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Exploring the history of industrial metabolism

Chapter · January 2003

DOI: 10.4324/9781351282086-3

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a
a 2_
on the history
of industrial metabolism
Marina Fischer-Kowalski
Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Vienna, Austria

‘On the history of industrial metabolism’: this title has a double meaning. On the one
hand, it refers to the history of a paradigm, of a way to think about a problem. On the
other hand, it refers to a time-series of facts: how has industrial metabolism developed
over the past, say, 200 years, and what preceded it? What are the specific historical
features of ‘industrial metabolism’ as compared with other types of socioeconomic
metabolism? In this chapter, I will touch on the first subject only, dealing with the history
of the paradigm, with the intellectual traditions on which it rests.

2.1 Roots and origins of the

paradigm across disciplines
The analysis of the metabolism of a socioeconomic system, be it a national economy, an
industrial sector, a company, a community or a household, is a truly interdisciplinary
enterprise. It necessarily utilises concepts and methodology from several social and natu-
ral science disciplines. What now seems to be a newly emerged and rapidly growing field
of science, an interdisciplinary field of its own making, on closer inspection can be traced
to some long-standing traditions, dispersed over several disciplines.
What I will do in the first part of this chapter is to trace down some of these traditions
(see Fig. 2.1). I will have to be selective: trained as a social scientist, I will focus more on
the social science origins.1 This approach is complementary to that of other contributors
to this book who deal with the economic and technical aspects.
1 For a more elaborate discussion, see Fischer-Kowalski 1998 and Fischer-Kowalski and Hüttler
1999, as well as Rosa et al. 1988 for a sociological perspective and Martinez-Alier 1997 for an
economic perspective.

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36 perspectives on industrial ecology

Social sciences Natural sciences

Sociology Biology and

ecology

History Agricultural
sciences

Society's
metabolism

Materials
Economics
science

Cultural Social
anthropology geography

Material flow analysis

Energy flow analysis Regulatory mechanisms

Figure 2.1 Overview of scientific traditions and the study of society’s metabolism: an
interdisciplinary concept

It is interesting to note that there are, across the various disciplines under considera-
tion, very distinct phases of development for the paradigm of socioeconomic metab-
olism:
a A first phase can be localised in the late 1860s and is mostly associated with a
progressivist evolutionary world-view.
a A second phase, still indebted to a progressivist evolutionary perspective but
already with some critical overtones, spreads from about the First World War to
the mid-1950s.
a A third phase, in the late 1960s, which I choose to term the phase of the
pioneers, is marked by modern environmental concerns and lacks the belief in
an ever-brighter future.

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 2. on the history of industrial metabolism Fischer-Kowalski 37

