The Commodification of Human Life : Labour, Energy and Money in a Deteriorating Biosphere

Summary, in English

The chapter integrates physicalist and constructivist approaches to phenomena conventionally categorised as ‘labour’ and ‘energy’ by unravelling how the two entangled concepts reflect nineteenth-century modernity’s increasingly instrumental approach to both society and nature. Energy technologies became understood as the efficient harnessing of nature’s powers in much the same way as economists focused on the efficient harnessing of human labour power. Although seemingly neutral in their references to objectively measurable, physical phenomena, concepts of ‘labour’ and ‘energy’ remain geared to maximum exploitation of humans and non-human nature, propelled by money and capitalism. The historical progress of energy technologies is consistently intertwined with political economy. No less than slavery, such technologies are strategies for displacing work and environmental loads onto less powerful segments of world society.

• Author: Alf Hornborg
• Editor: Nora Räthzel; Dimitris Stevis; David Uzzell
• Department/s: Human Ecology
• Publishing year: 2021
• Language: English
• Pages: 677-698
• Publication/Series: The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Labour Studies
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71909-8_29
• Document type: Book chapter
• Publisher: Springer International Publishing
• Topic: Social and Economic Geography
• Keywords: Capitalism; Energy; Labour; Modernity; Money; Political Economy; Technologies
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISBN: 978-3-030-71909-8; ISBN: 978-3-030-71908-1