Register for the next Pathways Forum which will delve into social metabolism as an understanding of the economy as embedded in a web of material and social relationships constrained by environmental boundaries.
Classical approaches to economic theory are built on a fatal omission: that of the material cost of the extraction and disposal of resources and the environmental impacts that come with them. When focusing on the relationship between production and consumption, classical economists are forgetting sources, sinks, and the whole infrastructure needed to condition fluxes. Social and socio-ecological metabolic approaches allow us to understand economic processes more comprehensively than an analysis in monetary terms. Understanding the economy as embedded in a web of material and social relationships that are constrained by the boundaries of the environment, such approaches can account for the material footprint of all of these exchanges, from extraction to transformation and disposal.
What can these approaches contribute to social transformations? What limitations are there due to ecological limits? What underlying patterns can be identified at different levels of analysis? What scale is appropriate for such methods?
After exploring the foundational concepts of social metabolism and how it can be applied to sustainability issues in the 12th Pathways Forum, the focus here will be on its applications at various scales and for various uses. Also looking into what it means to weigh cities, how material footprints can be used to assess transition scenarios, and how social metabolic approaches uncover unequal ecological exchanges on a global level.
Photo by Mike Kononov on Unsplash
