The Nature That Capital Can See: Science, State, and Market in the Commodification of Ecosystem Services
The Nature That Capital Can See: Science, State, and Market in the Commodification of Ecosystem Services
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DOI：
10.1068/d3304
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发表时间：
2006-06
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影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Morgan M. Robertson
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文献类型：
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作者：
Morgan M. Robertson
在生态系统服务方面发展稳定的市场现在是美国和其他地方的一项主要的新自由主义政策举措。然而，这样的市场要求生态系统科学家在证明交易商品的价值方面发挥新的和具有挑战性的作用，这些商品的价值是使用生态学的整体衡量标准而不是毫无争议的重量，体积或时间的衡量标准来定义的。随着生态系统科学越来越多地作为生态系统服务商品化的测量技术，其精细和脆弱的特性越来越多地承受着资本循环的压力。在本文中，我报告生态系统评估技术人员的实地工作，并建议，这新一轮的自然商品化可能会压倒科学的能力，提供稳定的商品价值的代表。生态系统评估的方法和技术必须描述一种资本可以“看到”的自然状态--具有一种无争议的衡量标准--以便进行贸易。然而，这些评估方法目前产生的数据不稳定，只有实地技术人员创造性地临时翻译才能使这些数据具有经济意义。有人认为，这可能是资本关系扩张的一个实际限制或危机点，或者至少是关于生态系统服务商品化的简化的新自由主义叙述的一个复杂性。
The development of stable markets in ecosystem services is now a major neoliberal policy initiative in the United States and elsewhere. Such markets, however, require ecosystem scientists to play a new and challenging role in certifying the value of the commodities traded, which are defined using the holistic measures of ecology rather than the uncontroversial measures of weight, volume, or time. As ecosystem science increasingly serves as a metrical technology for the commodification of ecosystem services, its fine and fragile distinctions increasingly bear the weight of capital circulation. In this paper I report on fieldwork among ecosystem assessment technicians, and suggest that this new round of the commodification of nature may overwhelm the capacity of science to provide stable representations of commodity value. The methods and techniques of ecosystem assessment must describe a nature that capital can ‘see’—that has an uncontroversial measure—in order for trade to occur. However, these assessment methods currently produce unstable data that are rendered meaningful in economic terms only by dint of creative and ad hoc efforts at translation by field technicians. It is suggested that this may represent a practical limit or crisis point in the expansion of capital relations, or at least a complication in the streamlined neoliberal narratives about the commodification of ecosystem services.