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...read more
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Dissertation
Underdeveloping Appalachia: Toward an Environmental Sociology of Extractive Economies
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors modify Simon's prescription that "one does not study Appalachia; rather he or she st udies the social relations which characterize Appalachia in a given instance" to encompass "socio-metabolic relations".
Journal ArticleDOI
The perils of ecologically unequal exchange: Contesting rare-earth mining in Greenland
Irene Henriques,Steffen Böhm +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors use ecologically unequal exchange theory to understand how Greenland, as a peripheral, less-developed country, is seemingly destined to fulfill a role of provider of raw materials for more industrialized countries that now urgently need to decarbonize their economies.
References
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Book
We Have Never Been Modern
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
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.
Journal ArticleDOI
Historical overfishing and the recent collapse of coastal ecosystems.
Jeremy B. C. Jackson,Jeremy B. C. Jackson,Michael Xavier Kirby,Wolfgang H Berger,Karen A. Bjorndal,Louis W. Botsford,Bruce J. Bourque,Roger Bradbury,Richard G. Cooke,Jon M. Erlandson,James A. Estes,Terry P. Hughes,Susan M. Kidwell,Carina B. Lange,Hunter S. Lenihan,John M. Pandolfi,Charles H. Peterson,Robert S. Steneck,Mia J. Tegner,Robert R. Warner +19 more
TL;DR: Paleoecological, archaeological, and historical data show that time lags of decades to centuries occurred between the onset of overfishing and consequent changes in ecological communities, because unfished species of similar trophic level assumed the ecological roles of over-fished species until they too were overfished or died of epidemic diseases related to overcrowding as mentioned in this paper.
Book
The New Imperialism
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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Resilience: the emergence of a perspective for social-ecological systems analyses
Carl Folke,Carl Folke +1 more