of how state interventions (for example, resource militarisation, land grabs, or climate adaptation policies) may temporarily mitigate crisis but often reproduce underlying contradictions.
Methodological Approaches and Research Strategies
A research programme informed by these conceptual grounds will incorporate diverse and reflexive methodologies, including:
- Critical historical analysis of land tenure, resource extraction, and policy regimes over time, linking periods of conflict and peace.
- Community Ethnography that is an approach of participatory co-productive research with affected communities, foregrounding local knowledge, resistance, and adaptation strategies.
- Political mapping of actors, interests, and networks involved in resource governance, including military, government, private sector, and civil society stakeholders.
- Ecological fieldwork to document changes in landscapes, ecosystems, and resource flows, complemented by geospatial and remote sensing data.
- Analysis of legal and institutional frameworks, including international humanitarian law, climate accords, and environmental protection statutes.
Such approaches critically examine the production of knowledge itself, recognising that research in conflict areas must be attentive to power relations, ethics, and the politics of representation.
Learning and Teaching Activities
Nyan Corridor, in collaboration with likeminded Myanmar and International scholars, are providing the members of civil society organizations, newly emerged political authorities and newly established schools seeking Myanmar a just society with the concepts and philosophies of Critical Political Economy and Political Ecology.
For more information and collaboration please contact Nyan Corridor.
