Uneven development as a result of the unequal exchange of time and space: Some conceptual issues

Abstract

The acknowledgement of asymmetric transfers of material, biophysical resources such as energy, matter, embodied land, and embodied labor is fundamental to understanding not only development gaps, but the very phenomenon of 'technology' as a social redistribution of resources. This paper argues that to posit the occurrence of ecologically unequal exchange does not need to imply a value judgement, or being constrained by the approach to unequal exchange provided by Arghiri Emmanuel. During two centuries of fossil fuels, ecologically unequal exchange has not always involved net transfers of energy, nor has it always involved net transfers of embodied land, but it has always involved net transfers of one of these resources. In a future dominated by biofuels, ecologically unequal exchange will again involve concerns with both energy and embodied land. In terms of economic theory for understanding the course of history, this would amount to the bankruptcy of both Ricardian and Marxian concepts of'labor value' in favor of a cosmology more akin to pre-industrial Physiocracy.