Exploiting Nature

 

Mandi Cox

26 January 2021

Response Paper

 

Exploiting Nature

            In “A History of the World in Seven cheap Things” Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore write about the complicated relationship between capitalism and the web of life. To encompass how the history of humans, capitalism, and nature have all affected one another they used the term “world-ecology.” “Cheap” is another key term in their writing. Patel and Moore focus on “seven cheap things” that they believe contribute heavily to the modern world that we live in. They refer to the process of how capitalism has and continues to exploit and cheapen: nature, money, work, energy, care, food, and lives.

            Patel and Moore argue that when the cycle of capitalism began there had to have been a “conceptual split between Nature and Society” (24). The split was due to humans gaining profit from nature and essentially separating themselves from nature in the process. However, the same society that separated themselves from nature excluded most women, indigenous people, slaves, and anyone else who they considered to not be full members of society. They saw those people as a part of nature and in turn their lives were cheapened, and the work of those people exploited by capitalism. We have touched on this subject in class briefly because some the same issues in society still exist today.

            The negatives of capitalism are not the only focus of Patel and Moore’s book, at the end of the introduction they go on to suggest that we can still make amends with nature. They also bring up organizations existing today that promote positive change of each of the seven cheap things such as climate change activists, immigrant-right activists, and The Movement for Black Lives. Here is a quote that ties in well with the conclusion of Patel and Moore’s introduction, “World-ecology therefore commits not only to rethinking but to remembering” (39).

This is why in our conclusion we offer a series of ideas that help us recognize and orient humans’ place in nature through the forensics of reparation. Weighing the injustices of centuries of exploitation can resacralize human relations within the web of life. Redistributing care, land, and work so that everyone has a chance to contribute to the improvement of their lives and to that of the ecology around them can undo the violence of abstraction that capitalism makes us perform every day. We term this vision “reparation ecology” and offer it as a way to see history as well as the future, a practice and a commitment to equality of reimagined relations for humans in the web of life. (Patel and Moore 43)