Theory Of Metabolic Rift Research Articles

Capitalist Social Relations and the Environment: A Hyena—Baby Gazelle Acquaintance

Despite playing a critical role in the survival of living beings, several empirical findings all around the world suggest that the planet Earth is now in a perilous state. Whilst acknowledging the influence of several superficial humanistic factors upon which the conventional discourses on the current environmental concerns have long been affixed, this analytical paper contends that such aspects are deficient in comprehending and remedying the problem. Contrarily, attempts to identify the underlying causes and cures of the environmental problem should recognise the modus vivendi of the prevailing capitalistic social relations, which serve as the basis for existing exploitative and environmentally damaging behaviours. It is against this standpoint that this paper uses both theoretical and empirical evidence informed by a metabolic rift theory to dismiss the prevalent illusory eco-capitalistic arguments that capitalism is not responsible for the current environmental problems in the world but only human activities. In order to address the current environmental problem, the paper proposes a systemic transformation wherein unorthodox forms of social interactions are oriented around satisfying the needs of both the environment and humans without jeopardising each other’s worth.

Ocean Literacy and Metabolic Rift Theory for Addressing the Effects of the Marine Ecological Crisis

Abstract: Natural resources are used by society to produce goods and this proceeding mediated by human work which transforms nature. This process is called social metabolism and is expressed differently throughout history. In the capitalist mode of production, the exchange value subsumes use value and nature is modified on a scale beyond its reproduction capacity, establishing a metabolic rift that expands to different environments, including the marine. Ocean Literacy (OL) – understanding the human influence on the oceans and the influence of the oceans on human society – aims to contribute to overcoming the ecological crisis in the ocean, however, it is focused on a logic that ranges from the Enlightenment to post-modern perspectives. In the present work, it is proposed that OL incorporates the theory of metabolic rift in order to be able to organize society to face the challenges related to oceanic issues such as acidification, extinction of biodiversity, overfishing, etc. Finally, a case study of the “Onda Cultural’” (Cultural Wave) educational initiative of the “Laboratório de Genética Marinha e Evolução” (Marine Genetics and Evolution Laboratory) at Universidade Federal Fluminense (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is presented in its attempt to incorporate this theory into its OL practices and activities in public schools. Key Words: Oceanic crisis. Metabolic rift. Social metabolism. Estate schools.

Metabolic rift theory and the complexities of water conflict between India and Pakistan: A pathway to effective environmental management

The exacerbation of the historical and geopolitical tensions between India and Pakistan, largely attributed to colonial legacies, is further amplified due to climate change-induced water conflicts. These environmental management issues stemming from the climate crisis are urgent, demanding innovative and collaborative solutions. The primary aim of this article is to elucidate the complexities of the water conflict between India and Pakistan and propose more effective environmental management strategies that will ultimately foster regional peace and stability. The article applies the metabolic rift theory, a sociological approach, to comprehensively explain crisis-led ecological challenges in the Indo-Pak context. By applying this theory, the article reveals that collective environmental management strategies, particularly those aimed at water resource management, can significantly mitigate the impact of climate crisis and the related climate-induced conflicts. The study also proposes a need-based approach to environmental management, stressing the importance of having integrated water resource planning (harmoniously) shared between India and Pakistan. This includes ensuring sustainable wastewater treatment, securing freshwater quality, and guaranteeing an equitable distribution and utilization of water resources between these two nations.

Ecological Marxism

In this interview from April 2023, Jia Keqing and John Bellamy Foster discuss the state of ecological Marxism worldwide, the question of anthropocentrism, the theory of metabolic rift, and the environmental proletariat.

Critical realism and the ontology of Eco-Marxism between emergence and hybrid monism

ABSTRACT Eco-Marxism presents a debate between two theoretical schools: metabolic rift theory, developed by John Foster and others, and world-ecology, proposed by Jason W. Moore. The debate refers ultimately to ontology, more precisely to the relation between society and nature. Critical realism plays a central role as the philosophical underlabouring for metabolic rift theory and has implications regarding the Anthropocene/Capitalocene debate as well. Reviewing the debate through CR categories provides clarity about the specifically social character of the causes of ecological disruptions. Using CR, metabolic rift theorists could explain the interdisciplinary character of their analyses. By distinguishing between real transfactual mechanisms and their actual interaction in open systems, I intend to show that neither metabolic rift theory, nor its interdisciplinary approach to the Anthropocene, involve Cartesian Dualism, as Moore claims. World-Ecology provides an alternative historical account of capitalism's environmental history, but it does not critically replace metabolic rift theory.

