Alf Hornborg

Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange

Fetishism in a Zero-Sum World

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

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.

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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.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales)
• Seitenzahl: 208
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. Juni 2011
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 216mm x 137mm x 18mm
• Gewicht: 358g
• ISBN-13: 9780415614863
• ISBN-10: 0415614864
• Artikelnr.: 31804441

Autorenporträt

Alf Hornborg is an anthropologist and Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University, Sweden.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction 1. Zero-Sum World: How to Think about Ecologically Unequal
Exchange 2. Fetishism, Dissociation, and the Cultural Analysis of
Capitalism 3. Historical Political Ecology: Progress as Environmental Load
Displacement 4. Toward a Truly Global Environmental History 5. The Unequal
Exchange of Time and Space 6. Value, Unequal Exchange, and Uneven
Development 7. Vital Signs: How Money Transforms Ecosystems 8. Possible
Moneys and Impossible Machines: To Intervene in the Logic of Capitalism