Terracentrism Theory in Context
By
Blaine D. Pope, Ph.D.
© 2011
There are six (6) core areas of understanding in the Terracentric framework. They are neither sequential nor discreet; instead, they are tightly linked, overlap to a high degree, and ultimately blur into one another. For discussion purposes, however, they are broken out into discrete categories, or ideal types. This post will focus on area #1, on the political-economy of the World System. These core concepts are rooted in the imperative to help human beings understand the social dimensions of matter-energy resources. This will be done by streamlining some the complexities involved in in these various overlapping, large-scale issues. These core areas of understanding may be summarized as follows:
1. Understand the Political-Economy of the World System
2. Understand the Bio-Geo-Physical Properties of the World System
3. Understand the “Earth-Based” vs. “Technology-Based” Social Dichotomy as two different ways of telling stories
4. Understand A- & B-phase Ontology (in the Context of Long Waves of Socio-energetic Activity)
5. Understand the Linkage Between Myth, Cosmology, and Cognition
6. Understand Terracentrism as “a verb”(as Synthesis)—Application of Areas 1-5 to the Problem at Hand, by the individual reader or interpreter
Terracentrism was derived by me, over a period of time, from world-systems analysis (WSA). I concluded that WSA was important, but still inadequate, in aiding my understanding of the dynamic and synergistic nature of the current global ecological-economic crisis.[1] In order to understand the truly global nature of the impact of the petroleum production chain, for example, one must be able to integrate these six areas. In so doing, we create a new hybrid form of knowledge and understanding. That new hybrid is what I refer to as “Terracentrism.” It is derived from the Latin word “Terra” (“Earth”) and “-centrism” or central focus. It is Earth-based or Earth-centered ways of understanding and communicating about the world. It is a meta-framework that can be applied to a wide range of large-scale, social, and historical phenomena. In this particular case, we will apply Terracentric analysis to the issue of petroleum production, consumption, and depletion.
Area 1: The Political-Economy of the World System (World Systems Analysis)
World-systems analysis (WSA), as espoused by the sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein, is a holistic framework for understanding the global political-economic system in which we live, with particular regard to material life and attendant culture, and how material life and culture are produced, replicated, and dispersed through great distances of space and over long periods of time. This particular system is to be viewed as an integrated global/historical/social phenomenon, having its origins in Europe during the period of “the Long 16th Century,” circa 1450 to 1650, C.E (Wallerstein, 1974, 2004).[2] Having its origins in the 16th century, it has so far survived and evolved through the early 21st century. This system, in simple terms, is known as the capitalist world-economy (Wallerstein, 1974, 1979, 2004). This system is also known variously as global capitalism and somewhat less accurately (but more popularly), in some circles, as the presumably recent phenomenon of globalization. In this section on Wallerstein’s approach to WSA, it is important to define our terms clearly, before proceeding further. According to Wallerstein (2000), WSA entails the following:
The argument of world-systems analysis is straightforward. The three presumed arenas of collective human action—the economic, the political, and the social or socio-cultural—are not autonomous arenas of social action. They do not have separate “logics.” More importantly, the intermeshing of constraints, options, decisions, norms, and “rationalities” is such that no useful research model can isolate “factors” according to the categories of economic, political, and social. . . . We are arguing that there is a single “set of rules” or a single “set of constraints” within which these various structures operate. (p. 134)
The economic historian, Andre Gunder Frank, had been an early collaborator with Wallerstein. However, one of Andre Gunder Frank’s critiques of Wallerstein came to be—in addition to privileging Europe (as Eurocentrism)—privileging human-to-human structures (as “humanocentrism”) to the exclusion of non-human/ecological structures which also influence those same human structures, in a dynamic, iterative, back-and-forth fashion. Frank, in his book Re-ORIENT (1998), wrote the following:
Our world economy and “system” is not independent of the ecology and the cosmos, with both of which it can and does have mutual interactions, which also must bear more and more systematic attention. . . . Sing Chew insists that my attempts at “humanocentric” analysis are not enough. What we need, he says, is “ecocentric” theory and praxis. Alas, we or at least I lack even the conceptual wherewithal adequately to address either of these problematiques, let alone in combination. (p. XXVI)
However, in Re-ORIENT, Frank does go on to at least pose some of the right ecological and environmental questions. In doing so, he helps lay the foundation for the inclusion of ecology within the concept of the long-term, unified field of political-economic forces we are here calling the World System. That process of attempting to expand the definitions of the World System is reflected in this book, also.[3] Sing Chew (2001) has taken his analysis of the World System a step further than many other analysts from the World System school in incorporating environmental and ecological issues into WSA. This concept factors in the total, long-term costs associated with the human accumulation of profit—on a global ecological-economic scale. He notes that part of the costs left out of other mainstream, classical economic analyses have had to do with the degradation of the natural environment (defined as an “externality,” in mainstream 20th century economics parlance). Yet it has been that same natural environment that has been the source of great material wealth for humanity—as a sort of divine inheritance or environmental savings account, passed on from nature to subsequent generations of human beings (Pimm, 2001; Youngquist, 1997). The human ability to manage that natural inheritance over the past 5,000 years is the focus of Chew’s work.
