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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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Journal Article

The New Imperialism

TL;DR: This article argued that the British Empire was a " liberal" empire that upheld international law, kept the seas open and free, and ultimately benefited everyone by ensuring the free flow of trade.
Journal ArticleDOI

Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference

TL;DR: In this article, the material frames of daily life are constituted and represented through social practices, not as separate elements but in relation to each other, and they then become fundamental to the exploration of political, economic and ecological alternatives to contemporary life.
Journal ArticleDOI

Resilience and disaster risk reduction: an etymological journey

TL;DR: The authors examines the development over historical time of the meaning and uses of the term resilience and concludes that the modern conception of resilience derives benefit from a rich history of meanings and applications, but that it is dangerous to read to much into the term as a model and a paradigm.
References
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Book

Sacred Ecology: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource Management

Fikret Berkes
TL;DR: In this article, a knowledge-practice-belief complex of traditional ecological knowledge is proposed to deal with the topic of traditional knowledge specifically in the context of natural resource management, and a diversity of relationships that different groups have developed with their environment is explored.
Book

Culture and practical reason

TL;DR: Sahlins as mentioned in this paper argues that symbols enter all phases of social life, including those which we tend to regard as strictly pragmatic, or based on concerns with material need or advantage, as well as those which are purely symbolic, such as ideology, ritual, myth, moral codes, and the like.
Journal ArticleDOI

Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference

TL;DR: In this article, the material frames of daily life are constituted and represented through social practices, not as separate elements but in relation to each other, and they then become fundamental to the exploration of political, economic and ecological alternatives to contemporary life.
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