Full Description
Modern thought on economics and technology is no less magical than the world views of non-modern peoples. This book reveals how our ideas about growth and progress ignore how money and machines throughout history have been used to exploit less affluent parts of world society. The argument critically explores a middle ground between Marxist political ecology and Actor-Network Theory.
Contents
1. The Ecology of Things: Artifacts as Embodied Relations
2. Land, Energy, and Value in the Technocene
3. The Magic of Money
4. Empires, World-Systems, and Expanding Markets
5. Money as Fictive Energy: Unraveling the Relation between Economics and Physics
6. Agency, Ontology, and Global Magic
7. The Political Ecology of Technological Utopianism
8. Redesigning Money to Curb Globalization and Increase Resilience
9. Conclusions: Money, Technology, and Magic
