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Journal ArticleDOI

Zero-Sum World: Challenges in Conceptualizing Environmental Load Displacement and Ecologically Unequal Exchange in the World-System

TLDR
In this article, the authors discuss various ways in which conventional discourse on sustainability fails to acknowledge the distributive, political, and cultural dimensions of global environmental problems, and identify five interconnected illusions currently postponing systemic crisis and obstructing rational societal negotiations that acknowledge the political dimension of global ecology.
Abstract
This article discusses various ways in which conventional discourse on sustainability fails to acknowledge the distributive, political, and cultural dimensions of global environmental problems. It traces some lineages of critical thinking on environmental load displacement and ecologically unequal exchange, arguing that such acknowledgement of a global environmental `zero-sum game' is essential to recognizing the extent to which cornucopian perceptions of `development' represent an illusion. It identifies five interconnected illusions currently postponing systemic crisis and obstructing rational societal negotiations that acknowledge the political dimensions of global ecology: 1) The fragmentation of scientific perspectives into bounded categories such as `technology', `economy', and `ecology'. 2) The assumption that the operation of market prices is tantamount to reciprocity. 3) The illusion of machine fetishism, that is, that the technological capacity of a given population is independent of that popula...

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Challenging dichotomies – exploring resilience as an integrative and operative conceptual framework for large-scale urban green structures

TL;DR: Balancing interests of urban growth and development against the need to safeguard socially equitable and ecologically functional green space is a core urban planning issue as mentioned in this paper, and these urban needs are st...
Journal ArticleDOI

The sociology of ecologically unequal exchange, foreign investment dependence and environmental load displacement: summary of the literature and implications for sustainability

TL;DR: In this article, the authors summarize sociological approaches to (1) ecologically unequal exchange, and (2) foreign investment dependence and environmental load displacement, which consist of structural theories and cross-national statistical analyses that test hypotheses derived from both approaches.
Journal ArticleDOI

Toward an alternative dialogue between the social and natural sciences

TL;DR: The authors made a comparison of eight distinct interdisciplinary attempts at integration of knowledge across social and natural sciences, and concluded that none of these prominent eight interdisciplinary fields in and of itself manages to provide, in a satisfactory way, such an integrated understanding of sustainability.
Journal ArticleDOI

Luxury seafood consumption in China and the intensification of coastal livelihoods in Southeast Asia: The live reef fish for food trade in Balabac, Philippines

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the relationship between Chinese patterns of luxury seafood consumption and the intensification of coastal livelihoods in Southeast Asia, focusing mostly on the trade in live reef fish, with reference also to sea cucumber and shark fin.
Journal ArticleDOI

Community development in Ok Tedi, Papua New Guinea: the role of anthropology in the extractive industries

TL;DR: In this paper, anthropological data can shed light on the negative social impact of current development models using Papua New Guinea's Ok Tedi mine as a case study, and the authors argue that a comprehensive understanding of the diverse cultural nuances activated by cultural actors with varied access to the opportunities provided by extractive industry should be implicit in the design of community development programs.
References
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Book

We Have Never Been Modern

Bruno Latour
TL;DR: This article argued that we are modern as long as we split our political process in two - between politics proper, and science and technology, which allowed the formidable expansion of the Western empires.
Book

The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill

Tim Ingold
TL;DR: The Perception of the Environment as discussed by the authors is a collection of essays focusing on the procurement of livelihood, what it means to "dwell" and on the nature of skill, weaving together approaches from social anthropology, ecological psychology, developmental biology and phenomenology in a way that has never been attempted before.
Book

The New Imperialism

David Harvey
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe how America's power grew and how capital bondage was used for accumulation by dispossession and consent to coercion by consenting to coercion.
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