Earth Capital

Alessandro Stanziani is Professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris.

• Foreword by Thomas Piketty Earth Capital: Long Live Eco-History!IntroductionWhen Does the Future Begin?Thinking About Time, Appropriating the Future: A Global PerspectivePart I. Green Growth and Forced Labour, 12th-19th Centuries1: Indispensable Labour, Forced LabourToo Many People?Where's the Capital?A Law for the MastersGlobal Economic Growth2: Energy Resources in Pre-Industrial EconomiesWood and CoalWind and SeawaterRivers Like No OthersAnimal and Human Power3: Crops and Material CultureWheat: The Wrong Right AnswerHybridisation or Perhaps Not: PastaMany Rice Varieties, Not Just in AsiaAfro-American Maize'Noble' Cane: Our Sweet Tooth, a Rod for Their Backs4: A Dangerous Mix: Environment, Institutions and InequalityLittle Ice Age and the Collapse of Agrarian EmpiresThe Price is Right! Regulating MarketsMeat: A Scarce FoodPart I Conclusion: Why Europe? The Power of Violence and ConstraintPart II. The Productivist Regime and the Great Acceleration, 1870-19705: The Age of CapitalThe Architecture of CompetitionWhat the Modernisation of Agriculture Really MeansCreative Destruction? Chemicals in Food ProductionSmog in the Global North, Flogging in the South: A New Energy Equilibrium6: Seeds, Plants, and GeneticsHybrid Maize: Miraculous Yields and Economic DependenceRice and FloodsWheat: Standardization at the Expense of Nutrition7: Transmissible Diseases and Food: MeatMeat for All, but at What Cost? Swine Trichinosis: Protectionism or Health Crisis?An Epidemic without Borders: Bovine TuberculosisConclusion: Epizootic to Zoonotic, the Pendulum Swings8: Capital, Neo-Colonialism and FamineCapital and Markets: Allegro Ma Non TroppoNouveaux Riches and Permanent OutsidersColonial FaminesPart II Conclusion Part III. From the 1970s to 2050: High Globalisation, Collapse and the World After9: Neoliberalism and the Euphoria of SpeculationDas Kapital Moves SouthEnergy Sources in the Age of GlobalisationEver-Increasing Yields: The End of Illusions10: Hunting for Seed Varieties vs. Genetic SelectionFrom Hybrids to GMOsSeeds and Intellectual Property: Breaking the LinkBreeding Wipes Out Everything in Its PathWhy Can’t We Live Without Meat?The Boomerang Effect: Mad Cow Disease, Avian Flu and CovidBabette's Feast11: Towards the World AfterAn Ideal World in the Past?Green Taxation vs. InequalitiesShould We Get Out of Capitalism?Put an End to SpeculationSeeds and Intellectual Property: Breaking the LinkRestoring the Centrality of LabourConclusion: Just Institutions vs. Just Societies

"This is a new genre of total history. At once an account of human uses of earthly resources, a history of social structures, and a study of the frameworks that have guided social scientists for centuries, Earth Capital connects calories, energy, work, and the institutions that govern our lives into one relentlessly insightful and provocative narrative. Stanziani tells the story of 'earth regimes' by taking readers from Russia to the Mediterranean, from the Indian Ocean to France; his book rises above north-south and east-west divides and illuminates a divided and often unjust whole."Jeremy Adelman, University of Cambridge "Earth Capital is an erudite and brilliant history of the processes by which, in recent few decades, 'a savage form of capitalism', equally destructive of social regulation and the planetary environment, came to assume an aggressive and dominant global form. Stanziani's arguments will be essential reading for anyone debating human futures today." Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago