Money and the Semiotics of Ecosystem Dissolution

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2391380
AutoresA Hornborg (0000-0003-2102-5875, Lund University, autor de correspondencia)
Año1999
Volumen4
Número2
Páginas143-162
Fecha de publicación1999-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Material Culture (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/135918359900400202
OpenAlexW2148973357
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas13
Referencias citadas32

This paper argues for a semiotic approach to the problematic interface of economics and ecology. It begins by tracing the origins of materialist science and discussing strategies for transcending Cartesian dualism in the study of human ecology. It then discusses pre-modernity, modernity and post-modernity as transformations of semiotic relations with implications for identity and culture as well as human-environmental relations. The phenomenon of money is identified as a vehicle and epitome of the processes of semiotic abstraction we know as modernity. Various analogies between money and language are scrutinized and rejected. The tendencies of money to dissolve cultural and natural systems are understood as two aspects of a single, ecosemiotic process. Finally, a very general suggestion is offered as to how the idea and institution of money could be transformed so as to check the continued devastation of the biosphere

Aesthetics · Biology · Commodification · Ecocriticism · Economics · Economy · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Materialism · Modernity · Semiotics · Social science · Sociology · Critical Realism in Sociology · Economic Theory and Institutions · Philosophy · Ecology