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.

Alf Hornborg (Author)

9781108454193, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 13 May 2021

304 pages
15 x 23 x 1.5 cm, 0.43 kg

'Among advocates of Degrowth, Hornborg stands out in proposing the radical, practical alternative of reforming the money system to enable the reconstruction of the relationship between people and planet.' Mary Mellor, Professor Emerita, Northumbria University and author of Debt or Democracy

Are money and technology the core illusions of our time? In this book, Alf Hornborg offers a fresh assessment of the inequalities and environmental degradation of the world. He shows how both mainstream and radical economists are limited by a particular worldview and, as a result, do not grasp that conventional money is at the root of many of the problems that are threatening societies, not to mention planet Earth itself. Hornborg demonstrates how market prices obscure asymmetric exchanges of resources - human labor, land, energy, materials - under a veil of fictive reciprocity. Such unequal exchange, he claims, underpins the phenomenon of technological development, which is, fundamentally, a redistribution of time and space - human labor and land - in world society. Hornborg deftly illustrates how money and technology have shaped our thinking and our social and ecological relations, with disturbing consequences. He also offers solutions for their redesign in ways that will promote justice and sustainability.

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.

Subject Areas: Social impact of environmental issues [RNT], Conservation of the environment [RNK], Environmentalist, conservationist & Green organizations [RNB], Anthropology [JHM], Archaeological science, methodology & techniques [HDW], Environmental archaeology [HDP], Archaeological theory [HDA], Archaeology [HD]