Subsequently, there followed more than two decades of relative stagnation: the holistic
perspective of ‘size’ and ‘growth’ of industrial metabolism receded behind the predomi-
nance of pollution and toxicity. In the 1990s, then, there was a virtual explosion of
research dealing with industrial metabolism, and the term ‘industrial metabolism’ was
(re)born (Ayres and Simonis 1994; Baccini and Brunner 1991; Fischer-Kowalski and
Haberl 1993; Lehmann and Schmidt-Bleek 1993) as a powerful unifying concept to relate
the functioning of economy and society to its consequences on the environment. But this
is just part of the story. Typically, between one phase and the next, the threads were cut,
and each author seemed to start anew.
It was in the 1860s, when the concept of ‘metabolism’, both as applied to organisms
and to human social systems, was born—pretty much at the same time in biology and in
social theory. Subsequently, the idea of an energy and materials exchange between society
(or, more narrowly, the economy) and the environment as a relevant process, and as an
interdependency between social and natural systems, played a role in various social and
natural sciences.
The term ‘metabolism’, according to present-day standard biological textbooks, refers
to the ‘totality of the biochemical reactions in a living thing. These reactions proceed
down metabolic pathways’ (Purves et al. 1992: 130; see Fig. 2.2). This more-or-less bio-
chemical notion of metabolism has developed away from the 19th-century concept of
metabolism as an exchange of energy and substances between organisms and the envi-
ronment which, by the writings of Moleschott (1857), had become influential in the
social science theory of that time. So the modern biochemical notion of metabolism
refers more to the transformative processes of cells, organs and organisms, and does not
focus on the environment–organism interface.
Ecologists use the term ‘metabolism’ to refer to the energy conversion and nutrient
cycling in ecosystems (e.g. Clements 1916; Lotka 1925; Odum 1959, 1969). Among biol-
ogists, it is a matter of dispute whether the term ‘metabolism’ may legitimately be used
beyond organisms, on the level of ecosystems. Although this dispute is still going on, it
is widely accepted that, in effect, biotic communities and ecosystems have self-organis-
ing properties that allow them to optimise the utilisation of energy and nutrients (e.g. see
Beck et al. 1991). What is common to the biochemical and the ecological approach is the
idea of metabolism being a complex self-organising process of autopoietic systems,
dependent on the characteristics of this system, and stabilising this system vis-à-vis
highly variable environments (Fig. 2.2). So, whether this notion legitimately can be used
for the economy of for society in a literal, and not only in a metaphorical sense, depends
on the degree of system integration attributed to social systems. Interestingly enough,
biologists are very willing to attribute organismic (or system integration) characteristics
to the human society where they might deny them to an ecosystem (for an early example,
see Tansley 1935: 290; for a critical discussion, see Oechsle 1988).
For the early ‘founding fathers’ of social theory (e.g. Marx, Engels, Spencer and Comte)
the material society–nature interaction seemed to be an important issue. They readily
made use of the biological concepts of their time: Marx and Engels, well acquainted with
Moleschott’s writings, were the first to apply the term ‘metabolism’ to society. They shared
with most other social scientists of those times an interest in the advances of biology,
particularly in evolutionary theory and their implications for universal progress. For
Herbert Spencer in his First Principles in 1862, the process of societal advance and the
differences in stages of advancement among societies can be accounted for by energy:

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38 perspectives on industrial ecology

biology and ecology

Jakob Moleschott (1857):

Metabolism is defined as an exchange of energy

and substances between organisms
and the environment.
Concepts: food chain, trophical hierarchy

Biochemical notion (contemporary biology) Ecological notion

Metabolism in cell or organism Frederick E. Clements (1916),

Alfred Lotka (1925) and
Purves et al. (1992: 130): ‘Metabolism is Eugene Odum (1959, 1969)
the totality of the biochemical reactions
in a living thing. These reactions proceed Metabolism in an ecosystem
down metabolic pathways . . . , so ordered
Energy conversion and nutrient
that the product of one reaction is the
cycling in ecosystem evolves and
substrate for the next. Some pathways
becomes optimised in the
synthesise, step-by-step, the important
course of the maturation
chemical building blocks from which
of the ecosystem.
macromolecules are built, others trap
energy from the environment, and still
others have functions different from these.’

Commonalities
Metabolism = self-organising process of highly complex autopoietic systems,
subject to evolution.

Figure 2.2 Milestones of ‘metabolism’ in biology and ecology

progress depends on an available energy surplus. The more energy a society is able to
consume, the further advanced it is. Societal progress is based on energy surplus. First it
enables social growth and thereby social differentiation. Second it provides room for
cultural activities beyond basic vital needs.
The beginnings of cultural anthropology were, similar to the situation in sociology,
marked by evolutionism (as in the works of Morgan 1877, 1963; see Fig. 2.3), and cultural
anthropology then split into a more functionalist and a more culturalist tradition. The
functionalist line, from which contributions to societal metabolism should be expected,
did not, as was the case in sociology, turn towards economics and distributional prob-
lems but retained a focus on the society–nature interface. In effect, several conceptual
clarifications and rich empirical material on societies’ metabolism can be gained from

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 2. on the history of industrial metabolism Fischer-Kowalski 39

sociology and cultural anthropology

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1867, 1961):
‘Metabolism between man and
nature’ is effected by human labour:
labour (mediated by technology)
transforms ‘nature's material . . . to
the wants of man’.
Herbert Spencer (1862) and
Lewis H. Morgan (1877, 1963):
‘energetic’ theory of evolution:
the more energy a society consumes,
the more advanced it is

Mode of production determines metabolism

Dominant sociological world-view: nature does not matter for society.

