Commissioned Book Review: Alf Hornborg, Nature, Society, and Justice in the Anthropocene: Unraveling the Money-Energy-Technology Complex
| Author | Xiao Wang,Xiufeng Zhao |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211053490 |
| Published date | 01 November 2022 |
| Date | 01 November 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Reviews |
Political Studies Review
2022, Vol. 20(4) NP11 –NP12
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
1053490PSW0010.1177/14789299211053490Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
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Commissioned Book Review
Nature, Society, and Justice in the
Anthropocene: Unraveling the Money-
Energy-Technology Complex by Alf
Hornborg. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2019. 242 pp., £73.34, ISBN 9781108429375
With the ecological crisis getting worse, more
and more scholars have turned to supporting
‘degrowth’ and opposing capitalism. Alf
Hornborg (2019), Professor of Human Ecology,
considers that ‘the rules of general-purpose
money generate unevenly distributed growth,
globalization, increasing inequalities, and
environmental degradation’ (6). Mainstream
researchers, however, are limited by a particu-
lar worldview; they focus on unequal distribu-
tion but often ignore that general money could
also threaten the world. ‘Without a redesign of
currency, the whole ideas and wishes for a bet-
ter world would draw a blank’ (Hornborg,
2019: 1). Nature, Society, and Justice in the
Anthropocene: Unraveling the Money-Energy-
Technology Complex was finished in 2019. On
one hand, it explains how technology and
money forms our thinking, and our ecological
and social relations. On the other hand, it offers
a solution to money redesign that promotes jus-
tice and sustainability.
The book is organized into 13 different
chapters. Chapters 1–4 discuss the meaning of
economy and science to human beings. Under
the concept of ‘Anthropocene’, the relation-
ship between unstable economy, ecological
inequality and social injustice is revealed. Our
existing money logic would cause a global gap
and environmental disruption. Chapters 5–7
look into ‘degrowth’ and currency reform. This
part delves more closely into the ontology of
technology and why energy and technology are
tools for space–time distribution. Chapters 8
and 9, by addressing capitalism, energy and
currency, show how market attributions of eco-
nomic value inexorably lead to asymmetric
transfers of resources. It is necessary to reform
general money. Chapters 10–12 explore some
post-humanist challenges to the tenets of main-
stream science. Finally, chapter 13 proposes a
concluding, integrated approach to money
redesign.
Professor Hornborg has pioneered a trans-
disciplinary research field on the challenges of
global justice and sustainability. He analyses
the relationship of nature, society and justice,
based on economics, Marxist theory, the phi-
losophy of technology, energy transitions,
environmental justice, industrial ecology,
actor–network theory and history. In the con-
text of the Anthropocene era, wealthier parts of
global society make use of resources, environ-
ments and the workforce in poor areas to save
space and time. Modern technologies, as
Hornborg further points out, are based on dif-
ferences in wages and the prices of natural
resources, resulting in a globalized ‘zero-sum
game’ and the rapid degradation of the bio-
sphere. Without being limited by a particular
discipline framework, he took the basic but
often neglected problem – general money – as
an ‘elephant in the room’. A new value system
that breaks current monetary logic is proposed
in his book, which provokes philosophical
thinking to re-examine the surroundings most
people take for granted.
In the thoughts of Hornborg, human behav-
iour changes will be encouraged without
depending on severe austerity measures or cen-
tralized politics. As a basic income for resi-
dents, every country sets up its complementary
currency (CC) merely for local use. This policy
helps alleviate the exploitation of low-wage
labour, cuts down the asymmetry of global
resource flows, reduces our carbon footprints
and improves local and national resilience.
With the alternative to relying on economic
growth and the global market, social, ecologi-
cal and financial crises would gradually miti-
gate.
Although there are different solutions and
perspectives, Hornborg’s ultimate goal is simi-
lar to several other leading thinkers: to promote
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