- Convenors:
-
Jennifer Baka
(Penn State)
John Kendall (Pennsylvania State University)
- Format:
- Roundtable
Format/Structure
Short talks and an extended discussion to bring different approaches to metabolism into conversation with goal of identifying synergies and tensions.
Long Abstract
Metabolism is a concept with a rich intellectual history across the social and biophysical sciences. For decades, researchers have used it to theorize nature-society relations, quantify the biophysical and geochemical flows sustaining society, assess the impact of changing metabolisms on social and material worlds, and envision more equitable and just environmental futures. In turn, a myriad of analytical frameworks have been distilled, including the metabolic rift, the production of nature, urban metabolism, metabolic politics, the Vienna School of Social Metabolism, political-industrial ecology, and degrowth. Despite a shared interest in the conceptual work of metabolism, however, these frameworks have rarely been brought into direct conversation–and when they are, it is often more for the sake of polemics than mutual understanding. In response, this panel aims to gather research across these differing approaches for a more careful examination of their productive synergies and tensions. We hope our collaborative efforts can help refine metabolism as a theoretical concept and assess its relevance for understanding–and intervening in–the current political and environmental moment. Pertinent questions for us include, but are not limited to: How can consideration of the vitality/agency of matter inform metabolic analysis? How do Marxist-inspired theories of metabolism resonate with, and diverge from, metabolic theories in Degrowth, New Materialism, Urban Political Ecology? How do these different frameworks compare and contrast in their conceptualizations of nature, society, and materiality? How can recognition of the agency, vitality, or legal personhood of nature help address climate change and environmental injustice?
We welcome a mix of theoretical and empirical papers that engage these and other questions to explore how the concept of metabolism can advance the study of environmental change and nature-society relations.
Accepted papers
Contribution short abstract
I will talk about how to think about the metabolism concept from the vantage point of a critical theory of nature. I will highlight the contribution of Alfred Schmidt and stress how he helps us ground Frankfurt School critical theory in ecology.
Contribution long abstract
I will talk about how to think about the metabolism concept from the vantage point of a critical theory of nature (based on my book Toward a Critical Theory of Nature and the article "Eco-Marxism and the critical theory of nature: two perspectives on ecology and dialectics"). I will highlight the contribution of Alfred Schmidt and stress how he helps us ground Frankfurt School critical theory in ecology. The result is a distinctive approach to ecology that differs both from influential strands of eco-Marxism and from new materialism.
Contribution short abstract
Summary comments will be made on how the problem of external nature has motivated different metabolism concepts. Further, it will be considered how each usage addresses (or does not address) the limitlessness of capital's social metabolism.
Contribution long abstract
Metabolism is a plural concept. It has been deployed across a variety of disciplines to describe some aspect or other of 'our' relation to 'nature'--with both 'our' and 'nature' being terms problematized in the very deployment of the concept. Yet despite its plural meanings, the metabolism concept has thus consistently been used to address the problem of external nature. In political ecology, for instance, 'metabolism' is invoked to critique society-nature dualism: there is no society and (external) nature; there are only socionatures. In the concept's development within industrial ecology and eco-Marxism, on the other hand, external nature is treated as a necessary precondition for critical and normative judgment. In order to evaluate the ecological impact of industrial capitalism, in other words, it is necessary to at least analytically separate capital's social metabolism from human and non-human natures. While we ultimately sympathize more with this gesture toward external nature than the double internality (i.e., society-in-nature and nature-in-society) of political ecology's metabolism concept, we suggest further that a negative and planetary perspective on external nature is necessary to adequately address the crises inherent to the limitless drive of capital accumulation. Put another way, it is precisely because capital's social metabolism fails to reconstruct socionatural worlds into a smooth, homogenous globe that we are forced to confront the critical-materialist question of our being planetary.
Contribution short abstract
Social-ecological transformation involves restructuring and reducing the social metabolism, but this process is highly contested. Bridging socio-metabolic and political ecology research, this contribution introduces a typology of socio-ecological transformation conflicts.
Contribution long abstract
From a socio-ecological perspective, transformation refers to both a qualitative restructuring and a quantitative reduction of social metabolism, but this transformation is highly – and increasingly – contested. Socio-metabolic research has so far argued that an increasing social metabolism also leads to more conflicts. The EJOLT Atlas, for example, has linked “ecological distribution conflicts” to increases in socio-metabolic processes around the world. Political ecology, in turn, has emphasized the political-economic structures as well as the discursive or onto-epistemic relations in which transformation pathways and respective conflicts unfold but lacks more detailed references to biophysical and socio-metabolic processes. This contribution builds on social metabolism and political ecology research to propose a typology of socio-ecological transformation conflicts that captures both the socio-metabolic dimension and the transformation dimension of such conflicts. This helps a) to better understand both the productive and obstructive role of conflicts and b) carve out the potentials and barriers for transformative change. From such a perspective, contemporary transformation processes are especially contested because they are not only about the introduction of new technologies, infrastructure or sectors (i.e., an increasing social metabolism) but at the same time about the phase-out and termination of fossil fuels and environmentally destructive resource use, technology and sectors (i.e., the reduction and qualitative transformation of the social metabolism).
Contribution short abstract
We identify a lack of attention to labour within metabolic research. Based on Urban Political Ecology, we argue that labour plays a central role in all metabolic processes and their transformation, and that it provides a productive entry point for dialogue across different approaches to metabolism.
Contribution long abstract
In Marx’ concept of social metabolism, human labour is crucial in its role of transforming nature into consumable products within a specific mode of production and, hence, mediating the dialectical metabolic relationship between nature and human beings. Accordingly, labour is at the centre of Marxist considerations of appropriating, democratizing and transforming metabolic relations. Despite the important role of urban metabolism in Urban Political Ecology (UPE) and the preoccupation with its politicization and democratization, there is, however, a considerable lack of scientific work concerned with this role of human labour.
Our contribution calls for human labour – comprising infrastructural and reproductive labour, as well as political (disruptive) work – to be brought to the fore as a central object of analysis in UPE. Departing from infrastructure studies and energy geography, we transfer the recently grown interest in human labour within these fields to the perspective of UPE. Engaging with human labour in its role of, first, maintaining and repairing infrastructure and, second, transforming urban energy metabolisms, we argue for the consideration of labour as a crucial analytical concept in the quest for more just and democratic metabolisms in times of crises and transformation. Recognising the relevance of labour also creates an opportunity to engage with its explicit, implicit, or even absent consideration in other frameworks, thereby providing a basis for fruitful conversations across diverse approaches to metabolism.
Contribution short abstract
Metabolism describes a relation between living beings and their environments; social freedom concerns a relation between human beings within the context of an institutionally ordered social world. Our talk asks: How might these two concepts be fruitfully brought together in social theorizing?
Contribution long abstract
Metabolism describes a relation and process between living beings and their environments; social freedom concerns a relation between human beings within the context of an institutionally ordered social world. Our talk asks: How might these two concepts be fruitfully brought together in social theorizing? Can social freedom be understood beyond an anthropocentric context, such that the human relation to nature is an essential aspect of realizing social freedom? Drawing on some earlier insights from both German philosophy and critical theory, we propose that social theorizing in the 21st century must understand social freedom and metabolism as essentially intertwined. A starting point for understanding this intertwinement is the labor process, which, we argue, is the materialist basis for social freedom.