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The Global Political Economy of the Environment

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Against Kaplan: Keynesianism, modernisation theory, agro-industry, the WTO, IMF, World bank ... century watershed, Mill (wanton nature), Jevons (blinding value theory) ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: The Global Political Economy of the Environment


1
The Global Political Economy of the Environment
  • IPE II Lecture 11

2
Lecture Outline
  • Kaplans Coming Anarchy
  • Against Kaplan Keynesianism, modernisation
    theory, agro-industry, the WTO, IMF, World bank
  • Empire
  • Historical production of capitalism against
    nature scientific revolution, Christian moral
    economy, 19th century watershed, Mill (wanton
    nature), Jevons (blinding value theory), Property
    (stewardship to risk?)

3
Kaplans Coming Anarchy
  • 1. From Cold war to New Threats
  • 2. The Issues ( a la Kaplan)
  • Socio-economic dislocation and the restless
    hordes
  • Environmental scarcity and catastrophe
  • Cultural antagonisms

4
Kaplan Ignoramus?
  • Problems all in poor societies
  • West seen as potential victim!
  • West needs to manage the problem
  • BUT

5
Pace Kaplan 1
  • Does history show capitalist societies can manage
    these problems?
  • Environmental costs are external costs
  • Production problematic environmentally
  • - Keynesian demand management
  • - Modernisation theory (Biel reading)

6
Pace Kaplan 2
  • The Environment at the World Trade Organisation
  • The Sources of socio-economic dislocation
  • - Agro-industry
  • - World Bank and International Monetary Fund

7
Ellen Woods Empire
  • Actually existing globalisationmeans the
    opening of subordinate economies and their
    vulnerability to imperial capital, while the
    imperial economy remains sheltered as much as
    possible from the obverse effects. Globalization
    has nothing to do with free trade. On the
    contrary, it is about the careful control of
    trading conditions, in the interests of imperial
    capital. Globalization has been as much about
    preventing as promoting integration. The global
    movements of capital require not only free
    transborder access to labour, resources and
    markets but also protection from opposite
    movements, as well as a kind of economic and
    social fragmentation that enhances profitability
    by differentiating the costs and conditions of
    production.

8
Genesis of Environmental Catastrophe
  • Christian Moral Economy and Scientific revolution
  • Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
  • Adam Smith (1723-1790)
  • It is not from the benevolence of the butcher,
    the brewer, or the baker that we expect our
    dinner, but from their regard to their own
    interest. We address ourselves, not to their
    humanity but to their self-love, and never talk
    to them of our own necessities but of their
    advantages. so it is this same trucking
    disposition which originally gives occasion to
    the division of labour.
  • (Wealth of Nations Book I pp. 102)

9
Capitalism Against Nature
  • 19th century Why then?
  • 1. Religious Crisis
  • 2. Collapse of common episteme
  • Foucault the total set of relations that unite,
    at a given period, the discursive practices that
    give rise to epistemological figures, sciences,
    and possibly formalized systems (Archaeology of
    Knowledge 1969 211)
  • 3. Need for new foundation for knowledge

10
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
  • Nature not only amoral but wantonly immoral
  • the doctrine that man ought to follow nature, or
    in other words, ought to make the spontaneous
    course of things the model of his voluntary
    actions, is equally irrational and immoral.
    Irrational, because all human action whatever,
    consists in altering, and all useful action in
    improving, the spontaneous course of nature
    Immoral, because the course of natural phenomena
    being replete with everything which when
    committed by human beings is most worthy of
    abhorrence, any one who endeavoured in his
    actions to imitate the natural course of things
    would be universally seen and acknowledged to be
    the wickedest of men.

11
William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882)
  • Value Theory
  • Previously bottom up from nature
  • Marginal value theory top down from individual
    consumption choices
  • Accompanying shift in conceptions of property
  • John Lockes (1632-1704) Spoilation proviso
  • Abandonment of stewardship (now risk?)

12
Locke and Property
  • For this labour being the unquestionable
    property of the labourer, no man but he can have
    a right to what that is once joined to, at least
    where there is enough, and as good left in common
    for othersif gathering acorns, or other fruits
    of the earth etc. makes a right to them, then
    anyone may ingross as much as he will. To which I
    answer, not so. The same law of nature that does
    by this means give us property, does also bound
    that property tooAs much as anyone can make use
    of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so
    much may he by his labour fix a property in.
    Whatever is beyond this is more that his share,
    and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God
    for Man to spoil or destroy.
  • (Locke (1689), Two Treatises of Government,
    Section 32, pp. 308)
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