The Role Of Distinction In Dialectical Analyses Of Socioecology

The concept of metabolism, as applied to the interrelations between human society and the rest of nature, has been one of the most fruitful iterations of socioecological thought over the last few decades. Here we will examine specific orientations of metabolic thought commonly employed in the social sciences, and their depiction of metabolism as it relates to the “society–nature” problematic and elaborate on the role of the dialectical method when analyzing socioecological processes and distinctions between society and the rest of nature. We will review two overarching uses of metabolism: the theory of metabolic rift and a hybridist metabolic approach to socio-nature. While the former regards society as an emergent property of nature, the latter regards distinctions between the two as undialectical and dualist. First, we review each of these approaches and how they differ in their application of the dialectical method. Then we explore some of the analytic implications of these differing approaches. We contend that a dialectical method that allows for, and encourages, analytical distinction is essential, and that the metabolic rift theory provides an important potential for advancing socioecological analysis in an era of anthropogenic environmental change through its use of analytical distinction between social and environmental phenomena.

Critical Geography's nature problem and the Lefebvrian ecological dialectic

The human social-metabolic relation to what Karl Marx calls ‘the universal metabolism of nature’ has become dangerously antagonistic, altering the Earth System on a scale that threatens to undermine human existence itself. In the face of this threat, many anthropocentric or anthropomorphic notions — such as the human domination of nature, ‘the production of nature’, and a posthumanism that seeks to remove the grand abstractions of nature/society and naturalism/humanism — have proven to be encumbrances to the necessary critical and dialectical thought on the ecological problem. They have particularly riven geography, rendering it largely incapable — despite its rich history and still numerous important contributions — of coherently addressing our age of planetary ecological crisis. Here we argue that a path forward that avoids the pitfalls of dualism on the one hand, and a dubious monism, homogenization, and/or hybridism on the other, is to be found in Henri Lefebvre's ecological dialectic, underlying his theory of spatial dynamics and his engagement with Marx's theory of metabolic rift. His approach could allow critical geography to address the fissures of the mid-twenty-first century.

How does agricultural specialization affect carbon emissions in China?

Agricultural carbon emissions have long attracted scholars' interest. In recent decades, China has gradually explored the path of agricultural specialization without large-scale operation based on agricultural machinery service outsourcing driven by structural transformation. To date, our understanding of the impact of China's unique agricultural specialization on agricultural carbon emissions remains scant. Nevertheless, this issue is important for promoting China's carbon emission reduction and exploring a path of agricultural transformation that is both competitive and sustainable. Based on China's provincial panel data from 2000 to 2019, this paper constructed a mediating model to test empirically the impacts of agricultural specialization on agricultural carbon emissions. The results showed that agricultural specialization exerted a significant positive effect on agricultural carbon emissions by increasing agricultural external inputs. Specifically, in addition to promoting increased mechanization, agricultural specialization caused an even greater, excessive application of chemical fertilizers, which largely follows metabolic rift theory and substitution and remittance effects. The farmland operation scale had no significant effect on agricultural carbon emissions due to the offset of its significant negative effect on chemicalization and significant positive effect on mechanization. This finding demonstrates that, in the context of smallholder farming, the moderate expansion of farm size can reduce agricultural environmental pollution, but it cannot be proved to reduce agricultural carbon emissions. These findings challenge China's current unique path of agricultural specialization from the perspective of carbon emission reduction and demonstrate the applicability of the theory of metabolic rift to the current path of agricultural development in China. Accordingly, corresponding short-term and long-term implications related to agrarian transition and agricultural carbon emissions are provided.

