Ulrich Brand

Markus Wissen

Zur Ausbeutung von Mensch und Natur in Zeiten des globalen Kapitalismus

Imperiale Lebensweise

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.

Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism

The Imperial Mode of Living

Offers an understanding of the multiple crises of capitalism, focusing on the ecological crisis and its interaction with other crisis phenomena (financial crisis, crisis of democracy, economic crisis).

Theorizing and Overcoming the Imperial Mode of Living

The Limits to Capitalist Nature

Joachim Hirsch

Christoph Görg

This book examines the global regulation of biodiversity politics through the UN UNConvention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the WTO and other international treaties. Using historical-materialist state and regulation theory, it assesses how the discourse and politics of sustainable development have contributed to the internationalisation of the state. The authors argue that sustainable development, far from being a fixed concept, is a conceptual terrain on which different and conflicting symbolisations of and solutions responses to of the ecological crisis struggle for hegemony. Furthermore, it shows that the international multilateral environmental organisations agreements are not at all a means to counteract neoliberal globalisation but, on the contrary, form an integral part of the ongoing transformation process. Focussing on the UN Convention on Biological DiversityCBD, the FAO International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in the World Trade Organisation, this co-authored volume addresses the following issues: state theory, regulation theory and International Political Economy biodiversity protection and valorisation of genetic resources access to genetic resources and sharing of benefits which arise out of its use enforcement of intellectual property rights and their impact on biodiversity. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international politics, international political economy, environmental studies, development studies and political ecology.

Contested Terrains

Conflicts in Environmental Regulation and the Internationalisation of the State

Markus Wissen

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