The Imperial Mode of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism
- ISBN-10
- 1788739361
- ISBN-13
- 9781788739368
- Category
- Political Science
- Pages
- 256
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2021-01-26
- Publisher
- Verso Books
- Authors
- Ulrich Brand, Markus Wissen
Description
Our Unsustainable Life: Why We Can't Have Everything We Want With the concept of the Imperial Mode of Living, Brand and Wissen highlight the fact that capitalism implies uneven development as well as a constant and accelerating universalisation of a Western mode of production and living. The logic of liberal markets since the 19thCentury, and especially since World War II, has been inscribed into everyday practices that are usually unconsciously reproduced. The authors show that they are a main driver of the ecological crisis and economic and political instability. The Imperial Mode of Living implies that people's everyday practices, including individual and societal orientations, as well as identities, rely heavily on the unlimited appropriation of resources; a disproportionate claim on global and local ecosystems and sinks; and cheap labour from elsewhere. This availability of commodities is largely organised through the world market, backed by military force and/or the asymmetric relations of forces as they have been inscribed in international institutions. Moreover, the Imperial Mode of Living implies asymmetrical social relations along class, gender and race within the respective countries. Here too, it is driven by the capitalist accumulation imperative, growth-oriented state policies and status consumption. The concrete production conditions of commodities are rendered invisible in the places where the commodities are consumed. The imperialist world order is normalized through the mode of production and living.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2021-01-26
- 312 pages
- Paperback
- Verso Books
-
- 2021-01-26
- 256 pages
- Paperback
- Verso Books
Similar books
-
White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism
By Andreas Malm, The Zetkin CollectiveEpic and riveting, White Skin, Black Fuel traces a future of political fronts that can only heat up.
-
Fairness and Justice in Natural Resource Politics
By Cornelia Staritz, Melanie Pichler, Karin KüblböckITC (2013) 'Improving Africa's cotton value chain for Asian markets', Technical Paper, Geneva. ... D. (2012) 'One thing leads to another: promoting industrialisation by making the most of the commodity boom in SubSaharan Africa', ...
-
Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism
By Kate SoperThis is an urgent and necessary intervention into debates on climate change.
-
Global Histories of Work
By Andreas Eckert203 204 Linden, “Historia do trabalho: o Velho, o Novo e o Global”, Revista Mundos do trabalho, 1 (2009), pp. 11–26. Other important methodological references are A. Lüdtke (ed.), The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical ...
-
Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics: Nature and Society
By Clive L. SpashThis handbook, edited by a leading figure in the field, demonstrates the dynamism of ecological economics in a wide-ranging collection of state-of-the-art essays.
-
The Making of the October Crisis: Canada's Long Nightmare of Terrorism at the Hands of the FLQ
By D'Arcy JenishUsing new research and interviews, D'Arcy Jenish tells the complete story--starting from the spring of 1963.
-
A People's Green New Deal
By Max AjlAs the climate crisis deepens and the literature on the subject grows, A People's Green New Deal contributes a distinctive perspective to the debate.
-
Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism
By Ariella Aïsha AzoulayIn Potential History, Azoulay travels alongside historical companions—an old Palestinian man who refused to leave his village in 1948, an anonymous woman in war-ravaged Berlin, looted objects and documents torn from their worlds and now ...
-
The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War
By James Bradley6 Steven Ericson and Allen Hockley, eds., The Treaty of Portsmouth and Its Legacies (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, published by University Press of New England, 2008), 57. 7TR to Kaneko, August 23, ...
-
Imperial Projections: Ancient Rome in Modern Popular Culture
By Margaret Malamud, Sandra R. Joshel, Donald T. McGuireAt the same time , cinematic technique encourages the viewer to identify the gladiators with nature ; truly salt of the earth , they live in man's original state . Establishing long shots of landscape that close in to reveal the rebels ...