Marxism and the Dialectics of Ecology

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bellamy Foster ◽  
Brett Clark
Keyword(s):  
German Idealism ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Ecological Value ◽  
Metabolic Rift ◽  
Historical Materialist ◽  
The Social ◽  
Production Of Nature ◽  
Constructivist Conceptions ◽  
Metabolism Analysis ◽  
Monist View

The recovery of the ecological-materialist foundations of Karl Marx's thought, as embodied in his theory of metabolic rift, is redefining both Marxism and ecology in our time, reintegrating the critique of capital with critical natural science. This may seem astonishing to those who were reared on the view that Marx's ideas were simply a synthesis of German idealism, French utopian socialism, and British political economy.… The rediscovery of Marx's metabolism and ecological value-form theories, and of their role in the analysis of ecological crises, has generated sharply discordant trends. Despite their importance in the development of both Marxism and ecology, neither idea is without its critics. One manifestation of the divergence on the left in this respect has been an attempt to appropriate aspects of Marx's social-metabolism analysis in order to promote a crude social "monist" view based on such notions as the social "production of nature" and capitalism's "singular metabolism." Such perspectives, though influenced by Marxism, rely on idealist, postmodernist, and hyper-social-constructivist conceptions, which go against any meaningful historical-materialist ecology and tend to downplay (or to dismiss as apocalyptic or catastrophist) all ecological crises—insofar as they are not reducible to the narrow law of value of the system.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

scholarly journals Politische Ökologie und Politics of Scale – Vermittlungszusammenhänge zwischen Raum, Natur und Gesellschaft

2016 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 353-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alina Brad
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Politics Of Scale ◽  
The Social ◽  
Physical Foundation ◽  
Production Of Nature ◽  
And Control ◽  
Over Time

Abstract. Political ecology approaches examine how the relation between society and nature has historically and geographically evolved through material and discursive practices. This grounds a perspective which explore the social production of nature as a physical foundation of society. This article develops a conceptual framework to integrate the dimension of scale into political ecology. This allows political ecology approaches to understand social processes and the transformation of nature in the context of the production of scale. Against the background of palm oil production in Indonesia this article argues that combing political ecology and scale enhances our understanding of the way in which access to and control over natural resources change over time.

Antinomies of space and nature or an open totality? Neil Smith and Henri Lefebvre on nature and society

2021 ◽  
pp. 194277862110513
Author(s):  
Brian M. Napoletano ◽  
John Bellamy Foster ◽  
Brett Clark
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Dynamics ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Metabolic Rift ◽  
Natural Processes ◽  
Dialectical Approach ◽  
Commodity Production ◽  
The Social ◽  
Production Of Nature ◽  
Nature And Society

The work of Henri Lefebvre has played a pivotal role in human geography in recent decades. At the same time, it has frequently been subject to partial and fragmented appropriations that isolate his insights on the production of space from his broader corpus, leading to confusion and misunderstanding regarding his handling of the dialectical relationships between space, time, society, and nature. In particular, Neil Smith's claim that Lefebvre's conceptualization of nature was both deficient and inconsistent with his dynamic conceptualization of space has tended to dominate geographical engagements with Lefebvre in this area. Following Smith, researchers generally reconstruct the production of space as an epiphenomenon of the production of nature. We critically assess and respond to Smith's criticisms of Lefebvre. Specifically, we contrast Lefebvre's material–dialectical approach to Smith's production-of-nature thesis. While Smith's thesis is helpful in understanding how capital attempts to subsume all of nature under commodity production, Lefebvre's dialectical conceptualization of nature–society as an oppositional unity points both to the impossibility of capital subsuming all of nature and the dangers that its attempts to do so pose to human civilization (even survival). Lefebvre's observations, regarding the growing rupture between natural processes and spatial dynamics, which he incorporates into his own elaboration of Karl Marx's theory of metabolic rift, make his work indispensable to the development of an ecospatial critique within geography and the social sciences more generally.

Producing vertical territory: geology and governmentality in late Victorian Canada

Ecumene ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Braun
Keyword(s):  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Political Rationality ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Production Of Nature

This paper relates developments in the science of geology to forms of governmental rationality in Canada during the late nineteenth century. By so doing it opens for discussion a topic rarely broached by political theorists: the role that the earth sciences played in the historical evolution of forms of political rationality. The paper contests theoretical approaches that understand the relation between scientific knowledge and state rationality as only instrumental. Instead, the paper demonstrates how attending to the temporality of science (as evident in the emergence of specifically geological ways of seeing nature during the period) helps us understand the ways in which science is constitutive of political rationality, rather than merely its instrument. This argument is developed through a critique of Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘governmentality’, a concept that historicizes political rationality, yet remains silent on how the physical sciences contributed to its varied forms. The paper concludes with reflections on the implications of such an argument for theories of the social production of nature.

scholarly journals The Social Production of Invited Spaces: Toward an Understanding of the Invitational Character of Spaces for Citizens’ Initiatives

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivian Visser ◽  
Jitske van Popering-Verkerk ◽  
Arwin van Buuren
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Public Value ◽  
The Social ◽  
Self Organizing ◽  
Formal Rules

AbstractThe rise of citizens’ initiatives is changing the relation between governments and citizens. This paper contributes to the discussion of how governments can productively relate to these self-organizing citizens. The study analyzes the relation between the social production of invited spaces and the invitational character of such spaces, as perceived by governments and citizens. Invited spaces are the (institutional, legal, organizational, political and policy) spaces that are created by governments for citizens to take on initiatives to create public value. We characterize four types of invited spaces and compare four cases in Dutch planning to analyze how these types of invited spaces are perceived as invitational. From the analysis, we draw specific lessons for governments that want to stimulate citizens’ initiatives. We conclude with a general insight for public administration scholars; in addition to formal rules and structures, scholars should pay more attention to interactions, attitudes and meaning making of both government officials and citizens.

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