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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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Citations
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Caloric unequal exchange in Latin America and the Caribbean Documento de Trabajo FLACSO Ecuador 2016_05

TL;DR: The existence of unequal exchange between rich and poor countries is being demonstrated in the literature for some time, explained by differences in labour costs that reflected in the prices of traded goods.

Can improved circular migration programs fit into the imaginary of a socially just sustainable agriculture

TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the perception on the importance of social justice within alternative agrarian movements, like the organic movement, and question under which circumstances and to what extent these intensive farms could be labeled as socially just.
Journal ArticleDOI

Allocation of U.S. Biomass Production to Food, Feed, Fiber, Fuel and Exports

TL;DR: In this article , the authors analyzed the end uses of biomass production in the U.S. in 1997, 2002, 2007, and 2012 and found that the proportion allocated to nonfood uses is consistent with the tragedy of ecosystem services and commodification of nature frameworks.
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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