Ecological anthropolgy

Leslie White (1949), Julian Steward (1955) and Marvin Harris (1965):
Society and culture organise human metabolism (core: nutrition) under
given environmental conditions and for a given carrying capacity (regulating population
reproduction, food habits, handling of water). Environmental change is a consequence of social
metabolism, or, for other reasons, leads to cultural change: ‘cultural evolution’.

Figure 2.3 Milestones in social theory and cultural anthropology

this research tradition that Orlove (1980), in his critical review, terms ‘ecological anthro-
pology’. The followers of this approach ‘see the social organisation and culture of
specific populations as functional adaptations which permit the populations to exploit
their environments successfully without exceeding their carrying capacity’ (Orlove 1980:
240). The unit that is maintained is a given population rather than a particular social
order (as put forward by sociological functionalists). In contrast to biological ecologists,
they treat adaptation not as a matter of individuals and their genetic success but as a
matter of cultures. Up to now this research tradition has borne rich fruit that typically is
not registered within the industrial ecology research community.
In 1864 George Perkins Marsh states in his book Man and Nature that people endanger
themselves by destroying their base of subsistence (Fig. 2.4). His main concern is
deforestation and the threats of wood scarcity. Marsh was not concerned about the
exhaustion of mineral resources. But this was the issue Nathaniel Shaler took up in 1905,
worried about the ever-increasing human consumption of mineral resources. One might
say this shift of focus from Marsh (1864) to Shaler (1905) reflects the change in society’s
metabolism from an agrarian mode of production (where scarcity of food promotes the

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40 perspectives on industrial ecology

social geography
George Perkins Marsh (1864; Man and Nature):
‘Physical geography as modified by human action’:
forests are eliminated as a consequence of the need to feed an
ever-growing population.

Nathaniel Shaler (1905; Man and the Earth):

There are worries about ever-increasing human
consumption of mineral resources and the
possible exhaustion of these resources.

Princeton 1955 conference on ‘Paley Report: President's

‘Man's Role in Changing the
Face of the Earth’ (Thomas 1956):
There are ‘limits to growth’ as a
consequence of a limited
geological resource base
(Ordway 1956; Ayres 1956;
Scarlott 1966; Wolman 1965).
Materials Policy Commission’
‘Paley Report’ (Paley Report 1952)
Scientific American
September 1970: ‘Biosphere’
(substance flows)
September 1971: ‘Energy’
(energetic metabolism)

Pioneers of material flow analysis Turner et al. (1990): ‘The Earth as

transformed by human action’

Figure 2.4 Milestones in social geography

extension of agricultural land at the expense of forests) to an industrial one, where vital
‘nutrients’ are drawn from subterranean sinks that one day will be exhausted. It reflects
it—but it does not reflect on it.
In 1955 seventy participants from all over the world and from a great variety of
disciplines convened in Princeton, New Jersey, for a remarkable conference: ‘Man’s Role
in Changing the Face of the Earth’ (Fig. 2.4). The conference was paying honour to
George Perkins Marsh and his book of 1864. It was financed by the Wenner-Gren Foun-
dation for Anthropological Research, and the geographer Carl O. Sauer, the zoologist
Marston Bates and the urban planner Lewis Mumford presided over the sessions. The
papers and discussions were published in a 1,200-page compendium (Thomas 1956a)
that documents, so I would claim, the world’s first interdisciplinary panel on environ-
mental problems of human development, staged by top scientists.
This compendium expresses a strong concern with the limited natural base for an
explosively rising economic demand for minerals. Such a ‘materials flow’ focus seems to
have been strongly supported by wartime experiences and institutions. Ordway (1956:

