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

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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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Ecologically Unequal Exchange and the Value of Money

TL;DR: In this article , a consistent account of the ecologically unequal exchange is presented based on the different value of money between countries, which emerges as a structural manifestation of the uneven development of capitalism, which exacerbates the global environmental crisis and preexisting power imbalances by reproducing global economic and ecological hierarchies.

Synthesis, part of a Special Feature on Exploring Social-Ecological Resilience through the Lens of the Social Sciences: Contributions, Critical Reflections, and Constructive Debate Social-ecological systems, social diversity, and power: insights from anthropology and political ecology

TL;DR: The authors argue that much SES literature defines people's interests and livelihoods as concerned primarily with the environment, and thereby underplays the role of other motivations and social institutions, and highlight the SES resilience literature's focus on institutions and organized social units which misses key aspects of social diversity and power.

Assessing resilience of agricultural system of Dhaka, Bangladesh

TL;DR: Due to rapid urbanization agricultural lands in metropolitan areas are shrinking. As a result, our cities are getting more dependent on distant places for food, which is making the food system vuln...
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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