Chain of Explanation

The chain of explanation is the core analytical device of regional political ecology, introduced by Piers Blaikie and Harold Brookfield in Land Degradation and Society (1987). It treats an environmental outcome such as soil erosion not as a technical accident but as the visible end of a causal chain that runs from the individual land manager outward through the household, the regional economy, the state, and ultimately the world economy. Rather than blaming the farmer or the rainfall, the analyst follows the chain link by link to show how decisions on the ground are shaped by pressures and constraints set at much wider scales. The method is closely allied to Andrew Vayda's progressive contextualization, which begins with a specific human-environment activity and explains it by placing it in progressively wider contexts. Together these give political ecology a disciplined, scale-spanning way to connect local degradation to its political-economic roots.