Marx, Critical Theory, and the Treadmill of Production of Value: Why Environmental Sociology Needs a Critique of Capital

2021 ◽  
pp. 89-110
Author(s):  
Alexander M. Stoner
2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rolf Lidskog ◽  
Göran Sundqvist

What is environmental expertise? The background to this question is that many scholars consider environmental expertise crucial for discovering, diagnosing, and solving environmental problems but do not discuss in any depth what constitutes expertise. By investigating the meaning and use of the concept of expertise in three general theories within environmental sociology—the treadmill of production, risk society, and ecological modernization— and findings from science and technology studies (STS), this article develops a sociological understanding of environmental expertise: what it is and how it is acquired. Environmental expertise is namely about group belonging and professional socialization around specialized skills; that is, it concerns both substantial competence and social recognition. The implications of this general view on expertise are then used to enrich theories in environmental sociology.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-76
Author(s):  
Gregory Hooks ◽  
Michael Lengefeld ◽  
Chad L. Smith

We revisit and recast two prominent theories of environmental degradation: the treadmill of production and the treadmill of destruction. This recasting is guided by critical realism, focused on theorizing generative mechanisms that produce and shape empirical events. Our theorization is informed by Marxist and Weberian insights into environmental sociology contributions. In this critical realist recasting, the treadmill of production and the treadmill of destruction are conceived of as generative mechanisms. A treadmill refers to a process in which powerful organizations appropriate nature to amass power and capital. These organizations degrade the environment, and they suppress and distort information about the environmental damage they cause. The macrosocial context, the organizations at the center of them, and the elites that command these organizations make these treadmills distinct. A treadmill spans the biophysical and the social/cultural realms. Whereas the biophysical is necessary for the social/cultural realm to exist, it exists independent of human knowledge of this realm. As such, historical contingency and social change are at the center of analysis when studying the waxing, waning, transformation, and demise of treadmills. Adopting a critical realist stance, future theorization and research can and should engage a wide range of theories advanced in environmental sociology. The goal is not to establish the single best unitary theory, but to identify and gain insight into the generative mechanisms that shape and constrain human interactions with the environment.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Chiles

Coronavirus is currently dealing a concussive blow to global food systems, but this crisis could also present a rare opportunity to uncover and address longstanding social and environmental problems. The purpose of this paper is to shed additional light on this rapidly developing situation by (i) outlining the vulnerabilities and inequities in the global food system that have been exposed by the coronavirus, (ii) identifying the emergent sociotechnical shifts that have occurred in the initial stages of the post-coronavirus era, and then (iii) interpreting these vulnerabilities, inequities, and shifts from the standpoint of two key theories in environmental sociology: the treadmill of production and ecological modernization.


2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (188) ◽  
pp. 453-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Peter Büttner

While the majority of the scientific community holds Marxian Value and Price Theory to be internally inconsistent because of the so-called “transformation problem”, these claims can be sufficiently refuted. The key to the solution of the “transformation problem” is quite simple, so this contribution, because it requires the rejection of simultanism and physicalism, which represent the genuine method of neoclassical economics, a method that is completely incompatible with Marxian Critique of Political Economy. Outside of the iron cage of neoclassical equilibrium economics, Marxian ‘Capital’ can be reconstructed without neoclassical “pathologies” and offers us a whole new world of analytical tools for a critical theory of capitalist societies and its dynamics.


2015 ◽  
Vol 0 (24) ◽  
pp. 95-126
Author(s):  
Ángel Badillo ◽  
◽  
Guillermo Mastrini ◽  
Patricia Marenghi ◽  
◽  
...  

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