Special section: Circuits of production, crisis and revolt: the environment and capital in the Middle East and North Africa

This article introduces the special section on “Circuits of production, crisis and revolt: The environment and capital in the Middle East and North Africa,” featuring four articles. Each one examines cases where imperial and hegemonic state powers exert power over the environment, while forms of agency and resistance emerge in response. The introduction identifies some of the problems that exist within the study of the environment in the Middle East and North Africa. The Orientalist tendency continues to lead to distortions that exceptionalize and mislead. A redress to these problems is the development of a political ecological framework that identifies the power differential within social relations over resources. The introduction explains how these are represented within the four articles.