Wall Street is a way of organizing nature : an interview with Jason W. Moore

• My alternative to the Cartesian binary is the world-ecological perspective. This perspective says that the great movements of modern world history – imperialism, transitions in family and gen-der relations, commodification, financial expansions and much more – are messy bundles of human- and extra-human relations. The theory of capitalism as world-ecology builds out from a simple proposition: Just as a farm is a way of organizing nature, so is a market, a financial center, a factory, an empire. The production of nature has been every bit as much about the factories as forests, stock exchanges, shopping centers, slum and suburban sprawls, as it has been about soil exhaustion and species extinction. Focusing on capitalism as world-ecology, I seek a dialectical synthesis of the accumulation of capital, the pursuit of power, and the production of nature. The capitalist world-ecology is a kind of gravitational field. At its vortex is the commodity. The com-modification of everything, capitalism‟s basic tendency, is often considered a social process; in fact it is powerfully ecological. The commodification of everything says that human nature, as labor productivity, is what really counts. Extra-human nature is literally devalued, mobilized in support of rising labor productivity. Capitalism is the gravitational field within which the vast array of “big picture” historical movements of the past five centuries unfolds. Financialization, shifts in family structure, the emergence of new racial orders, colonialism and imperialism, industrialization, social revolutions and workers‟ movements – these are all world-ecological processes and projects, all with powerful visions for re-ordering of human- and extra-human natures.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Etnologi (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Ethnology (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography (hsv//eng)

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

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

Keyword

capitalism as world-ecology

political ecology

environmental history

commodity frontiers

world-systems analysis

world history

finance capital

financialization

Human ecology

Humanekologi

Human geography, economic geography

Kulturgeografi, ekonomisk geografi

Economic history

Ekonomisk historia

Economic History

ekonomisk historia

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

art (subject category)