A world-system analysis of the ecological rift generated by capitalism requires as one of its elements a developed theory of the unequal ecological exchange between center and periphery. After reviewing the literature on unequal exchange (both economic and ecological) from Ricardo and Marx to the present, a new approach is provided, based on a critical appropriation of systems ecologist Howard Odum's emergy (spelled with an m) analysis. Odum's contribution offers key elements of a wider dialectical synthesis, made possible in part by his intensive studies of Marx's political-economic critique of capitalism and by Marx's own theory of metabolic rift.
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John Bellamy Foster is professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of Monthly Review. He is the author of Marx's ecology: materialism and nature (2000) and (with Robert W. McChesney) The endless crisis: how monopoly-finance capital produces stagnation and crisis from the USA to China (2012) – both published by Monthly Review Press. Email: jfoster@uoregon.edu
Notes on contributors
Hannah Holleman is assistant professor of sociology at Amherst College. Her recent articles include ‘Energy policy and environmental possibilities: biofuels and key protagonists of ecological change’ in Rural Sociology (June 2012) and (with John Bellamy Foster) ‘Weber and the environment: classical foundations for a postexemptionalist sociology’ in American Journal of Sociology (May 2012). Email: hholleman@amherst.edu
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