Henri Lefebvre's conception of nature-society in the revolutionary project of autogestion

Henri Lefebvre's intricate material-dialectical approach to the nature-society problematic, taken together with his advocacy of a praxis oriented to total transformation from the ground up through autogestion, offers a unified, critical, and dialectical approach to political ecology. Unfortunately, his work in these areas has too often been interpreted as divided and fragmentary, splitting his radical analysis of the production of space-time from his critical praxis related to autogestion. We offer a corrective to this by elaborating briefly on his use of Marx's material-dialectical approach, outlining how Lefebvre brings this method to bear on the nature-society problematic, and how his theorization of autogestion points to a radical praxis aimed at overcoming the social-ecological contradictions of capital. His engagement with Marx's theory of metabolic rift, and his advocacy of a radical project of autogestion as part of the critique of everyday life, serve to place the underlying issue of alienation in spatial terms, offering geography a transformative perspective that avoids positing closed systems and attempting to exhaust the various meanings assigned to nature. In this, Lefebvre demonstrates how the nature-society problematic overflows issues of ontological framing and language, calling for a unity of radical theory and practice to overcome the separations.

Antinomies of space and nature or an open totality? Neil Smith and Henri Lefebvre on nature and society

The work of Henri Lefebvre has played a pivotal role in human geography in recent decades. At the same time, it has frequently been subject to partial and fragmented appropriations that isolate his insights on the production of space from his broader corpus, leading to confusion and misunderstanding regarding his handling of the dialectical relationships between space, time, society, and nature. In particular, Neil Smith's claim that Lefebvre's conceptualization of nature was both deficient and inconsistent with his dynamic conceptualization of space has tended to dominate geographical engagements with Lefebvre in this area. Following Smith, researchers generally reconstruct the production of space as an epiphenomenon of the production of nature. We critically assess and respond to Smith's criticisms of Lefebvre. Specifically, we contrast Lefebvre's material–dialectical approach to Smith's production-of-nature thesis. While Smith's thesis is helpful in understanding how capital attempts to subsume all of nature under commodity production, Lefebvre's dialectical conceptualization of nature–society as an oppositional unity points both to the impossibility of capital subsuming all of nature and the dangers that its attempts to do so pose to human civilization (even survival). Lefebvre's observations, regarding the growing rupture between natural processes and spatial dynamics, which he incorporates into his own elaboration of Karl Marx's theory of metabolic rift, make his work indispensable to the development of an ecospatial critique within geography and the social sciences more generally.

Dialectical Materialisms, Metabolic Rifts and the Climate Crisis: A Lacanian/Hegelian Perspective

Metabolic rift theory has been accused of assuming an untenable ontological dualism between nature and society. In response, two of its leading advocates, John Bellamy Foster and Andreas Malm, have tried to argue that the approach is not dualist but rather rigorously realist, nonreductively naturalist, and dialectically materialist. According to Foster and Malm, metabolic rift theory is essential because it enables eco-Marxism to make an analytic distinction between nature and society while nevertheless grasping their complex interrelation. From a Lacanian and Hegelian perspective, Foster and Malm are right to preserve the dialectical distinction between nature and society but their respective accounts of this dialectic are insufficiently materialist. Foster falls into a pre-Marxian contemplative materialism. Malm hesitates between his intended realism and Kantian idealism. For metabolic rift theory to be put on a firmer materialist footing, nature must be thought along Lacanian and Hegelian lines as incomplete, thwarted, or shot through with antagonisms out of which emerge the subject and society. To put this in dialectical terms: ontologically there is only nature, out of which society and the subject emerge as an effect of nature's failure to be fully natural.

The global water crises: a cross-national analysis of metabolic rift theory

Unchecked consumption, extraction, and growth have resulted in severe damage to ecological systems. Fresh water issues constitute one of the great challenges for political ecologists. On the one hand, there is a human health and development crisis and over 700 million people still lack access to clean, safe drinking water. On the other hand, there is a growing environmental water crisis regarding water scarcity, water stress, and freshwater resource depletion. This analysis utilizes metabolic rift theory to demonstrate the disruptive consequences that human development and agriculture have on the water cycle. I use two-way fixed effects longitudinal regression for 176 nations from 1970-2015 to test how agriculture, capital, international aid, governance, and civil society are associated with two important water indicators: access to water and water stress. I find that agriculture is associated with higher levels of water stress and higher levels of water access. Higher GDP per capita and international aid increase water access but have no significant relationship with water stress. Additionally, international non-governmental organizations and environmental treaty ratifications are associated with decreased water stress, but also decreased water access. Therefore, I find that the disruptive processes of capital and development have differential impacts on these two interrelated water outcomes. This political ecological analysis suggests that simple solutions that address water access or water stress alone, without considering the interrelated aspects of global water issues, may inadvertently influence other facets of the world's growing water concerns. Furthermore, agriculture and development create an ever-growing metabolic rift in the processes that allow fresh water to replenish itself, leading to future global issues of water access and stress.

