Biomass, Capitalism, and Hegemony

Biomass, Capitalism, and Hegemony brings political economy down to earth. Daviron penetrates the glittering surface of money to reveal a long history of successive ruptures in social metabolism, in which societies like living organisms, consume resources and produce waste. For millennia, biomass from plants supplied all human needs. Empires 500 years ago began to stretch solar metabolisms in space by reaching into distant landscapes to extract biomass, using enslaved labour, but still relying on energy from sun, wind, and water. Centuries later metabolism stretched in time by reaching deep into the earth for stored fossil energy and minerals. The “industrial revolution” not only separated labour from land, but also shifted the metabolic regime to mining. Viewed as metabolic regimes, wars are not only about hegemonic transitions from losers to victors. They create successive separations of “industry” from “agriculture,” and finally the rise of chemical industries that dominate agriculture and food along with everything else. More than cyclical transfers of wealth and power, extraction of biomass and energy have cumulatively led humans to a precipice, in which small course reversals face towering power and wealth locked into a disastrous trajectory of extraction and war. * Harriet Friedmann, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Toronto *

Benoit Daviron is a French agronomist and agricultural economist at the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD). He is also currently a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, USA.