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 2. on the history of industrial metabolism Fischer-Kowalski 41

988) quotes data from a 1952 report of the President’s Materials Policy Commission
(Paley Report 1952) worrying about the ‘soaring demand’ for materials. (This report is an
excellent source for research into longer time-series of materials consumption, by the
way!) The depletion of national resources becomes part of a global concern: ‘if all the
nations of the world should acquire the same standard of living as our own, the resulting
world need for materials would be six times present consumption’ (Ordway 1956: 988).
The bulk of material flow considerations in the 1955 conference is devoted to the input
side of metabolism. The overall systemic consideration that the mobilisation of vast
amounts of matter from geological sinks (e.g. minerals and fossil energy carriers) into a
materially closed system such as the biosphere would change parameters of atmospheric,
oceanic and soil chemistry on a global level does not occur yet. Still, many contributions
of this conference document the transformations of local and regional natural environ-
ments by human activity, both historically and at the time of the conference. Some years
later, this tradition was explicitly continued in a further publication, representing the
contemporary state of the art of social geography, dating from 1990: The Earth as Trans-
formed by Human Action: Global and Regional Changes in the Biosphere over the Past 300 Years,
edited by Turner et al.
The global environmental change issue was then taken up by a special issue of Scientific
American in September 1970, devoted to the ‘Biosphere’. One year later, Scientific American
edited an issue on energy and socioeconomic energy metabolism (Scientific American 1971).
In 1969 the German geographer Neef explicitly talked about the ‘metabolism between
society and nature’ as a core problem of geography (Neef 1969). But this already belongs
to the post-1968 cultural revolution of environmentalism, which we will look at next.

2.2 The pioneers of industrial

metabolism in the late 1960s
When in the late 1960s it again became culturally possible to take a critical view of
economic growth and consider its environmental side-effects, the stage was set for a new
twist in looking at socioeconomic metabolism. Up to this point the issue of metabolism
had mainly come in as a set of arguments claiming that natural forces and physical
processes mattered for the organisation and development of society, that they should be
attributed some causal significance for faits sociaux. The mainstream of social science
dealing with modern industrial society—whether it be economics, sociology or political
science—had not cared about this issue at all. In the mid-1960s this started to change,
and, apparently originating from the USA, a set of new approaches developed, often
triggered by natural scientists and typically subsequently elaborated in co-operation with
social scientists. In these approaches the material and energetic flows between societies
(or economies) and their natural environments became a major issue—governed by
worries that a ‘cowboy economy’ might not be compatible with a ‘Spaceship Earth’
(Boulding 1966). The common picture of cultural evolution as eternal progress started to
give way to a picture of industrial economic growth possibly resulting in a fatal devas-
tation of human life. This has to be looked at as a basic change in world-views, and it took
hold of a wide range of intellectuals across many disciplines. And, so I would claim, it

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42 perspectives on industrial ecology

promoted something like a rebirth of the paradigm of socioeconomic metabolism,

applied to industrial societies.
According to Abel Wolman (1965: 179), the water-supply specialist (and participant in
the 1955 conference on ‘Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth’):
The metabolic requirements of a city can be defined as the materials and com-
modities needed to sustain the city’s inhabitants at home, at work and at play
. . . The metabolic cycle is not completed until the wastes and residues of daily
life have been removed and disposed of with a minimum of nuisance and
hazard.

