The Power of the Machine

Hornborg argues that we are caught in a collective illusion about the nature of modern technology that prevents us from imagining solutions to our economic and environmental crises other than technocratic fixes. He demonstrates how the power of the machine generates increasingly asymmetrical exchanges and distribution of resources and risks between distant populations and ecosystems, and thus an increasingly polarized world order. The author challenges us to reconceptualize the machine-'industrial technomass'—as a species of power and a problem of culture. He shows how economic anthropology has the tools to deconstruct the concepts of production, money capital, and market exchange, and to analyze capital accumulation as a problem at the very interface of the natural and social sciences. Hornborg's work is essential for researchers in anthropology, human ecology, economics, political economy, world-systems theory, environmental justice, and science and technology studies.

Hornborg argues that we are caught in a collective illusion about the nature of modern technology that prevents us from imagining solutions to our economic and environmental crises other than technocratic fixes. He demonstrates how the power of the machine generates increasingly asymmetrical exchanges and distribution of resources and risks between distant populations and ecosystems, and thus an increasingly polarized world order. The author challenges us to reconceptualize the machine—'industrial technomass'—as a species of power and a problem of culture. He shows how economic anthropology has the tools to deconstruct the concepts of production, money capital, and market exchange, and to analyze capital accumulation as a problem at the very interface of the natural and social sciences. His analysis provides an alternative understanding of economic growth and technological development. Hornborg's work is essential for researchers in anthropology, human ecology, economics, political economy, world-systems theory, environmental justice, and science and technology studies. Find out more about the author at theLund University, Sweden web site.

Chapter 1 Preface
Chapter 2 Introduction: The Machine as Emperor
Chapter 3
Chapter 1: Technology and Unequal Exchange
Chapter 4
Chapter 1: Technology and Economics: The Interfusion of the Social and the Material
Chapter 5
Chapter 2: Cornucopia or Zero-Sum Game: The Epistemology of Sustainability
Chapter 6
Chapter 3: The Thermodynamics of Imperialism: Towards an Ecological Theory of Unequal Exchange
Chapter 7
Chapter 4: Ecosystems, World Systems, and Environmental Justice
Chapter 8
Chapter 5: Conceptualizing Accumulation from Spondylus Shells to Fossil Fuels
Chapter 9
Chapter 6: Use Value, Energy, and the Image of Unlimited Good
Chapter 10
Chapter 7: Language and the Material: Probing our Categories
Chapter 11
Chapter 8: Symbolic Technologies: Machines and the Marxian Notion of Fetishism
Chapter 12
Chapter 2: Money, Modernity and Personhood
Chapter 13
Chapter 9: Money, Reflexivity, and the Semiotics of Modernity
Chapter 14
Chapter 10: Ecology as Semiotics: A Contextualist Manifesto
Chapter 15
Chapter 11: Exchange, Personhood, and Human Ecology
Chapter 16
Chapter 12: The Abstraction of Discourse and Identity: A Case Study
Chapter 17 Afterword: Culture, Modernity, and Power: The Relevance of Anthropology
Chapter 18 References
Chapter 19 Index