Metabolic Rifts and the Ecological Crisis

2018 ◽  
pp. 650-658 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brett Clark ◽  
John Bellamy Foster ◽  
Stefano B. Longo
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Soil Nutrient ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Nutrient Cycle ◽  
Metabolic Rift ◽  
The Social ◽  
Broad Array ◽  
Natural Cycles

In analyzing the relations between human societies and the larger biophysical world, Karl Marx employed a dialectical triadic scheme of “the universal metabolism of nature,” the “social metabolism,” and the metabolic rift. He incorporated this metabolic approach within his critique of political economy, allowing him to assess the historical interchanges and interpenetrations of society and ecological systems. Given its endless pursuit of accumulation, capitalism imposes its demands on nature, increasing pressures on ecological systems and the production of wastes. It generates distinct metabolic rifts (ruptures) in natural cycles and processes. Marx specifically developed this approach in his critique of capitalist agriculture, with regard to how this system created an ecological rift in the soil nutrient cycle. Contemporary scholarship has drawn upon this work to examine a broad array of ecological contradictions, which are culminating in an ecological crisis.

scholarly journals Thomas Piketty’s Book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, Karl Marx and the Political Economy of the Internet

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 413-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Fuchs
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Tax Avoidance ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Social ◽  
Twenty First Century

Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has resulted in a sustained political and academic debate about capitalism in the 21st century. This article discusses the relevance of the book in the context of Karl Marx’s works and the political economy of the Internet. It identifies 3 common reactions to Piketty’s book: 1) dignification; 2) denigration of the work’s integrity; 3) the denial of any parallel to Marx. I argue that all three reactions do not help the task of creating a New Left that is urgently needed in the situation of sustained capitalist crisis. Marxists will certainly view Piketty’s analysis of capitalism and political suggestions critically. I argue that they should however not dismiss them, but like Marx and Engels aim to radicalise reform suggestions. In relation to the Internet, this paper discusses especially how insights from Piketty’s book can inform the discussion of tax avoidance by transnational Internet companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. For establishing an alternative, non-commercial, non-capitalist Internet one can draw insights about institutional reforms and progressive capital taxation from Piketty that can be radicalised in order to ground radical-reformist Internet politics.“The daily struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, offers to the social democracy the only means of engaging in the proletarian class war and working in the direction of the final goal-the conquest of political power and the suppression of wage labor. Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the social democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim” (Rosa Luxemburg 1899, 41).

scholarly journals The anthropology of human-environment relations

Focaal ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (82) ◽  
pp. 64-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny McCall Howard
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Human Intentionality ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ecological Relations

What are Marxists to make of the new wave of materialism that has become influential in anthropology and across the social sciences and humanities? An ethnography of fishing in coastal Scotland and an analysis of Tim Ingold’s ecological anthropology demonstrates both the usefulness and gaps in contemporary ecological and materialist anthropology. It finds that the reduced role for political economy, human intentionality, and material results in this literature significantly reduces their explanatory power. Efforts to unite analysis of humans and nonhumans have led to a lack of attention to the divisions within human societies, particularly the alienation of labor and therefore of ecological relations in capitalism. Understanding these dynamics is essential to contending with the current planetary ecological crisis.

scholarly journals Healing the Metabolic Rift between Farming and the Eco-System: Challenges Facing Organic Farmers in Canada and in Sweden

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Clow ◽  
Darrell McLaughlin
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Organic Farming ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Food System ◽  
Social Sustainability ◽  
Metabolic Rift ◽  
The Social ◽  
Organic Farmers

There is a growing list of scholarly and popular works which, when taken collectively, raise major concerns about industrialized farming and our present food system, particularly its impact on the natural environment. Over a century ago, Karl Marx used the concept “metabolic rift” to describe problems related to ecological and social sustainability resulting from capitalist industry and agriculture. in this paper, we examine the extent to which some members of today’s organic farming movement are addressing the metabolic rift and changing the social organization of food production.