Chew’s (2001) thesis also has important implications for contemporary economic development theory. Here, he wrote about gauging the depletion of world timber resources as an historic marker of human activity, over the long-term:
Regardless of which country, civilization, or region has dominated the world economy, the accumulation process has persisted with the removal of the forests just as it had for the last five thousand years of human history. Despite political independence achieved in most regions [during the post-World War II wave of independence movements] . . . political liberation did not usher in a period of respite for the forests. The indigenous governments, spurred on by the call of nation-building, combined with neocolonial policies on the part of the West resulted in a modernization trajectory that has meant the emulation of the developmental strategies of the West (Chew and Denemark 1996). Such developmental policies required utilization of the natural assets of each country, including the availability of cheap labor to meet five-year developmental plans. . . . The end result has meant massive transformation of the landscape to meet developmental goals spurred on by the availability of foreign aid and private commercial loans. (pp. 139-140)
Much of the fields of development studies and development economics, respectively, have been based on the implicit assumption of the abundant “natural assets” mentioned by Chew, above. This assumption was often left unquestioned (Hornborg, 2001a; Latham, 2000); furthermore, this unquestioned assumption about differences in natural asset levels between nations and societies seemed to have paralleled unquestioned assumptions on differences in overall political and economic power in the World System (Hornborg, 2001a). This is the perspective that has been so typical of modernization theory and its adherents (Huntington, 1968; Lerner, 2000; Levy, 1996; Rostow, 1966).
This issue will have implications for our analysis of the specific impact of petroleum resources on international economic development trajectories writ large, in the overall context of the World System. We must constantly bear in mind, however, that we are reviewing a rather large body of literature which has its own unique history. It is one of not having taken energy issues and ecology issues into consideration, for the most part, in telling its story of human development. This is especially true in the case of literature on modernization theory.
Comparative Analysis: Modernization, World Systems, & Terracentrism
Modernization theory, developed in the 1950s, starts with a presupposition of the need for expansion of physical infrastructure, economic growth, psychological and physical exuberance, plus the attendant increases in scale, complexity, and interdependency that comes along with the process. Marion J. Levy, Jr. (1996), when writing an updated forward to his classic work, Modernization and the Structure of Societies, stated the following:
The unique characteristic par excellence of modernized societies is this long-term relentlessly exponentially increasing problem of interdependency.
Were I writing Modernization and the Structure of Societies now I might define modernization as a process characteristic of any system or society that be marked by long-term exponentially increasing interdependence . . . never until the early or middle of the 19th century has humankind experienced long-term exponential increasing interdependency – and it increases relentlessly, regardless of ideology!
Here, Levy tacitly acknowledges this inherently growth-oriented framework. He
—without explicit acknowledgement—frames his discussion from the beginning of the fossil fuel-based industrial era from the early to mid-19th century.[4] Levy acknowledges that there are inherent problems in increasing levels of social complexity and interdependency. This is an important point which—as per Chew above—transcends ideological (at the time of Levy’s original writing, “capitalist” versus “socialist”) boundaries. This is an issue that affects the entire project of Modernity, or so-called “modern” civilization. While writers like Marion Levy (in the modernization school) have focused on the growth-oriented phase (what we will later refer to as the “A-phase”) of the long wave of economic development, other writers like Joseph Tainter (in the “collapse of complex societies” school [my name for this domain of knowledge]) have focused their work on the corresponding decline- or collapse-oriented phase (what we will later refer to as the “B-phase”).[5] According to Tainter, many of the same human and organizational factors that contribute to A-phase growth also contribute to B-phase decline. The key is to be able to situate a society’s growth trajectory within the broader sweep of history (Hodgson, 1993). From a chapter in the book, Getting Down to Earth: Practical Applications to Ecological Economics (Tainter, 1996), the author wrote the following:
Historical knowledge is essential to practical applications of ecological economics. Systems of problem solving develop greater complexity and higher costs over long periods. In time such systems either require increasing energy subsidies or they collapse. Diminishing returns to complexity in problem solving limited the abilities of earlier societies to respond sustainably to challenges, and will shape contemporary responses to global change. To confront this dilemma we must understand both the role of energy in sustaining problem solving, and our historical position in systems of increasing complexity. (p. 61) [Emphasis added.]
