Chapter 6 Flashcards
A principle, as well as body of thought & research, stressing the need for equitable distribution of environmental goods (parks, clean air, healthful working conditions), & environmental bads (pollution, hazards, waste) between people, no matter their race, ethnicity, or gender. Conversely, environmental injustice describes a condition where unhealthful or dangerous conditions are disproportionately proximate to minority communities
Environmental Justice
An object of economic value that is valued generically, rather than a specific object (Ex: Pork rather than a single pig). In political economy & Marxist thought, an object made for exchange
Commodity
The infrastructure, equipment, machinery, etc. required to make things, goods & commodities
Means of production
The material or environmental conditions required for a specific economy to function which may include things as varied as water for use in an industrial process to the health of workers to do the labor
Conditions of production
The value produced by underpaying labor or over-extracting from the environment, which is accumulated by owners & investors
Surplus value
The direct appropriation by capitalists of natural resources or goods from communities that historically tend to hold them collectively, as, for example, where the common lands of UK were enclosed by wealthy elites & the state in the 1700s
Primitive accumulation
The social relationships associated with, & necessary for, a specific economy, as serfs/knights are to feudalism & workers/owners are to modern capitalism
Relations of Production
A condition in the economy where capital becomes concentrated in very few hands (Wealthy individuals), or firms (banks), causing economic slowdown & potential socioeconomic crisis
Over-accumulation
The tendency for capitalism to eventually undermine the economic conditions for its own perpetuation, through overproduction of commodities, reduction of wages for would-be consumers, etc. Predicted to eventually lead to responses by workers to resist capitalism leading to a new form of economy.
First Contradiction of Capitalism (compare to 2nd contradiction of capitalism)
Tendency for capitalism to eventually undermine the environmental conditions for its own perpetuation, through degradation of natural resources, or damage to the health of workers, etc., predicted to eventually lead to environmentalists & workers’ movement to resist capitalism leading to a new form of economy.
Second Contradiction of Capitalism (compare to 1st contradiction of capitalism
Part of the economy, especially including household work, that depends on unremunerated labor, but without which the more formal cash economy would suffer & collapse
Social Reproduction
Idea that the environment, if it ever did exist separate from people, is now a product of human industry or activity
Production of nature
Environmental program established to address abandoned hazardous waste sites in the U.S.
Superfund
Transformation of an object or resource from something valued in & for itself, to something valued generically for exchange. In Marxist thought, the rise of the exchange value of a thing, over its use value
Commodification
Tendency of capitalism to temporarily solve its inevitable periodic crisis by establishing new markets, new resources, & new sites of production in other places
Spatial Fix