scholarly journals Vanished in gaps, vanquished in rifts: the social ecology of urban spatial change in a working class residential area, Peykan-Shahr, Tehran, Iran

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilia Farahani
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Residential Area ◽  
Spatial Change ◽  
Metabolic Rift ◽  
Labor Theory Of Value ◽  
Labor Theory ◽  
Ecological Changes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theory Of Value

The article aims to understand the forms and processes of socio-ecological changes following sociogeographical dislocation of workers in a working-class neighborhood (Peykan-Shahr) in Iran. The article integrates theories of gentrification and metabolic rift. Existing studies on urbanization in Iran refute the possibility of gentrification. This study, in contrast, by drawing attention to peculiarities of the capitalist economy in Iran, adapts the basic economic mechanisms of gentrification such as the rent/value gap and the concept of absolute rent, concluding that Peykan-Shahr is indeed in a process of gentrification. The theory of metabolic rift adds theoretical dimensions and complexity to the analysis and provides a richer understanding of the case. Grounded in Marx's labor theory of value, the analysis shows that by mediating the exploitation of labor/nature by capital through displacing workers from their houses, gentrification in Peykan-Shahr has caused a socio-ecological metabolic rift in terms of labor reproduction and deterioration of labor power.Key words: Socio-ecological metabolic rift, gentrification, absolute rent, Marxism, labor reproduction, political economy of Iran. 

Lord Dacre and the Politics of the Scottish Enlightenment

2005 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Kidd
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
North East ◽  
The Social ◽  
Romantic Movement ◽  
Scottish History

Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) made several iconoclastic interventions in the field of Scottish history. These earned him a notoriety in Scottish circles which, while not undeserved, has led to the reductive dismissal of Trevor-Roper's ideas, particularly his controversial interpretation of the Scottish Enlightenment, as the product of Scotophobia. In their indignation Scottish historians have missed the wider issues which prompted Trevor-Roper's investigation of the Scottish Enlightenment as a fascinating case study in European cultural history. Notably, Trevor-Roper used the example of Scotland to challenge Weberian-inspired notions of Puritan progressivism, arguing instead that the Arminian culture of north-east Scotland had played a disproportionate role in the rise of the Scottish Enlightenment. Indeed, working on the assumption that the essence of Enlightenment was its assault on clerical bigotry, Trevor-Roper sought the roots of the Scottish Enlightenment in Jacobitism, the counter-cultural alternative to post-1690 Scotland's Calvinist Kirk establishment. Though easily misconstrued as a dogmatic conservative, Trevor-Roper flirted with Marxisant sociology, not least in his account of the social underpinnings of the Scottish Enlightenment. Trevor-Roper argued that it was the rapidity of eighteenth-century Scotland's social and economic transformation which had produced in one generation a remarkable body of political economy conceptualising social change, and in the next a romantic movement whose powers of nostalgic enchantment were felt across the breadth of Europe.

Prophets and Profits of Racial Science

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruha Benjamin
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Precision Medicine ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Racial Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Racial Ethnic

In this response to Terence Keel and John Hartigan’s debate over the social construction of race, I aim to push the discussion beyond the terrain of epistemology and ideology to examine the contested value of racial science in a broader political economy. I build upon Keel’s concern that even science motivated by progressive aims may reproduce racist thinking and Hartigan’s proposition that a critique of racial science cannot rest on the beliefs and intentions of scientists. In examining the value of racial-ethnic classifications in pharmacogenomics and precision medicine, I propose that analysts should attend to the relationship between prophets of racial science (those who produce forecasts about inherent group differences) and profits of racial science (the material-semiotic benefits of such forecasts). Throughout, I draw upon the idiom of speculation—as a narrative, predictive, and financial practice—to explain how the fiction of race is made factual, again and again. 