This serves as the introduction to the first attempt to conceptualise and operationalise the
metabolism of industrial society, for the case of a model US city of a million inhabitants
(see Fig. 2.5). He is well aware of water being the input needed in by far the highest
quantities, but he also offers estimates for food and fossil energy inputs, as well as for
(selected) outputs such as refuse and air pollutants. His argument is directed mainly at
problems he foresees in the provision of an adequate water supply to US megacities.2
The economist Kenneth Boulding had also been a participant in the 1955 conference.
In ‘The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth’, Boulding (1966) briefly outlines,
with reference to the systems theory of Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1952), an oncoming
change from a ‘cowboy economy’ to a ‘spaceman economy’ (Fig. 2.5). The present world
economy, according to this view, is an open system with regard to energy, matter and
information (an ‘econosphere’). There is a ‘total capital stock, that is the set of all objects,
people, organisations and so on’ (Boulding 1966: 5) that has inputs and outputs. Objects
pass from the non-economic to the economic set in the process of production, and
objects pass out of the economic set ‘as their value becomes zero’ (Boulding 1966: 5).
Thus, he says, ‘we see the econosphere as a material process’. This similarly can be
described from an energetic point of view. In the ‘cowboy economy’, throughput is at
least a plausible measure of the success of the economy:
By contrast, in the spaceman economy, throughput is by no means a desider-
atum, and is indeed to be regarded as something to be minimised rather than
maximised. The essential measure of the success of the economy its not pro-
duction and consumption at all, but the nature, extent, quality and complexity
of the total capital stock, including in this the state of the human bodies and
minds (Boulding 1966: 9).

Here we find one of the first systematic considerations of the material compartments of,
as I would say, society (what Boulding calls the econosphere) visualised as an input–out-
put system within the biosphere. Boulding does not, because of his systems approach,
confound the economy or society with an ecosystem.
In 1969 Bob Ayres, a physicist, and Allen Kneese, an economist, presented the full
programme of what was much later, in the 1990s, carried out as material flow analyses of
national economies. Their core argument is an economic one: that the economy draws

2 A few years later, Australian human ecologists analysed the metabolism of Hong Kong, con-
centrating on its ‘bio-metabolism’: that is, its human and animal nutrient cycles, only. A com-
parison with Sydney (data for the years 1970 and 1971) illustrated a ‘Western-style’ diet, with
the same calorific and nutrient benefit for the consumer, to be about twice as wasteful as a diet
in the Chinese tradition (see Boyden et al. 1981; Newcombe 1977).

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 2. on the history of industrial metabolism Fischer-Kowalski 43

achievements of the pioneers

Abel Wolman (1965) Kenneth Boulding (1966)
publishes in the Scientific American the stresses the need to change
first empirical estimate of the metabolism from a ‘cowboy economy’
of a model US city. to a ‘spaceman economy’.
‘The metabolic requirements of a city can ‘Cowboy economy’: open system with
be defined as the materials and plenty of world. Measure of success:
commodities needed to sustain the city's high throughput.
inhabitants at home, at work and at
‘Spaceman economy’: more of a closed
play . . . The metabolic cycle is not
system in a narrow world. Measure of
completed until the wastes and residues of
success: quality and complexity of stock
daily life have been removed and disposed
(i.e. human bodies and minds).
of with a minimum of nuisance and
hazard.’

Robert Ayres and Allen Kneese (1968, 1969; Kneese et al. 1974)
present the first comprehensive empirical material flow
analysis for the USA and relate it to population and GDP.
Their core argument is an economic one: that the economy heavily draws from priceless
environmental goods such as air and water, goods that are becoming increasingly scarce in
highly developed countries, and that this would preclude a Pareto-optimal functioning of
markets at the expenses of those free common goods. They conclude with a formal general
equilibrium model to take care of these externalities. They claim ‘that the common failure
[of economics] . . . may result from viewing the production and consumption processes in a
manner that is somewhat at variance with the fundamental law of the conservation of mass’.
Thus they propose to ‘view environmental pollution and its control as a materials balance
problem for the entire economy’. They anticipate carbon dioxide—for its sheer quantity—
would become a major environmental problem(!)

