GEOG203 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Anthropocentrism, Environmental Health, New Social Movements

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Geography and Environmental Management
• Course: GEOG203
• Professor: Steffanie Scott

Document Summary

Chapter 7 covers the basic logic of the political economist approach to defining and solving environmental problems, drawing primarily on marxist and feminist theory. The political economist perspective argues that environmental problems are an integral part of the capitalist economic system, in fact that the system itself depends upon the over extraction and contamination of natural resources. Environmental p(cid:396)o(cid:271)le(cid:373)s a(cid:396)e a(cid:374) i(cid:374)teg(cid:396)al pa(cid:396)t of a (cid:272)apitalist e(cid:272)o(cid:374)o(cid:373)(cid:455). Ma(cid:396)(cid:454)"s (cid:272)o(cid:374)(cid:272)epts of la(cid:271)o(cid:396), accumulation, and crisis explain how the economy produces environmental problems. Labor: labor is the alteration of the natural world by human action, therefore labor integrates nature and society. Capitalists (cid:373)ust (cid:862)u(cid:374)de(cid:396)pa(cid:455)(cid:863) the workers and the environment for their contribution to the commodity or there will be no surplus value, and by extension there will be no capitalism. There have been other economic forms in the past and there could be in the future.