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Journal of Material Culture
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Money and the Semiotics of Ecosystem Dissolution

Alf Hornborg

Human Ecology Division, Lund University, alf.hornborg{at}humecol.lu.se

This paper argues for a semiotic approach to the problematic interface of economics and ecology. It begins by tracing the origins of materialist science and discussing strategies for transcending Cartesian dualism in the study of human ecology. It then discusses pre-modernity, modernity and post-modernity as transformations of semiotic relations with implications for identity and culture as well as human-environmental relations. The phenomenon of money is identified as a vehicle and epitome of the processes of semiotic abstraction we know as modernity. Various analogies between money and language are scrutinized and rejected. The tendencies of money to dissolve cultural and natural systems are understood as two aspects of a single, ecosemiotic process. Finally, a very general suggestion is offered as to how the idea and institution of money could be transformed so as to check the continued devastation of the biosphere.

Key Words: Cartesian dualism • economic anthropology • human ecology • materialism • modernity • money • semiotics • sustainability

Journal of Material Culture, Vol. 4, No. 2, 143-162 (1999)
DOI: 10.1177/135918359900400202
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