Building energy democracy to mend ecological and epistemic rifts: An environmental sociological examination of Seoul’s One Less Nuclear Power Plant initiative

This paper brings together metabolic rift theory and discussions surrounding energy democracy. Energy democracy is interpreted as a political program and social movement to alter the social order in ways that mend the ecological, knowledge, and epistemic rifts of energy systems. The ecological rifts of conventional energy systems refer to material separations between sites of energy production, refinement, generation, consumption, and disposal that rupture natural cycles, accumulate waste (e.g., nuclear waste, CO2), and cause other ecological and social problems. Spaces between nodes of energy systems are also partly responsible for energy-knowledge rifts among energy users, or, gaps in knowledge about energy issues, as well as a more general rupture in thinking and conceptualization that divorces questions related to energy from everyday concerns and political discourse – an energy-epistemic rift. Seoul, South Korea’s One Less Nuclear Power Plant initiative is as an energy-democratic transition plan that begins to mend the ecological, knowledge, and epistemic rifts of energy systems. Along with programs that close ecological rifts, the initiative begins to mend energy-knowledge and -epistemic rifts via citizens’ recurrent interaction with nearby renewable systems (“proximate praxis”), energy education programs, and civic participation in decision-making and energy production.

An Ecological-Marxist Response to the Half-Earth Project

The deepening biodiversity crisis in the Anthropocene has led to polarised debates within the conservation movement regarding its objectives and guiding principles. Within this intellectual milieu, the Half-Earth project's call to enclose at least half the planet within protected areas has been defended as an ecocentric approach that overrides the concerns of anthropocentric 'critical social scientists'. One group of advocates has even attacked such scientists as 'neo-Marxists' dedicated to the 'mastery' of nature. To steer the debate in a more constructive direction, we offer an ecosocialist response to the ecocentric advocacy of the Half-Earth project, specifically from the perspective of Marx's theory of metabolic rift. While we are sympathetic to the project's motivation and admire its audacity, we note important deficiencies in the ways the moral imperative has been asserted against social justice, and in the problematic comprehension of the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss, which threaten to undermine its objectives. Nonetheless, opposition to capitalist instrumentalism serves as an important point of possible convergence between conservation and anti-capitalist struggle. Further engagement with the ecological-Marxist critique of capitalism could strengthen efforts to address the biodiversity crisis while resolving important shortcomings in the Half-Earth project.

Vínculo agroalimentario entre el campo y la ciudad: Hacia un enfoque de metabolismo agroecológico para América Latina

Agriculture and produce have always provided a fundamental link between rural and urban areas. However, global agricultural trade has reduced the reliance of cities on their surrounding areas for food, resulting in both a disruption in the agri-food link and an increasing ecological imbalance.  This paper proposes to integrate the metabolic rift theory, rooted in political economy tradition, and agroecology, an approach extensively developed as a science, farming practice and social movement in Latin America. The emerging approach is called agroecological metabolism and helps to better understand the socio-ecological implications of the disruption and reconexion of the agri-food link between geographically proximate rural and urban sites. The paper also discusses the approach’s potential application in Latin America.

Henri Lefebvre’s Marxian ecological critique: recovering a foundational contribution to environmental sociology

ABSTRACTFrench Marxist sociologist, Henri Lefebvre, was one of the foremost social theorists of the twentieth century, celebrated for his critiques of everyday life, urban revolution, and the production of space. We argue here that his mature work also encompassed a theory of ecological crisis, drawing directly on Marx’s theory of metabolic rift. In this conception, the dialectics of nature and society were subject to alienated capitalist accumulation, giving rise to metabolic rifts, epochal crises, and new historical moments of revolutionary praxis aimed at the metamorphosis of everyday life. Lefebvre thus ranks as one of the foundational contributors to environmental sociology, whose rich theoretical analysis offers the possibility of a wider social and ecological synthesis.

