Ecology and the accumulation of capital : thinking capitalism through the web of life

• Capitalism as world-ecology is an effort to move from the “environmental history of” capitalism, or modernity, or the world market, to capitalism AS environmental history. Financial crises, for instance, are not social or economic crises that make their footprint on the rest of nature; they are crises of a key moment of capitalism’s symbolic and material ordering of the relation between humans and the rest of nature. This dialectical alternative views the great movements of modern world history – industrial and agricultural revolutions, successive new imperialisms, the development of the world market – as socio-ecological projects and processes, aimed at reconfiguring nature-society relations. ‘Nature,’ no longer a passive substance upon which humanity leaves its footprint, becomes an active bundle of relations, formed and re-formed through the historically- and geographically-specific movements of humans, with the rest of nature. This entails more than a catalogue of capitalism’s biophysical depredations. It calls for new synthesis that locates the accumulation of capital, the production of nature, and pursuit of power in a singular and differentiated whole. This perspective begins from the premise that capitalism does not act upon nature so much as develop through nature-society relations. Capitalism does not have an ecological regime; it is an ecological regime.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Ekonomisk historia (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economic History (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

capitalism as world-ecology

historical geography

economic history

commodity frontier

productivity and plunder

world-systems analysis

Agricultural economics

Jordbruksekonomi

Human ecology

Humanekologi

Agricultural history

Agrarhistoria

Economic history

Ekonomisk historia

Economics

Nationalekonomi

Technology and social change

Teknik och social förändring

Human geography, economic geography

Kulturgeografi, ekonomisk geografi

Sociology

Sociologi

Economic History

ekonomisk historia

Social and Economic Geography

kulturgeografi

Systems Analysis

systemanalys

sociologi

Sociology

historia

History

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)