Ecologically Unequal Exchange

Ecologically Unequal Exchange PDF Author: R. Scott Frey
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319897403
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Get Book Here

Book Description
At a time of societal urgency surrounding ecological crises from depleted fisheries to mineral extraction and potential pathways towards environmental and ecological justice, this book re-examines ecologically unequal exchange (EUE) from a historical and comparative perspective. The theory of ecologically unequal exchange posits that core or northern consumption and capital accumulation is based on peripheral or southern environmental degradation and extraction. In other words, structures of social and environmental inequality between the Global North and Global South are founded in the extraction of materials from, as well as displacement of waste to, the South. This volume represents a set of tightly interlinked papers with the aim to assess ecologically unequal exchange and to move it forward. Chapters are organised into three main sections: theoretical foundations and critical reflections on ecologically unequal exchange; empirical research on mining, deforestation, fisheries, and the like; and strategies for responding to the adverse consequences associated with unequal ecological exchange. Scholars as well as advanced undergraduate and graduate students will benefit from the spirited re-evaluation and extension of ecologically unequal exchange theory, research, and praxis.

Ecologically Unequal Exchange

Ecologically Unequal Exchange PDF Author: R. Scott Frey
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319897403
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Get Book Here

Book Description
At a time of societal urgency surrounding ecological crises from depleted fisheries to mineral extraction and potential pathways towards environmental and ecological justice, this book re-examines ecologically unequal exchange (EUE) from a historical and comparative perspective. The theory of ecologically unequal exchange posits that core or northern consumption and capital accumulation is based on peripheral or southern environmental degradation and extraction. In other words, structures of social and environmental inequality between the Global North and Global South are founded in the extraction of materials from, as well as displacement of waste to, the South. This volume represents a set of tightly interlinked papers with the aim to assess ecologically unequal exchange and to move it forward. Chapters are organised into three main sections: theoretical foundations and critical reflections on ecologically unequal exchange; empirical research on mining, deforestation, fisheries, and the like; and strategies for responding to the adverse consequences associated with unequal ecological exchange. Scholars as well as advanced undergraduate and graduate students will benefit from the spirited re-evaluation and extension of ecologically unequal exchange theory, research, and praxis.

Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange

Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange PDF Author: Alf Hornborg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136658491
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Get Book Here

Book Description
In modern society, we tend to have faith in technology. But is our concept of ‘technology’ itself a cultural illusion? This book challenges the idea that humanity as a whole is united in a common development toward increasingly efficient technologies. Instead it argues that modern technology implies a kind of global ‘zero-sum game’ involving uneven resource flows, which make it possible for wealthier parts of global society to save time and space at the expense of humans and environments in the poorer parts. We tend to think of the functioning of machines as if it was detached from the social relations of exchange which make machines economically and physically possible (in some areas). But even the steam engine that was the core of the Industrial Revolution in England was indissolubly linked to slave labour and soil erosion in distant cotton plantations. And even as seemingly benign a technology as railways have historically saved time (and accessed space) primarily for those who can afford them, but at the expense of labour time and natural space lost for other social groups with less purchasing power. The existence of technology, in other words, is not a cornucopia signifying general human progress, but the unevenly distributed result of unequal resource transfers that the science of economics is not equipped to perceive. Technology is not simply a relation between humans and their natural environment, but more fundamentally a way of organizing global human society. From the very start it has been a global phenomenon, which has intertwined political, economic and environmental histories in complex and inequitable ways. This book unravels these complex connections and rejects the widespread notion that technology will make the world sustainable. Instead it suggests a radical reform of money, which would be as useful for achieving sustainability as for avoiding financial breakdown. It brings together various perspectives from environmental and economic anthropology, ecological economics, political ecology, world-system analysis, fetishism theory, semiotics, environmental and economic history, and development theory. Its main contribution is a new understanding of technological development and concerns about global sustainability as questions of power and uneven distribution, ultimately deriving from the inherent logic of general-purpose money. It should be of interest to students and professionals with a background or current engagement in anthropology, sustainability studies, environmental history, economic history, or development studies.

The Appropriation of Ecological Space

The Appropriation of Ecological Space PDF Author: Kenneth Hermele
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781138686441
Category : Energy crops
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Although it is recognised that Thomas Robert Malthus was wrong when he posited a contradiction between population increase and agricultural growth, there are increasing signs that he could be proved right in the future. Perhaps Malthus was too late and too early in his prediction? He was too late, because he did not foresee the shift from land-based resources to fossil fuels, outing an end to the limits of agricultural growth, at least temporarily; and he was too early to witness that fossil fuels would come up against their own limits in terms of supply as well as in terms of global warming. This study deals with land-based resources and the role they play in the global socio-ecological metabolic regime, both now and in the future. In particular, the controversial use of agrofuels as a solution to coming scarcity is subjected to close scrutiny.

