Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange: Fetishism in a Zero-Sum World

by Hornborg; Alf

• ISBN13: 9780415614863
• ISBN10: 0415614864
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-08-08
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Increased globalization through market exchange and technologies of trade and communication are widely celebrated as a road to a more integrated, prosperous, and even egalitarian future world and yet there is overwhelming evidence that it is precisely these connections that continue to generate devastating ecological deterioration and increasingly severe inequalities within and between nations.There are powerful social groups who have very much to gain from the current organization of global society and it is precisely these interests who exert a primary influence over the way social processes are defined. The language devised to manage socio-ecological "problems" actually constrains our capacity to "solve" problems and the language of policy and management tends to avoid questions of power, conflict, and inequality.In this new book, Alf Hornborg points the way to a new way of thinking that will transcend the impasse of sustainable development.

Table of Contents

List of tables	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Zero-sum world: how to think about ecologically unequal exchange	p. 6
Fetishism, dissociation, and the cultural analysis of capitalism	p. 27
Historical political ecology: progress as environmental load displacement	p. 45
Towards a truly global environmental history	p. 63
The unequal exchange of time and space	p. 83
Value, unequal exchange, and uneven development	p. 102
Vital signs: how money transforms ecosystems	p. 118
Possible moneys and impossible machines: to intervene in the logic of capitalism	p. 139
Notes	p. 161
References	p. 165
Index	p. 185
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