Different Resources, Different Conflicts? The Subnational Political Economy of Armed Conflict and Crime in Colombia

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Conflict Behavior ◽  
Drug Trade ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Sustainable Peace ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scholarly Attention

This book explores some of the risks associated with sustainable peace in Colombia. The book intentionally steers away from the emphasis on the drug trade as the main resource fueling Colombian conflicts and violence, a topic that has dominated scholarly attention. Instead, it focuses on the links that have been configured over decades of armed conflict between legal resources (such as bananas, coffee, coal, flowers, gold, ferronickel, emeralds, and oil), conflict dynamics, and crime in several regions of Colombia. The book thus contributes to a growing trend in the academic literature focusing on the subnational level of armed conflict behavior. It also illustrates how the social and economic context of these resources can operate as deterrents or as drivers of violence. The book thus provides important lessons for policymakers and scholars alike: Just as resources have been linked to outbreaks and transformations of violence, peacebuilding too needs to take into account their impacts, legacies, and potential

scholarly journals Realizing the Social Dimension of EU Coastal Water Management

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2261
Author(s):  
David Langlet ◽  
Aron Westholm
Keyword(s):  
Coastal Waters ◽  
Spatial Planning ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Current System ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Eu Directive ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Eu

In the last 20 years, the EU has adopted some rather ambitious pieces of legislation with the aim to achieve a good environmental status in freshwater and marine ecosystems. Both the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) have a strong focus on the natural environment and biological criteria for assessing the status of the relevant ecosystems. In the same time period, much research on environmental governance has focused on the interconnectedness of social systems and ecosystems, so-called social-ecological systems (SES). While having high aspirations, the legal frameworks underpinning current EU water and marine management do not necessarily reflect the advances of contemporary science relating to SES. Using the geographical intersection of the two directives, i.e., coastal waters as a focal point, the paper explores the inchoate integration of social and ecological perspectives in the EU marine governance. What are the main challenges for the current EU legal regimes for managing coastal waters in a way that builds on the understanding of social and ecological systems as interconnected? Having explored the two directives, the paper introduces the possibility of using marine spatial planning (MSP), and the EU directive establishing a framework for maritime spatial planning (MSPD) as a bridge between the social and ecological dimensions and discusses what implications this would have for the current system for governing coastal waters in Europe.

Historical Crucifixion: A Liberationist Response to Deep Incarnation

2020 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 892-912
Author(s):  
Michael E. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Divine Presence ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Cross

In light of the social-ecological crisis facing Puerto Rico, this article offers a response to deep incarnation theologies. Though it notes that deep incarnation offers a helpful account of divine presence and solidarity with all suffering creatures, the essay draws from liberationist theologians to argue that equating the cross with evolutionary death obscures the sinful causes of crucifixion. Ultimately, the essay insists that the notion of deep incarnation that addresses evolutionary suffering must be linked to a similarly “deep” notion of crucifixion rooted in historical reality.

scholarly journals Towards the Construction of Productive Interactions for Social Impact

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 485
Author(s):  
Blanca L. Díaz Mariño ◽  
Frida Carmina Caballero-Rico ◽  
Ramón Ventura Roque Hernández ◽  
José Alberto Ramírez de León ◽  
Daniel Alejandro González-Bandala
Keyword(s):  
Social Impact ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Project Duration ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Different Levels

Understanding the value of research for society has become a priority, and several methodologies have been developed to assess the social impact of research. This study aimed to determine how productive interactions are developed during the execution of research projects. A retrospective study was conducted on 33 projects from 1999 to 2020. Semi-structured interviews with the technical managers were conducted to analyze how different actors of the project—researchers, government officials, and civil society and private sector stakeholders—were involved, illustrating how productive interactions occur in specific biodiversity contexts. The results revealed different levels and intensities of productive interactions; on the one hand, three projects involved all actors; eight involved researchers outside the institution; and 25 involved community members. The number of participants ranged from 2 to 37. All research evaluated had a disciplinary orientation. The type and time of interactions with other interested parties depended on the amount of funding, project type, project duration, and, significantly, on the profile of the technical manager. The importance of assessing and valuing productive interactions was identified as a fundamental element in promoting the social impact of research, as well as integrating inter- or multidisciplinary projects that impact the conservation of socio-ecological systems.

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