Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange: Fetishism in a Zero-Sum by Alf Hornborg

In glossy society, we have a tendency to think about expertise. yet is our inspiration of ‘technology’ itself a cultural phantasm? This publication demanding situations the concept humanity as an entire is united in a standard improvement towards more and more effective applied sciences. in its place it argues that sleek expertise implies a type of worldwide ‘zero-sum video game’ concerning asymmetric source flows, which ensure that wealthier components of world society to avoid wasting time and house on the price of people and environments within the poorer elements.

We are likely to contemplate the functioning of machines as though it used to be indifferent from the social kin of trade which make machines economically and bodily attainable (in a few areas). yet even the steam engine that was once the middle of the commercial Revolution in England was once indissolubly associated with slave labour and soil erosion in far-off cotton plantations. or even as possible benign a expertise as railways have traditionally kept time (and accessed area) essentially should you can have the funds for them, yet on the cost of labour time and normal area misplaced for different social teams with much less procuring strength. The lifestyles of expertise, in different phrases, isn't a cornucopia signifying basic human growth, however the inconsistently allotted results of unequal source transfers that the technology of economics isn't built to understand. expertise isn't really easily a relation among people and their ordinary surroundings, yet extra essentially a manner of organizing worldwide human society. From the very commence it's been a world phenomenon, which has intertwined political, fiscal and environmental histories in complicated and inequitable methods. This ebook unravels those advanced connections and rejects the frequent idea that know-how will make the realm sustainable. as a substitute it indicates a thorough reform of cash, which might be as worthy for attaining sustainability as for heading off monetary breakdown.

It brings jointly a number of views from environmental and financial anthropology, ecological economics, political ecology, world-system research, fetishism conception, semiotics, environmental and monetary background, and improvement conception. Its major contribution is a brand new knowing of technological improvement and issues approximately international sustainability as questions of strength and asymmetric distribution, finally deriving from the inherent common sense of general-purpose funds. it's going to be of curiosity to scholars and pros with a history or present engagement in anthropology, sustainability experiences, environmental background, fiscal heritage, or improvement studies.