The Social Metabolism A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change

About this book

This book helps readers to understand the fast-growing and timely concept of social metabolism. The authors shed light on the different existing terms and methodologies that have been developed over the years. Through the study of history, readers will get an understanding of the main currents or schools that exist around this concept and their main findings. Also provides examples of how to apply the metabolic approach at different territorial and temporal scales and using different methodological tools. The book presents a novel socio-metabolic theory of historical change, in which biophysical and social variables are combined in an integrated way to understand the dynamics of socio-metabolic transitions.

In this second edition, the authors provide valuable updates and new sections to each of the previous chapters. New insights on global phenomena like climate change and the environmental crisis are also considered. As readers will learn, a paradigm shift in almost all areas of research and society will be needed to face the challenges created by the modern industrial society. The authors use a look back in history to explore the relationship between humans and nature from an evolutionary and thermodynamic perspective. With this approach, readers from history, environmental sciences and social sciences will get valuable insights on possible solutions.

Contents

Foreword
Note to the Second Edition

1. Introduction
2. Environmental history as sustainability science
3. Social metabolism: origins, history, approaches and main publications
4. A non-cybernetic theory of social metabolism
5. The basic model
6. Social metabolism at the local scale
7. Social metabolism at the regional scale
8. Social metabolism at the national scale
9. Global metabolism
10. The cinegetic or extractive mode of social metabolism
11. The organic metabolism
12. The industrial metabolism
13. Metabolic transitions: a theory of socioecological transformation
14. Epilogue: metabolisms, entropy and sustainable society

References

Customer Reviews

Biography

Manuel González de Molina is Professor of Environmental History. Coordinator of the Agroecosystems History Laboratory. His work focuses on the contemporary rural world, the biophysical analysis of agroecosystems and food systems and the design of public policies from an agroecological point of view. He has directed a Master's Degree Program on Agroecology at the International University of Andalusia from 1996 to the present. Has been president of the Spanish Society for Agrarian History from 2016 to 2023. He is a member of the editorial board of the ISI-refereed journals Historia Agraria [Agrarian History Review], Anthropoce, Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, and Sustainability. He was Vice-President of the Spanish Society for Organic Agriculture (SEAE) from 2006 until 2014, and a Minister of the Department of Organic Agriculture of the Andalusia Government (Spain) from 2004 until 2007. He is the author of over a hundred papers published in high impact journals and several books, among the most recent: Energy in Agroecosystems: A Tool for Assessing Sustainability (CRC Press, USA, 2017); Political Agroecology: Advancing the Transition to Sustainable Food Systems (CRC Press, 2019); The Social Metabolism of Spanish Agriculture, 1900-2008: The Mediterranean Way towards Industrialization (Springer, 2020).

Victor Manuel Toledo is a Researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones en Ecosistemas y Sustentabilidad (UNAM, Mexico). He is a biologist and has both a master's degree and a doctorate from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and has published 200 professional papers and 20 books. He is a researcher in Ecology at the UNAM and a visiting professor at the International University of Andalucia, Spain.[2] In 2011 he founded the Red Tematica del Consejo Nacional del Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Thematic Network of the National Council of the National Council of Science and Technology, Conayct). He has worked in nine different Mexican universities, the University of California, Berkeley, in addition to universities in Venezuela, Cuba, Spain, Ecuador, and Brazil. He was granted the Premio Nacional Medio Ambiente (1985), the Premio Merito Ecologico from the governor of the State of Mexico (1989), and the Luis Elizondo Prize of the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (2000). He has served as Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) of Mexico from May 27, 2019, to September 2, 2020.