Note the author’s linkage of the roles of energy, development trajectory, and complexity. He states further that as the scale and scope of society expands, via increased energy resource use, there is a tendency to use gradually more complex organizational systems. Why? Humans have traditionally used gradually increasing levels of complexity in their organizational systems as a means of short-term problem solving (Tainter, 1996).
For the past four to five centuries, throughout the so-called “modern” era (a.k.a. the era of European-led economic growth and cultural exuberance), there has been a gradual tendency toward increasing social and organizational complexity—first and foremost within European society, its diaspora communities, and subsequently within those other societies and economic enclaves attached to it via long distance trade networks. This has come about as a response to social demands stemming from, first, increased energetic/material requirements to offset the then declining carrying capacity of European soils (relative to population size), and second, the subsequent increases in social complexity and scale (as a secondary effect) that resulted from this. From within this four to five century social trajectory, certain patterns of thought have also developed and become institutionalized—being passed on from one generation to the next (Catton, 1980; Pope, 2004c; Wallerstein, 2001). Much of this book will focus on describing those ways of thinking, or “thoughtways.”
According to Catton (1980), these thoughtways were the natural by-product of the Age of Exuberance. The Age of Exuberance roughly corresponds with the so-called Modern Age, itself a euphemism for the era of the European (and subsequent Euro-American) rise to power in the World System, beginning around the time of the Long16th Century (per Wallerstein) and continuing through the 20th century (Frank & Gills, 1993; Wallerstein, 1979). Here, the word “exuberance” has a double meaning, and Catton explicitly employs that double meaning to make his point.
In psychology, exuberance is a state of mind that implies elation, excitement, enthusiasm, etc. In ecology, exuberance is a physical state of rapid growth, expansion, and/or increase in quantity, based upon resource-rich consumption. Catton’s thesis is that the “discovery” of the so-called “New World” (the Americas) by Europeans led to both ecological and psychological (and cultural) exuberance.
Here, it is important to note that Catton’s sociology is based on an ecological paradigm. His basic thesis here is that human social systems tend to mimic processes in the natural world. Therefore, European expansion into the Americas, for example, roughly mimics any species expansion into any new ecological niche. Such an expansion, in turn, typically displaces other species (in this case, other people like the indigenous Amerindian peoples, of the Americas). The main idea here is that human beings, as complex and highly adaptable primates, are so adaptable as to be able to mimic nature’s processes, even in their own social relations.
The Terracentric Shift: Fusing Concepts of History, Nature, and Culture
Based on the above model or paradigm, we can see how accessing the new resources of the Americas helped Europeans in multiple ways to do the following: a) reduce crippling population pressures in Europe; b) increase both the quantity and quality of food supplies on a per capita and absolute basis in Europe (Weatherford, 1988); c) increase the supply and circulation of money in Europe, based upon the acquisition of new sources of gold and silver; d) increase political stability in Europe, by using parts of the Americas (and much later the continent of Australia) as penal colonies for criminal and otherwise lumpen elements (Williams, 1944, 1970; Zinn, 2003). The exploitation of the Americas therefore—specifically the bio-geo-physical properties of the Americas—helped lay the foundation for social stability in Europe.[6] Increased social stability in Europe subsequently helped Europeans first to (re)define, then, second, to pursue their political, economic, and military objectives even further in the “New World” of the Americas—and beyond. It was during this period of increasing psychological and ecological exuberance that European people developed specific systems of thought (Catton’s “thoughtways”) based upon their experience of abundant energy and material resource acquisition. This time- and culture-bound activity is what has come to be known as the project of Modernity (Pope, 2004c). The currently fashionable observations on the alleged failures of Modernity (the writings of the so-called “post-modern” movement) have not been able to accurately recognize the Earth-based ecological processes that have been taking place, however. The very energetic and material resources that have fed the project of Modernity, the project of western hegemony, are themselves now being depleted on both a per capita and an absolute basis (Duncan, 2001; Greer, 2005; Gunderson & Holling, 2001; Hornborg, 2003b). With the depletion of the material and energetic inputs that have fueled the project of Modernity, there has been a subsequent diminution in psychological exuberance associated with that same Modernity.
The failure to recognize this is, of course, also a natural by-product of the project of Modernity: Its adherents tend to not ground their work in any kind natural resources or materialist perspective. The construct of Modernity has been a by-product of pre-ecological thought, in Catton’s words. Assuming that Europe’s (and by extension, Euro-America’s) power was contained strictly in the heads and hearts of human beings, the modernists and the Eurocentrists could literally not see beyond themselves, by and large. The entire problematique of the so-called death of the master narrative (much bemoaned by the Eurocentrist post-modernists, in literary circles) has been misdiagnosed. An epistemology of exuberance (itself a part of the larger construct of A-phase Ontology, see below for details) ipso facto requires relatively high levels of cheap energetic and material inputs to sustain it; without such high levels of inputs, it collapses on itself. Diminution of the material resource base could result in nothing other than a diminution of the mental construct it also spawned.
