Mon 17 Feb: World Systems, History and Ecology

As a GEH (global environmental history) student, Moore’s articles are confusing to me in three senses.

First and foremost is the language. As had been discussed yesterday, Moore interchanges some concepts without defining them in specific contexts, which makes me uncertain and have to question the legitimacy of the usage. For example, nature (ecology), oikeios (antroposcene), historical method (imagination), etc. Take “nature/ ecology” as an instance, for what we had discussed, they are both broad and ambiguous concepts, although in some cases they can be interchanged. Still, if Moore could set a specific context for the concepts, it would be easier for readers to evaluate and comment on his work. Nevertheless, I appreciate Moore’s proposal of new language in order to avoid the misunderstanding of the mutually shared concepts.

Second, the trans-disciplinary issue. Moore’s articles at a first glimpse seem all center on ecology, food, or environment-oriented topics from a historical perspective. In my opinion, however, Moore’s work, in fact, is focused either on economical history or political history rather than GEH. As a consequence, this causes a problem for me, which is to recall my insufficient knowledge in economics and politics to explain environmental phenomena. This is exhausting and frankly speaking, the text is hardly understandable. Like what we fiercely discussed: some believe that the finical circuit is ruled by hegemonies and consequently the cheap food majorly flow to the hegemonies. Some worry that one day capitalism would lead to not only the end of cheap food but the end of food. Others refute that the world is based on the capitalist system. Not until another system would emerge and could replace capitalist, would the debate worth of discussing. Personally, the debate strikes me as it virtually reflects Moore’s diverse perceptions on GEH. If only Moore could explain how his multiple insights (like economics and politics) are corresponded to environmental studies, I should be able to better understand the articles.

Last but not least, Moore’s articles are more or less theoretical interpretations to me. Wherever I read between the lines, I seldom find proofs to support the arguments. The cheap food interpretation, for example. Should Moore exemplify how world food has become cheaper or does it merely occur in the hegemonies? Or compared to which historical period has the food become cheaper? If Moore can provide me with more facts and figures, the articles would become more clear.

I think like many people who were at the seminar with Moore, the most interesting thing about the discussion to me was his response to the question “what is the future of capitalism”? In his writings, Moore continually poses the question of the possibility of the neoliberal world system being able to re-establish the conditions for a new long wave of accumulation despite the exhaustion of the four pillars of capitalist production (cheap energy, raw materials, labor power, and food relative to the previous era). Is the depletion of “cheap ecology” a signal or epochal crisis to capitalism as world-ecology? When asked the question in person his response was capitalism is done for, and the next three decades (most of my adult life-span) will be determined by the end of the four cheaps, and made exponentially more volatile due to climate change. This is a pretty heavy statement, and while Moore may be simplifying the trajectory of the future, such a narrative demands attention.
According to Moore the imminent future will see a reorganization of relations of humanity and nature (the oikeios) in the post-“Capitalpocene”. Nature can no longer be construed as external, time cannot be understood as linear, and space is not flat. Moore also stressed that we need to approach this paradigmatic moment armed with the knowledge that social justice and environmental justice are one in the same.
As a student of archaeology, I began to ask myself, what is the significance of Moore’s declaration to my discipline? One possible offering of archaeology to this impending world reorganization is through the examination of how human environment relations have been configured over the longue duree and outside of global north perspectives. Archaeology can begin to examine the possibility of humans perceptually organizing nature prior to the Capitalpocene and without being ultimately and essentially compelled towards endless expansion. This in itself is an incredibly enormous task, and a thorough and enlightened discussion of the topic is certainly beyond the scope of my PhD. However, what I can get behind and approach in my own studies is an examination of societal perceptions of food prior to the Capitalpocene. Moore made the point that food is not cultural or social, and it is also not simply a natural phenomena, but that it is every one of those parts and more. For my thesis I am examining changing human settlement and landscape dynamics in the Amboseli basin Kenya, over the last 500 years. Today the Amboseli is largely enclosed as a National Park and conflicts over the four cheaps between pastoralists, agriculturalists (both subsistence farmers and agro-industrialists), conservationists, and those in the tourist sector encompass these dialectical relations and tensions between environment and human, and they are certainly structured along capitalism as world-ecology. I hope to educate myself on capitalist perceptions of the all-encompassing food concept so I can compare and contrast such notions with realities that may have existed prior to the Capitalpocene in the Amboseli.
I’ve always been inspired by a past for future approach to archaeological studies (archaeology as activism!), and especially inter-disciplinary collaborations. I’m was further motivated to knowledge share when Moore said if we want to understand climate change, we have to understand how global interest rates are set – what I’m taking from Moore is that we need to understand how capitalism functions to understand our future. So if anyone cares to comment back at me with your ideas about perceptions of food in the Capitalpocene, I’m anxious to hear!

