The Imperial Mode of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of CapitalismOur 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. |
Contents
At the Boundaries of a Mode of Living | 1 |
Multiple Crises and Socioecological Transformation | 13 |
The Concept of the Imperial Mode of Living | 39 |
The Historical Making of the Imperial Mode of Living | 69 |
The Global Universalization and Deepening | 101 |
Imperial Automobility | 135 |
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The Imperial Mode of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of ... Ulrich Brand,Markus Wissen No preview available - 2021 |
Common terms and phrases
actors agricultural alternatives Anthropocene Antonio Gramsci authoritarian automobile become Berlin capitalist cent century Chapter China Christoph Görg climate change concept conflicts consumer countries critique debate demand destruction dominant ecological crisis ecological modernization economic elites Elmar Altvater emerging emissions energy environmental European everyday example externalization Fordism forms fundamental gender German global North Gramsci green capitalism green economy growth Hamburg hegemony Ibid imperial mode important increasing increasingly industrial infrastructure institutions International Kapitalismus labour power Latin America Le monde diplomatique London Markus Wissen ment middle class million mode of living multiple crises Münster nature neoliberal norms Ökonomie perspective policies political practices problems production and consumption PROKLA raw materials reproduction Rosa Luxemburg Foundation sector social and ecological social relations society solidary mode South strategies structures struggles tion trade transport Ulrich Brand valorization VSA Verlag Westfälisches Dampfboot Verlag workers Wuppertal Institut Zapatistas