It is during the early phases of the ascent of modernization theory in the 1950s and 1960s, for example, that great works of literature coming out of Africa included such titles as The Beautiful Ones are Not Yet Born (Armah, 1968) and Things Fall Apart (Achebe, 1959). Both of these classic literary works from the Third World, along with many others from that period, focus not on “stages of growth,” great explorations and discoveries, and long-term increases in wealth; but rather on the “stages of decline” and long-term social disruption related to imbalanced relations with foreign powers. This theme—of Africa’s on-going decline in the face of the West’s continuous growth—will have implications for our subsequent analyses for A- and B-phase ontology in general (see details on this in upcoming posts).
This will also have implications for our upcoming exploration of the impact of petroleum depletion in a context of imbalanced economic relations, in particular. There have been a number of significant petroleum producing states in Africa (e.g., Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, Gabon, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Angola), plus states with other forms of energy available to them. Those energy resources are at the same time also unavailable to them, in part, because of those same imbalanced relations between “the West” and “the Rest” (Chinweizu, 1987; Nkrumah, 1966; Okonta & Douglas, 2001; Rodney, 1981). This is because the mechanism of debt often forces these states to mortgage their natural resources for the sake of high levels of debt service (Black, 2001). This process is often referred to as “debt for equity swaps” (clubdeparis.org, 2006; Stiglitz, 2002).
Some social scientists now say we have entered a new era in world history. This new era, this so-called post-modern era (I propose that this is more accurately defined as a “post-petroleum” era), is an era that will bring on massive change, and require significant adaptation in all of our human and organizational systems. But change from what and change to what? Catton (1980) framed this situation in terms of an ecological vocabulary with which he stated we shall have to become familiar, sooner or later. First and foremost is the concept of carrying capacity. He wrote as follows:
It has now become essential to recognize that all creatures, human or otherwise, impose a load upon their environment’s ability to supply what they need and to absorb and transform what they excrete or discard. An environment’s carrying capacity for a given kind of creature (living in a given way of life) is the maximum persistently feasible load—just short of the load that would damage the environment’s ability to support life of that kind. Carrying capacity can be expressed quantitatively as the number of us, living in a given manner, which the environment can support indefinitely. (p. 4)
Because so-called “modern man” had forgotten (or obfuscated) the issue of reciprocity with Nature (Ani, 1994; Diop, 1981; Ford, 1999; Karenga, 2004; Some, 1998), modern man seemingly confused his own tool production limits with Nature’s limits of carrying capacity. This anthropocentric, or strictly human-centered, error then led modern man to assume that his ability to garner energetic and physical resources began and ended with himself, and his organizational/technological creations. Catton wrote further,
The past four centuries of magnificent progress were made possible by two non-repeatable achievements [by European people]: (a) discovery of a second hemisphere, and (b) development of ways to exploit the planet’s energy savings deposits, the fossil fuels. The resulting opportunities for economic and demographic exuberance convinced people that it was natural for the future to be better than the past. [Emphasis added.] (p. 5)
The last sentence in the quote above is key; and will have implications for what I will say further on.
With this natural, evolutionary development in thought, we have the foundation for the creation of A-phase—or growth-oriented—ontology (look for details on this in subsequent posts). It is that growth-oriented framework that guides much of our historical and social outlook today. It is that same framework that guides much of contemporary energy policy and international economic development policy. But what happens when the objective material circumstances that gave rise to the ideology/thoughtways in the first place have subsequently changed? How long does it take for the ideology/thoughtways to change, in accordance with the newly changed circumstances? What processes are involved in that change?
Conclusions on Part 1
In developing the Terracentric idea, I have been working toward a set of new universal indicators—like those touched upon by Frank and outlined by Catton and Chew above—by which to gauge the effects (long-term costs and benefits) of the process of capital/material accumulation on the planet’s natural resource base.[7] Beyond this, I am also attempting to assess the human and societal self-perception of that process, and how that perception then feeds back to influence the environment through subsequent collective decisions made by society (see sections in upcoming posts, on Ontology). In other words, we are addressing two things here: what is happing around us; and, how we are perceiving what is happening around us. A detailed exploration of documentation on the global petroleum industry will serve as the primary vehicle through which we will explore this critical issue of human perception, in upcoming posts.
END OF PART 1
Next post: Area 2--Understanding the Bio-Geo-Physical Properties of the World System