SEMINAR 2, 18th february 2014. Nisa Dedic
Overcoming the nature/human binary has almost become a mantra in my head since I’ve begun with my studies in environmental history. I do not know whether the sharp division was even more enforced in my new academic milieu, since to me it was a closed deal that there is nothing natural about humans and nothing natural about nature either. A naive constructivist approach, I suppose. In my reflection I will mainly focus on the historical-ecological method and historical practice/theory as ways of understanding/changing the capitalist world-ecology. Moore diagnoses two wide fields of practicing environmental history: one that focuses on biophysical conditions that enabled socio-environmental transformations and the other that focuses on consequences of human activity upon biophysical nature. Both of these practices are according to Moore still entrenched deep within the Cartesian mind/body divide, which he translates into his frame as »nature and capitalism«. Moore proposes a historical-ecological methodology that would write history as »capitalism in nature«; in other words, capital accumulation and production of human and extra human nature should not be understood as discrete phenomena but dialectically bound emergences. In this way environmental history could understand urban decay, debtocracy in the same bundle of flows as for example soil depletion.
Throughout my reading of Moore’s texts I was bothered by the question how does this proposed methodology translate into historical practice. I acknowledge that capitalism should not be understood in an asynchronic perspective; Moore’s syntagm historical capitalism is productive precisely because it understands capitalism and the master processes that are produced/producing in the capitalist world ecology (class, urbanization, agricultural revolutions etc.) as a flux not as »invariable structures«; yet at the same time Moore employs Marx’s general law of underproduction as the underlying tension of capital accumulation that pushes different stages of historical capitalism on the verge of signal or epochal crises, as a constant of capitalism. I am not opposing that the limit of capital is capital itself, yet I do not agree that the general law of underproduction can function as the organizing principle of practicing history. When a capitalist hegemony reaches a limit of exhaustion, when it basically endangers the conditions of further capital accumulation, a signal or epochal crisis emerges. Various strategies are employed by capitalists to continue capital accumulation: plunder/production duo as Moore calls it and accumulation by dispossession (Harvey) for example. This methodology practices history as cycles of accumulation and crises and searches for patterns in historical capitalism in accord with the questions what is cumulative, cyclical or novel, in other words, when quantitative change becoms qualitative. I accept the dialectic emergence of human and extra human nature that gravitates around the commodification of everything in the capitalist oikeios, but I cannot agree at practicing history as locating cumulative and cyclical moments in the capitalist world-ecology. It is hard to put my finger on what bothers me in Moore’s article but what I missed in them is a reflection on how historical practice itself is produced in the capitalist oikeios, and indeed it has to be since »no domain of human experience is off limits« (Moore:2011, p.135). This is why I find the concept of oikeios circular; oikeios is defined as the »fundamental ontological relation between humans and the rest of nature« (ibid., p.127), in turn historical master processes are expressions of this fundamental relation, and the fundamental relation emerges in capitalist world-ecology. What is the position of theory in this producing/produced dialectic? Can we practice historical theory that is not in accord with the capitalist oikeios then? Moore distinguishes the part/whole historical practice and I believe that the historical-ecological methodology simply would work better for understading master processes in specific historical, material contexts than at practicing grand history of cycles and qualitative leaps.

