Urban political ecology: Recovering the subject

In this article I trace evolving conceptions of the human subject through successive waves of urban political ecology literature. My argument proceeds via a series of loosely chronological archetypes: the collective subject; the embodied subject; the multiple subject; the porous subject; the creative subject; the occluded subject; and the neo-human subject. I suggest that there is significant potential for reworking existing conceptions of agency and subjectivity within the field. I conclude that a more conceptually refined vantage point for urban political ecology offers a distinctive alternative to the more diffuse or flattened ontologies associated with new materialism.