Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
nature of these collectivities, and especially of the argument that the famed 'proletariat'
are not 'workers', but in fact exceed the limits of 'identity politics' in any form see
Thoburn (2003).
4. Just so. But still up for grabs in a research area that Marxists by no means own is to
what sort of relations these very sociotechnical relations are themselves related. There
are, for example, impulses to
collapse
capitalism into broader socio-technical relations
(e.g., Whatmore, 2002), to argue that capitalism
lends a distinctive taint
to dominant
sociotechnical relations (see Castree, 2002; Kirsch and Mitchell, 2004) and to
rethink
what capitalism and sociotechnical relations are
cum
nature (e.g., Braun, 2006).
5. This is a point made widely by 'green' thinking Marxists both before and after O'Connor
- see Benton, 1996b; Enzenberger, 1996; Leff, 1996; Perelman, 1996; Skirbekk, 1996;
Altvater, 2006; Bernstein and Woodhouse, 2006; Löwy, 2006; McMichael, 2006;
Swyngedouw, 2006.
6. I am stressing the difference that capitalist work makes to the body of labourers. One
fi nds other themes of difference in Marx, though not satisfyingly developed. Particularly
important are the differences produced before or along with capitalist work - differences
of race, gender, sexuality, that are forced into articulation with capitalist work (and
capitalist consumption). See Spivak's (1985) 'Scattered speculations on the question of
value'. Smith frames such differences in terms of the concept of external nature: 'By
corollary, of course, this external conception of nature becomes a powerful ideological
tool for justifying . . . forms of social difference and inequality as 'natural' rather than
social in their social genesis' (Smith, 2006, p. 23). That is to say, the idea of nature as
outside the human can be used by some human beings to cast marginalised other human
beings as
belonging
to the realm of controllable (or uncontrollable, excessive, overabun-
dant) nature, or as being closer to nature and further from culture (as enslaved to the
body and its emotions, for example).
7. Readers should note Smith is cannier than some of the critics of the production of nature
thesis allow. Read Bakker and Bridge (2006) and compare with the Smith (2006) essay
summarised here.
8. Why though does it appear that human actions, human projects, human objects, seem
only human? How is the ruse perpetuated? Why is it not patently obvious that this is
wrong? There can be no easy answer, although it is easy to see how such an effect could
be generated, fi rst by the qualities of species being: the requirement to 'always-already'
be in contact with nature with hand and brains. To forfeit this is to forfeit life: As Marx
wrote, we are always objects for another subject. Second, class processes perhaps serve
to reinforce anthropocentric ways of thinking. Here I mean class in the broadest sense
of the word: the elite cloistering of technologies (economic, scientifi c, political) that per-
petuate the notion of nature as external. One could add that, after all, a great deal
depends on the illusion that things are under control. Daily life would seem to depend
upon a high degree of faith in our ability to use certain 'natural' forces in order to keep
other natural forces at bay.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Albo, G. (2006) The limits of eco-localism and scale, strategy, socialism. In L. Panitch and
C. Leys (eds),
Socialist Register 2007: Coming to Terms with Nature.
New York: Monthly
Review Press, 337-63.
Althusser, L. (1997) The object of capital. In L. Althusser and E. Balibar (eds),
Reading
Capital
. London: Verso, pp. 73-198.
Altvater, E. (1991)
The Future of the Market: An Essay on the Regulation of Money and
Nature After the Collapse of 'Actually Existing Socialism'
, trans. P. Camiller. London:
Verso.