The three articles written by American scholar Jason W Moore are all fascinating and I would have needed much more time and space to reflect on the ideas he advances. “Capitalism as world-ecology” appears to me as the most striking concept that Moore elaborates on. Moore considers capitalism in a holistic way and according to him capitalism is much more than an economic or a social system, since it determines the whole relationship between human and extra-human nature. Moore argues against the traditional binary division between “Nature” and “Society”: “Capitalism as world-ecology is therefore a protest against, and an alternative to, the Cartesian worldview that puts nature in one box, and society in another” (Moore, 2011: 119).
The paradigm shift Moore suggests us to adopt with this concept of “capitalism as world-ecology” is intertwined with the need of a new vocabulary in order to better our understanding of environmental issues that Moore discusses. Indeed, the notions of “ecology”, “nature” and “environment” have been so overused that they have lost their substances, which is why Moore proposes the Greek term of Oikeios in order to palliate to our linguistic deficiencies. The world-ecology we now live in has been generated by the logic of endless accumulation that dictates human’s relations with extra-human nature. In “Cheap food and bad money” (2012), Moore underlines that food surplus and overproduction have been critical to the birth and development of capitalism but that the era of cheap food has come to an end. Neoliberalism by producing the conditions for the end of cheap food, since no agricultural revolution seems possible in a world where the biotech regime has only led to the superweed effect, killed the basic condition for its own survival.
Being very concerned with the issues of food safety and food security, I think it is very interesting to read Moore’s perspective on food and his way of understanding how things work through the lens of world-system theory enabling him to consider capitalism as a system that rules the whole world, humans’ relation to nature and even one could argue human’s spirituality (cf David Loy, The Religion of the Market). In his interview, Moore stated that he does not fear for food scarcity and distances himself from the views of journalist Paul Roberts expressed in his famous book “The End of Food” (2008). For Moore, the only issue is the end of cheap food, something the neoliberal system cannot produce anymore. However, one could rightly ask what kind of food has capitalism been producing? Is it really food or rather chemical substances tasting like food? The food grown within the capitalist world-ecology has not much to do with the food that was enjoyed in pre-capitalist world-ecologies. The need of a new vocabulary is indeed here crucial since the capitalist world-ecology has produced a certain type of reality.

I was not able to submit this in time since I did not have login access for some reasons. It is now sorted so here is my reflection.
Hopefully my late submission does not cause any problem for you who are to comment it!

Reflection on Seminar: World Systems, History and Ecology

What I found interesting, or rather perplexing, in our discussion with Moore was that I did not seem to get a straight answer on solutons to the envrionmental and financial problems which capitalism has lead us to today. We spoke of the Anthropocene and how climate change has accelerated by the Industrial Revolution. This was due to an efficiency in production of foods, clothing and such, leading up to an overproduction and overconsumption of natural resources. As far as we all can agree on the latter, Moore did not consider the Antrophocene to be a concept that would make us more alert to deal with the current climate change than using a vocabulary such as world-ecology and oikeios. His answer then is to understand capitalism in a historical perspective with the ecological touch. I do think he has a point in this, but still believe the explanation of the Antrophocene could make a lot of people more aware of the actual acute environmental problems we are in today. According to Moore, speakers of the Anthropocene are usually people who speak much but act little. What I would have liked to hear was in what way Moore acted on the climate change, and not only spoke of it? It seemed he mostly focused on a new way of defining capitalism and not how this in practice can change climate change, which I consider people speaking of the Antrhopocene give suggestions to (less carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere for example). I refrained from asking him this since I did not think I could ask it in a good way just then. Why I consider this to be important, is that all of us in the class discussed the different concepts without getting to a solution. Perhaps I was to focused on how this might help in the environmental issues, like a quick answer, than really understand how Moore tried to explain the role of captalism in envrionmental problems.
As I liked the discussion both with the class and with James Moore, it was especially how we dwelled into the different concepts from Moores articles, all of us having different angles of looking at it, bringing our different disciplines of former studies to the conversation. I also think that Moore was trans-disciplinary in his approach of his articles and in his discussion. This is definitely something I bring with me to my future job or career. To have a broad understanding of how things works together in the bigger picture. How one discipline easily taps into another and necessarily so in order to solve many problems, not at least as it comes to environmental issues. Another thing I take with me is a yearning to understand capitalism in more depth, and how this affect all levels of society, also in light of how Moore describes it.

