Nature, Society, and Justice in the Anthropocene - Unraveling the Money-Energy-Technology Complex

Money and market prices obscure an unequal global exchange of resources, which is a prerequisite to what we perceive as technological progress.

List of contents

1. Rethinking economy and technology; 2. The Anthropocene challenge to our worldview; 3. Producing and obscuring global injustices; 4. The money game; 5. Anticipating degrowth; 6. The ontology of technology; 7. Energy technologies as time-space appropriation; 8. Capitalism, energy and the logic of money; 9. Unequal exchange and economic value; 10. Subjects versus objects: artifacts have consequences, not agency; 11. Anthropocene confusions: dithering while the planet burns; 12. Animism, relationism and the ontological turn; 13. Conclusions and possibilities; Afterword: confronting mainstream notions of progress.

About the author

Alf Hornborg is an anthropologist and the Professor of Human Ecology at Lunds Universitet, Sweden. He is the author of The Power of the Machine (2001), Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange (2011), and Global Magic (2016). He has conducted field research in Canada, Peru, and Brazil.

Summary

This book shows how money and technology have shaped our thinking and social and ecological relations, with disturbing consequences. It offers solutions for their redesign in ways that will promote justice and sustainability. It is aimed at scholars and advanced students in environmental studies, economics, archaeology and social theory.

Additional text

'With money, capitalism, Marxism, political ecology, environmental degradation, and justice as anchoring themes, Hornborg ranges widely across many aspects of current anthropology (including its fringes). The book is important reading for scholars of these topics, and for all concerned about the future of humanity and the earth. Hornborg proposes that problems of the environment and justice call for a redesign of money for local use only within each nation, existing alongside regular currencies.' Joseph Tainter, Utah State University and author of The Collapse of Complex Societies

Product details

• Authors: Alf Hornborg, Alf (Lunds Universitet Hornborg, Alfred Hornborg, Alfred (Lunds Universitet Hornborg, Hornborg Alf
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.08.2019
• EAN: 9781108429375
• ISBN: 978-1-108-42937-5
• No. of pages: 242
• Series: New Directions in Sustainabili; New Directions in Sustainability and Society; New Directions in Sustainabili
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Natural sciences (general); Non-fiction book > History > Pre and early history, antiquity; BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Environmental Economics, Anthropology, Conservation of the environment, Social impact of environmental issues, Environmentalist, Conservationist & Green Organizations, Environmentalist, conservationist and Green organizations, Environmental archaeology