Nature, Society, and Justice in the Anthropocene

Are money and technology the core illusions of our time? In this book, Alf Hornborg offers a fresh assessment of the inequalities and environmental degradation of the world. He shows how both mainstream and radical economists are limited by a particular worldview and, as a result, do not grasp that conventional money is at the root of many of the problems that are threatening societies, not to mention planet Earth itself. Hornborg demonstrates how market prices obscure asymmetric exchanges of resources – human labor, land, energy, materials – under a veil of fictive reciprocity. Such unequal exchange, he claims, underpins the phenomenon of technological development, which is, fundamentally, a redistribution of time and space – human labor and land – in world society. Hornborg deftly illustrates how money and technology have shaped our thinking and our social and ecological relations, with disturbing consequences. He also offers solutions for their redesign in ways that will promote justice and sustainability.

Author Biography

Alf Hornborg is an anthropologist and the Professor of Human Ecology at Lunds Universitet, Sweden. He is the author of The Power of the Machine (2001), Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange (2011), and Global Magic (2016). He has conducted field research in Canada, Peru, and Brazil.