Metabolic fractures: How household livelihood practices differentiate agricultural input use in southwest China

As smallholders in the global South engage in new ways with agricultural markets, they change their farming strategies and use of agricultural inputs. In many locales, heavy use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides gives state authorities figurative headaches and farmers actual health hazards and soil degradation. It has been argued that agricultural commercialization and urbanization generate metabolic rifts—gaps in nutrient cycling that impoverish soils and accumulate wastes. Replacement of organic with synthetic inputs is central to this dynamic. We join metabolic rift theory with livelihood analysis to examine how varying livelihood strategies differentiate input use in an area of southwest China where farming is partially commercialized. We draw on household survey data to identify five household clusters with distinct on-farm activity patterns. Regression analyses show that these farming strategies mediate effects of household and community attributes on use of synthetic fertilizers, synthetic pesticides, and organic manure fertilizer. Strategies associated with diverse on-farm crop rotations are associated with greater use of manure. Emergent tree-borne crops are associated with greater pesticide use, but new high-elevation cash crops are linked to less use of both synthetic and organic inputs. These variations have gendered impacts: women's work around compost fertilizer gives way to male-dominated synthetic input management. Our theoretical synthesis and empirical results enrich both livelihoods and metabolic rift scholarship by showing how livelihood strategies mediate political economic forces, generating heterogeneous input use. This study demonstrates the uneven processes through which metabolic rifts tear open and the necessity for soil enhancement efforts to address farmers' variegated practices.

Making Space in Critical Environmental Geography for the Metabolic Rift

Marx’s concept of metabolic rift has emerged as a prominent theoretical framework with which to explain the socioecological crises of capitalism. Yet, despite its relevance to key concerns in critical environmental geography, it has remained marginal within the field. Here we address this by distinguishing between metabolic rift theory and two predominant Marxist approaches in environmental geography: the production-of-nature thesis and posthumanist world ecology. We follow this comparative assessment with a detailed analysis of metabolic rift theory and a brief overview of how the concept relates to key concerns in critical environmental geography. We conclude by discussing how a stronger engagement with the metabolic rift approach could benefit the field. Key Words: Marxism, materialist dialectic, nature–society relationship, production of nature, world ecology hybridism.

Geographic Rift in the Urban Periphery, and Its Concrete Manifestations in Morelia, Mexico

Capitalist urbanization is recognized as an important aspect of environmental change and conflict in Latin America. Karl Marx’s theory of metabolic rift can offer powerful insights into the alienated mediation of society and nature underlying the socio-ecological contradictions and conflicts associated with urbanization, but has been under-utilized in urban political ecology. Building on the concept of geographic rift, we demonstrate how urbanization as both a social metabolic process in itself and an important factor in other social metabolic processes, implicates capital’s fundamental contradictions in alienation from the land and its use-values and the subordination of human needs to capital accumulation. After developing the basic theoretical contours of these concepts, we provide an illustrative example of their concrete manifestations in urbanization of the periphery of Morelia, Mexico. We conclude with a discussion of how metabolic rift theory strengthens the radical critique of sustainability in urban political ecology and encourages struggles to defend the material conditions of human development within the capital system, while pointing to the need for structural change to bring about the conditions necessary for a conscious, sustainable social metabolism.

Marx and Alienated Speciesism

In many animal-rights circles, Karl Marx and a long tradition of Marxian theorists are to be faulted for their speciesist treatment of nonhuman animals and the human-nonhuman animal relationship. These criticisms typically neglect the larger historical conditions, intellectual influences, and debates out of which Marx's treatment of the human-animal dialectic arose—even though this is crucial to any meaningful understanding of his thought in this area. In response, this article assesses the historical-intellectual background behind Marx's arguments on humans and animals, placing it in the context of the influence exercised on his thought by Epicurus, Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Ludwig Feuerbach, Charles Darwin, and others. In the process, they explain how Marx's view of animals in the world came to be integrated with his theory of metabolic rift and his critique of capitalism.