Reply to Kristina by Sabbath

Thank you Kristina for your thoughtful reflection on J.W. Moore’s perspectives and the main theme ‘World systems, History and ecology’. I agree with you that it was the evolution of capitalism or rather the individualistic and institutional greed for the accumulation of property and financialism in the guise of development, which created the so called ‘world systems’. This was nothing but the systems of socio-economic hegemonies (capitalocene) whose aim was to plunder Mother Nature in search of the ‘four cheaps’. In due process (historical process), man-made ecological systems came into existence due to the ‘rush’ for new frontiers at the expense of natural environment.

As students of environmental history, I notice your concern about the order of things much as I do, which is also supported by Moore on his reaction about the fate of capitalism. He said that ‘capitalism is done’, in other words the system has already reached its limits. Moore chooses to emphasize this in his metaphoric titles and expressions like ‘end of the four cheaps’ and another article entitled ‘The end of the road’. However, to bring the whole issue to our current experience, capitalistic world systems are mutating in that the end of colonialism and ‘the four cheaps’ has gradually been replaced by financial hegemonies in the process of prolonging degradation of environment. The usual suspects now are the World Bank and IMF which are controlled by powerful states disguising as development partners. The result of this has been climate change, agro-ecological exhaustion, crop diseases and chronic indebtedness among the poor states.

According to Immanuel Wallerstein who is actually the pioneer scholar to develop a theoretical framework to understand the historical changes involved in the rise of capitalism up to the modern day world systems, these strong modern states or core states have only facilitated a ‘skewed development in which economic and social disparities between sections of the world economy have increased instead of providing prosperity for all.’ It is thus predicted that ‘a worldwide economic crisis is imminent and that the capitalist world economic system will collapse, giving way to new revolutionary changes’. Moore himself supports these changes, according your reflection that ‘we have to define our own new world-ecologies’ for future survival of both human and extra human nature. Thank you for your reflection Kristina.

Reply to Anna S. by Sarah R.
Thank you for your very interesting comments and the insight that your research in archaeology provides you. I agree with you that the discipline of archaeology can help us understand the relationships between humans and nature, and thus humans’ organization of nature, outside of the western world. Moore’s ideas that nature can no longer be construed as external are essential to the field of archaeology and environmental history in general. Your research in the Amboseli basin in Kenya will probably benefit from your readings of Jason W. Moore. Indeed, capitalism as world-ecology and the logic of endless accumulation shape stakeholders’ conflicts even in the most remote areas of the world todays. This reminds me of a lecture by Dr. Anneli Ekblom within the “Global environmental history” program at the beginning of the year when she highlighted that today the western ideas of progress and advancement shape the whole world’s mentality, even the tiniest Mozambique villages where she conducts her fieldwork. It seems that we can’t escape this system of capitalism as world-ecology wherever in the world we find ourselves.
About the future of capitalism, I surely agree with Moore that capitalism has come to an end. It is no longer possible to live within the current scheme we are in. Although Moore argues we have reached the “end of cheap food” and not the end of food per se, I would defend the idea that food in itself has come to an end. It is not food that we are eating in the “Capitalocene” but some kind of mixed chemicals that taste like food. The current capitalism as world-ecology system has led the breadbaskets of the world to produce more and more grains in order to achieve higher surplus quantities and larger cheaper amounts of calories for westerners leading to decreasing health and overweight issues and the reign of low price satisfaction in the fast-food nations. But the biotech regime embodied by greedy corporations such as the murderous Monsanto can no longer sustain this cheap food policy. Biotechnology in agriculture has only led to the “Superweed Effect” Moore writes about. Weeds have grown more resistant to pesticides, whereas crop yields have not increased and cheap prices even for GMO food will no longer be achievable.
I would argue along with Paul Roberts, author of the thought-provoking book “The End of Food” that food as a social, cultural and natural phenomenon, has now reached an end. I deeply believe that the whole system as we know it should be torn down if we want to be able to sustain ourselves on the long-term. We should get out of the capitalism as world-ecology system if we really want to save ourselves and the planet we live on. Capitalism is not sustainable, literally. I hope your research in Kenya will benefit from the insights of world-systems theory articulated by scholars such as Moore or Wallerstein. Probably, by stepping out of the capitalism as world-ecology perspective and by realizing that is just one more lens we wear, the apprentice archaeologist you are will be able to understand much more!