A Theory of

Ecological
History
Marxist Concept of ‘Modes of
Production’
• Primitive communism
• Slavery
• Feudalism
• Capitalism
Ideal Types to classify history of
society
– Technology and Relations of production
• Ecological critique to MoP
– Infrastructure and relations of prod
always embedded in an ecological
context: soil, water, animals, mineral
– Modes of Resource Use – more
appropriate than MoP
 Additional dimensions of Modes
of Resource Use
• Identifies the characteristic ideologies that
govern different modes
• Identifies ecological impacts of various modes
Characteristics
• Ideal types useful for classification
• Describes human use of living resources
• Industrial mode includes both capitalists
and socialist societies
– Two modes may be different from eco/dev
perspective, but ecologically quite similar
 Four historical modes
Technol Economy Social Ideology Ecological
ogy organisation impact
Gathering

Nomadic
pastoralism

Settled
cultivation

Industrial
 Mode 1: Gathering
Technology
• Hunting of animals and gathering
vegetables were mainstay of
subsistence
• Dependence on human muscle power
and wood fuel as the main source of
energy
• Nature – not under human control
• Ability to store food and
transport limited
• Consumption of materials from
immediate surrounding
• In case of resource shortage –
converted into nomadic bands or
tribal groups practising shifting
cultivation
Social organisation
• Small sized groups – kin groups having
face-to-face communication
• Limited transaction outside the group
• Minimal division of labour
• Equal access to resource – no pvt.
Property
• Conflicts among groups over access to
resource and territory
• Intense competition in stable and
productive environments compared to
harsher and variable env.
 Economy
• Natural economy
• Flow of resources from a limited spatial
area
• Demand on resource base – small
compared to overall availability –
equilibrium condition
– Small kinship groups tied to specific localities
• Gradually gatherer societies may have
confronted with shrinking resource base
– Breaking up of gatherer society
 Ideology
• Nature not subject to human control
• Gatherers regarded human beings as part
of a larger community including other
living creatures and non-living landscape
• Attributed sacred qualities to trees,
ponds, mountains, etc
• Treated plants, animals and elements of
landscape as kin
• Whole range of positive relations with
‘other’ beings of their locality
• Social practices of restraints -
sustainability
Social practices of restraint
• A quantitative restriction on amount
harvested of a given species/locality
• Abandoning harvest when density falls
• Harvesting from certain habitat abandoned
when yields reduce
• Abandoning harvest in certain seasons
• Abandoning harvest in certain stages of life
(of birds and animals)
• Certain methods of resource harvest wholly
prohibited (Ex: catching fish by poisoning)
• Certain age/sex categories of social groups
banned from harvesting
Certain prescriptions
• Provide protection to certain habitats
• Provide protection to certain selected
species
• Provide complete protection to
resource population at certain times
in a year
prescriptions to avoid
environmental collapse
• Rules evolved over a period of
time through trial and error
 Resource use by Gatherers
• Diversity of resource use
– American Indians of Amazon utilized
several hundreds of different species of
plants & animals
– Had distinct names of 500 – 800 biological
species
– Valued a very wide range of bio-diversity
– Evolved cultural practices which promoted
persistence of such diversity
• Deliberate destruction
– of resource base of aliens
Ecological Impact
• Low level of impact on environment
– Low pop density
– Low per capita resource demand
– Limited spatial scale
– Practices promoting
conservation/sustainability
• Impact began, when
– Resource base changed relatively rapidly
– Gatherer population encountered an
entirely new resource base
Mode 2: Nomadic
Pastoralism
Technology
• Domestication of plants and animals
– Cultivation – in moderate to high
rainfall/temperature
– Animal husbandry – tracts of low
rainfall/temperature
• Animals - (muscle power) – as source of
energy and food
• Took advantages of abundance of grazing
resources in different parts of region
 Pastoralism: Economy
• Flow/movement of resources over a larger
distance and scale
– High-bulk commodities like – salt
– High value commodities like–stones, musk
– Produced meat, wool from their animals and
exchanged with settled ag. Societies
Pastoralism: Social organisation
• Kin groups of few thousands
• Were in contact with large members of other
groups
• Division of labour based on age/sex
– Female: feeding, milking, tending animals
– Male: deciding migration roots, herding animals
• Elements of pvt property emerged
– Herds were owned by pvt households
– Pastures – common property: individuals
having rights to access and use
• Relatively egalitarian
– Coercion within groups limited
– Considerable cooperation within groups
– Conflict, coercion and usurpation of
resources of other groups
Pastoralism: Ideology
• Perceived human communities as separate
from nature
– Little attachment to locality