A People's Green New Deal

A People's Green New Deal PDF Author: Max Ajl
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781786807069
Category : TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The idea of a Green New Deal was launched into popular consciousness by US Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018. Evocative of the far-reaching ambitions of its namesake, it has become a watchword in the current era of global climate crisis. But its new ubiquity brings ambiguity: what - and for whom - is the Green New Deal? In this concise and urgent book, Max Ajl provides an overview of the various mainstream Green New Deals. Critically engaging with their proponents, ideological underpinnings and limitations, he goes on to sketch out a radical alternative: a 'People's Green New Deal' committed to degrowth, anti-imperialism and agro-ecology. Ajl diagnoses the roots of the current socio-ecological crisis as emerging from a world-system dominated by the logics of capitalism and imperialism. Resolving this crisis, he argues, requires nothing less than an infrastructural and agricultural transformation in the Global North, and the industrial convergence between North and South. As the climate crisis deepens and the literature on the subject grows, A People's Green New Deal contributes a distinctive perspective to the debate.

Underdeveloping the Amazon

Underdeveloping the Amazon PDF Author: Stephen G. Bunker
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226080323
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
Underdeveloping the Amazon shows how different extractive economies have periodically enriched various dominant classes but progressively impoverished the entire region by disrupting both the Amazon Basin's ecology and human communities. Contending that traditional models of development based almost exclusively on the European and American experience of industrial production cannot apply to a regional economy founded on extraction, Stephen G. Bunker proposes a new model based on the use and depletion of energy values in natural resources as the key to understanding the disruptive forces at work in the Basin.

Fair Enough?

Fair Enough? PDF Author: Martin Oulu
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789176237519
Category : Commodity fetishism
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


Nature, Society, and Justice in the Anthropocene

Nature, Society, and Justice in the Anthropocene PDF Author: Alf Hornborg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108454193
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
Are money and technology the core illusions of our time? In this book, Alf Hornborg offers a fresh assessment of the inequalities and environmental degradation of the world. He shows how both mainstream and radical economists are limited by a particular worldview and, as a result, do not grasp that conventional money is at the root of many of the problems that are threatening societies, not to mention planet Earth itself. Hornborg demonstrates how market prices obscure asymmetric exchanges of resources - human labor, land, energy, materials - under a veil of fictive reciprocity. Such unequal exchange, he claims, underpins the phenomenon of technological development, which is, fundamentally, a redistribution of time and space - human labor and land - in world society. Hornborg deftly illustrates how money and technology have shaped our thinking and our social and ecological relations, with disturbing consequences. He also offers solutions for their redesign in ways that will promote justice and sustainability.

Rethinking Environmental History

Rethinking Environmental History PDF Author: Alf Hornborg
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 0759113971
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 421

Get Book Here

Book Description
This exciting new reader in environmental history provides a framework for understanding the relations between ecosystems and world-systems over time. Alf Hornborg, J. R. McNeill, and Joan Martinez-Alier have brought together a group of the prominent social scientists, historians, and geographical scientists to provide a historical overview of the ecological dimension of global economic processes. Readers are challenged to integrate studies of the Earth-system with studies of the world-system, and to reconceptualize the relations between human beings and their environment, as well as the challenges of global sustainability.

The Power of the Machine

The Power of the Machine PDF Author: Alf Hornborg
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 0759116911
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book Here

Book Description
Hornborg argues that we are caught in a collective illusion about the nature of modern technology that prevents us from imagining solutions to our economic and environmental crises other than technocratic fixes. He demonstrates how the power of the machine generates increasingly asymmetrical exchanges and distribution of resources and risks between distant populations and ecosystems, and thus an increasingly polarized world order. The author challenges us to reconceptualize the machine—'industrial technomass'—as a species of power and a problem of culture. He shows how economic anthropology has the tools to deconstruct the concepts of production, money capital, and market exchange, and to analyze capital accumulation as a problem at the very interface of the natural and social sciences. His analysis provides an alternative understanding of economic growth and technological development. Hornborg's work is essential for researchers in anthropology, human ecology, economics, political economy, world-systems theory, environmental justice, and science and technology studies. Find out more about the author at the Lund University, Sweden web site.

Ecologically Unequal Exchange Theory

Ecologically Unequal Exchange Theory PDF Author: Marilecy (College student)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Regional economic disparities
Languages : en
Pages : 8

Get Book Here

Book Description
Zine summarizing three articles about unequal power relations between countries, where the United States imports a greater portion of the resources, while the lower-income countries are left with a greater portion of the pollution and other environmental damage.