Alf Hornborg
Lund University, Human ecology division, Faculty Member
Public discussion of the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic has reproduced several recurrent and interrelated topics in discourses on sustainability and the Anthropocene. First, there is an ambiguous concern—sometimes ominous,... more
Public discussion of the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic has reproduced several recurrent and interrelated topics in discourses on sustainability and the Anthropocene. First, there is an ambiguous concern—sometimes ominous, sometimes hopeful—that the pandemic will precipitate radical social transformation or even collapse. Second, there is widespread reflection over the risks of economic globalization, which increases vulnerability and undermines local food security. Third, the pandemic is frequently imagined as nature’s revenge on humankind. This metaphor reflects a fundamental conceptual dualism separating nature and society that continues to constrain our efforts to understand the challenges of sustainability. To help transcend the epistemological and ontological dichotomy of nature versus society, the article proposes an epidemiological approach to all-purpose money. Conventional money is an artifact with far-reaching repercussions for global society as well as the biosphe...
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Research Interests: Sociology, Human Geography, Economics, Anthropology, Technology, and 6 moreEnergy, Justice, Space, Tourism, Movement, and Capital
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Comment on De la Cadena, Marisol. 2015. Earth beings: Ecologies of practice across Andean worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
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This article contrasts two fundamentally different understandings of economic growth and "development" that lead to diametrically opposed approaches to how to deal with global ecological deterioration. One is the currently... more
This article contrasts two fundamentally different understandings of economic growth and "development" that lead to diametrically opposed approaches to how to deal with global ecological deterioration. One is the currently hegemonic perspective of neoclassical economic theory, which has been used to advocate growth as a remedy for environmental problems. The other is the zero-sum perspective of world-system theory, which instead suggests that growth involves a displacement of ecological problems to peripheral sectors of theworld-economy. The article begins by sketching the history of these two perspectives in recent decades and reflecting on the ideological and epistemological contexts of their appearance and different degrees of success. It then turns to the main task of critically scrutinizing some of the foundations of the neoclassical approach to environmental issues, arguing that its optimistic view of growth is based on faulty logic and a poor understanding of the gl...
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World-systemic processes of capital accumulation are inextricably intermeshed with ecology. Not only do they have obvious repercussions on landscapes and ecosystems ( e.g., erosion, deforestation), but they are also fundamentally... more
World-systemic processes of capital accumulation are inextricably intermeshed with ecology. Not only do they have obvious repercussions on landscapes and ecosystems ( e.g., erosion, deforestation), but they are also fundamentally dependent on ecological aspects such as topsoil, forests, or minerals. The analytical disjunction of ecology and economics is a persistent feature of modern science. The minority of researchers who have seriously tried to integrate them in a common theoretical framework (cf. Martinez-Alier 1987) have run into major, conceptual difficulties. This paper addresses some of the issues raised in an attempt to ground the notion of capital accumulation in the physical realities of ecology and thermodynamics.
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Research Interests: Landscape Ecology, Sociology, Human Geography, Climate Change, Law and Society, and 15 morePolitical Science, Environmental Sustainability, Multidisciplinary, Research Agenda, Land Use Change, Problem Solving, Marine Fish, Land Degradation, BIODIVERSITY LOSS, Critical research, Critical Research, Structuring, Social Science, Sustainability, and Knowledge Structure
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Abstract Animistic or 'relational'ontologies encountered in non-Western (ie premodern) settings pose a challenge to Western (ie modern) knowledge production, as they violate fundamentalassumptions of... more
Abstract Animistic or 'relational'ontologies encountered in non-Western (ie premodern) settings pose a challenge to Western (ie modern) knowledge production, as they violate fundamentalassumptions of Cartesian science. Naturalscientists who have tried seriously ...
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By extending the Marxian theory of fetishism from money and commodities to machines, we may achieve an epistemological shift in our understanding of the foundations of ‘technological development’. The first part of the article discusses... more
By extending the Marxian theory of fetishism from money and commodities to machines, we may achieve an epistemological shift in our understanding of the foundations of ‘technological development’. The first part of the article discusses previous definitions of fetishism in order to distil some central themes that appear to be particularly significant to the argument on machine fetishism. It is argued that semiotic theory can be useful in distinguishing different varieties of fetishism. The core of the Marxian definition is understood to be the mystification of unequal relations of social exchange through the attribution of autonomous agency or productivity to certain kinds of material objects. The attribution of productivity to modern technology is here interpreted as a mystification of the unequal, global exchange of (labour) time and (natural) space.
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Anthropologists have generally found it reasonable to understand the Industrial Revolution in Britain as a product of global historical processes including colonialism and the structure of world trade. The extent to which the... more
Anthropologists have generally found it reasonable to understand the Industrial Revolution in Britain as a product of global historical processes including colonialism and the structure of world trade. The extent to which the industrialization of British textile production was contingent on global processes has been illuminated in detail by historians such as Joseph Inikori. Andre Gunder Frank proposed that we should reconceptualize technological development as a ‘world economic process, which took place in and because of the structure of the world economy’. Yet the theoretical implications of understanding industrial technological systems as global and unevenly distributed phenomena have, by and large, not contaminated mainstream conceptions of technologies as politically neutral and fundamentally innocent manifestations of enlightenment, detachable from the societal contexts in which they have emerged. Social theory nevertheless offers perspectives for a radical rethinking of this...
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ABSTRACT This is Part 1 of an article arguing for an extended application of Karl Marx’s insight that the apparent reciprocity of free market exchange is to be understood as an ideology that obscures material processes of exploitation and... more
ABSTRACT This is Part 1 of an article arguing for an extended application of Karl Marx’s insight that the apparent reciprocity of free market exchange is to be understood as an ideology that obscures material processes of exploitation and accumulation. Rather than to confine this insight to the worker’s sale of his or her labor-power for wages, and basing it on the conviction that labor-power is uniquely capable of generating more value than its price, the article argues that capital accumulation also relies on asymmetric transfers of several other biophysical resources such as embodied non-human energy, land, and materials. It proposes that the very notions of “price” and “value” serve to obscure the material history and substance of traded commodities. Such a shift of perspective extends Marx’s foundational critique of mainstream economics by focusing on the unacknowledged role of ecologically unequal exchange, but requires a critical rethinking of the concept of “use-value.” It also suggests a fundamental reconceptualization of the ontology of technological progress, frequently celebrated in Marxist theory. Part 1 of the article introduces the argument on unequal exchange, the ideological function of money, some concerns of ecological Marxism, and the conundrum posed by three contradictory understandings of “use-value.”
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The World System and the Earth System: Global Socioenvironmental Change and Sustainability Since the Neolithic The World System and the Earth System: Global Socioenvironmental Change and Sustainability Since the Neolithic. Alf Hornborg , Carole Crumley . 2006. Left Coast Press. Walnut Creek, CA. ...more