– Domination of nature
• No strong traditions of careful or restrained
use of nature
– Usurpation of resource/territories of alien
communities major strategy
– Ideologies/religions which rejected attribution of
sacred value to nature arose in nomadic pastoral
tracts
• Some rituals of importance on livestock
Pastoralism: ecological impact
• Contributed to gradual over grazing
• Ecological degradation through
organisations of trade and diffusion of
technology (of mastery over nature)
• Ecological degradation significant
compared to the gatherer mode
 Mode 3: Settled Cultivation
Technology
• Intensified production/removal of
certain species of plants from a
restricted area
• Continuation of cultivation in a piece of
land depended on returning to the
earth for the things taken away
– long periods of fallow – shifting cultivation
– application of river silt, organic manure
• Dependence of human muscle power,
supplemented by animal muscle power
Settled cultivation: economy
• Resource flow over a long distance
– Cereal grains stored and moved around
• Emergence of towns – concentration of pop
not directly involved in food prod.
• Emergence of a section of pop. Who did not
used resources for subsistence
– Silk, wine, instruments of coercion
• Large scale export of materials
• Initially, no counter flow from towns
• Much less subject to env. Variations – due to
flow of food grains and animals
Social organisation
• Family as the basic unit of prod
• Sex based division of labour
– Men: ploughing
– Women: weeding, collection of fuel,
fodder and water
• Partial pvt property rights
• Sharp separation of cultivable and
non-cultivable lands
– Ag lands: controlled by family
– Non- cultivable lands: controlled by
community
• With technological advancement and
concentration of powers of coercion,
village communities lost control
• Resource use by ag. Societies
– expanding resource base: when new
lands were colonised
– Shrinking resource base: in situations of
adverse climatic change, cut off from
important inputs, stagnant agricultural
Productivity, pop. growth
– Equilibrium with resource base: slow
pop growth, limited demand
• High levels of cooperation in conditions
of equilibrium – ex: peasant society of
Asia before colonisation
• Low levels of cooperation in conditions
of scarcity – ex: 17th/18th century
Europe/America
Settled Cultivation: Ideology
• Had established control over nature,
but still subject to its calamities
– Thus, perceived humans as one among a
community of being, including elements of
nature
• Restrained use of nature – in situation
of equilibrium
– Linked to philosophy of minimizing risk
rather than maximizing profit
– Related to agriculture – crop rotation,
community managed irrigation, non-
cultivated land
– Required high degree of cooperation
– Customs, traditions provided the
institutional framework for human-nature
interaction
• in situation of expanding resource base –
perceived humans as separate from nature
Settled cultivation: ecological impact
• Intermediate ecological degradation
– Conversion of forest lands into grazing
land/crop-field
– Removal of forest produce for fuel, fodder,
manure, building material
– Discovery of iron- important tool for
colonisation of forests
– Improvement in hunting tech.
– Transformation of landscape, extermination of
certain species, introduction of weedy species
• Ecological impact moderate in equilibrium
societies
Mode 4: Industrial Mode
Technology
• Patterns of energy use – extra active
– harnessing (hydro power) and
mining (fossil fuels) natural resource
• Great improvements in transportation
– Shifting of bulky goods (timber, rock)
• Global resource flow – great abilities
of material processing, storage, trans.
Industrial mode: Economy
• Intensification of resource use – over
use and exhaustion of resources
– Search for substitutes (coal in place of
wood)
• Asymmetric resource flow between
industrial and colonized countries
• Production of high volume of waste
– Dumping in global commons
Social organisation
• Elaborate division of labour
• Extremely fluid groups and rise of
individualism
– Expansion of role of state in regulating
individual use of resources
• With erosion of community state comes in
to monopolise resources
– Then transforms it to private industries
– State ownership of forests – then handing it
over to industries
– Sufferers are villages based system of
community forest, pasture lands
Ideology
• Total rejection of the ideas that
humans are part of a larger community
of beings including nature
• Humans are separate from nature and
have every right to exploit it for their
own wellbeing
• Desacralisation of nature
• Emphasis on market with a belief that
it will allocate resources effectively
• Ideology of conquest over nature
 Ecological impact
• No longer dependent of locality for
resource extraction –
– Conservation of own resources and
depletion of others (ex-Japan’s
dependence of Malaysia/ Indonesia
forests)
• Radical modification of landscape
• Two paradoxes of ecological impact
– Closer to the forest – less degradation
– Faster the development of scientific knowledge
about composition and functioning of forest,
greater the speed of deforestation