Per capita yearly material input:

Wolman 1965 (US city) : 22.6 million tons
Kneese et al. 1974 (US) : 20.8 million tons
Statistisches Bundesamt 1995 (G 1970) : 19.3 million tons State of the art
(adapted by the author) in the 1990s

Figure 2.5 Achievements of the pioneers

heavily on priceless environmental goods such as air and water, goods that are becoming
increasingly scarce in highly developed countries, and that this would preclude a Pareto-
optimal functioning of markets at the expense of those free common goods. They
conclude with a formal general equilibrium model to take care of these externalities.
In the first part of the paper Ayres and Kneese give an outline of the problem, and they
present a first material flow analysis for the USA for the period 1963–65. They claim ‘that
the common failure (of economics) . . . may result from viewing the production and
consumption processes in a manner that is somewhat at variance with the fundamental

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44 perspectives on industrial ecology

law of the conservation of mass’ (Ayres and Kneese 1969: 283). There must occur, they
argue, uncompensated externalities unless one of the following three situations prevails:
a All inputs of the production process are fully converted into outputs, with no
unwanted residuals along the way (or else they all must be stored on the
producers’ property)
a All final outputs (commodities) are utterly destroyed, made to disappear, in the
process of consumption
a The property rights are so arranged that all relevant environmental attributes
are in private ownership and these rights are exchanged in competitive markets
They state that none of these conditions can be expected to hold (Ayres and Kneese 1969:
283):
Nature does not permit the destruction of matter except by annihilation with
anti-matter, and the means of disposal of unwanted residuals which maxi-
mises the internal return of decentralised decision units is by discharge to the
environment, principally, watercourses and the atmosphere. Water and air are
traditionally free goods in economics. But in reality . . . they are common
property resources of great and increasing value . . . Moreover, . . . technolog-
ical means for processing or purifying one or another type of waste discharge
[does] not destroy the residuals but only [alters] their form . . . Thus, . . .
[recycling] of materials into productive uses or discharge into an alternative
medium are the only general options (Ayres and Kneese 1969: 283).

Later, taking us up to the present day, another option came into view: the downsizing of
industrial metabolism.

2.3 Lessons learned from the intellectual tradition

The first and maybe most important lesson to be learned is the dependence of the
organisation of any socioeconomic system on the exchange relations it entertains with
natural systems: in other words, on its metabolism. As the intellectual debate teaches, it
is not just society and technology that mould the natural environment; it is as much the
environment, however modified by human action, that in turn moulds the opportunities
and the problems society faces. As the French anthropologist and historian Maurice
Godelier put it:
Human beings have a history because they transform nature. It is indeed this
capacity which defines them as human. Of all the forces which set them in
movement and prompt them to invent new forms of society, the most pro-
found is their ability to transform their relations with nature by transforming
nature itself (1988: 1f.).

The same lesson can be cast as a biological analogy: an organism belonging to a certain
species has to sustain a certain metabolism on which its whole internal structure
depends. If there is a profound difference in metabolism, there will be a profound

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 2. on the history of industrial metabolism Fischer-Kowalski 45

difference in the organism itself—it will be the member of another species. So if we wish
to change the energetic metabolism of modern industrial societies, for example, we
should be aware of the scope of the project. It will not just be a technological task: it will
in the end imply profound socioeconomic, historical change.
The second lesson I have learned, and I hope the reader can follow me in this, is both
the need and the potential of a thoroughly systemic perspective, as the term ‘metabolism’
implies. This concept brings into view the totality of a techno-economic social system
within a natural, but also within a socioeconomic, environment. With this picture in
mind, many of the fallacies of earlier environmental policy become redundant: you
cannot profoundly alter a system’s outputs (i.e. its wastes and emissions) without
changing also its inputs and the ways it works internally.
Finally, I hope it has become obvious that, to be able to deal with industrial metab-
olism, social and natural sciences must co-operate intimately. The appeal to co-operation
across the ‘great divide’ (Snow 1956) has of late become very popular. The field of
industrial ecology seems to be one where this really happens. To put it in the terms of the
much-debated French philosopher of science, Bruno Latour: in modern thinking and
science, sociocultural ‘subjects’ and natural ‘objects’ were pulled apart to constitute two
completely separate realms of reality. However, what modern industrial society con-
stantly does is the opposite: the creation of socio–cultural–natural hybrids. It has to learn
to deal with them (see Latour 1991).

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