Ecological Imperialism: A Holistic Analysis of the Guano Trade in Nineteenth-Century Peru
| dc.contributor.advisor | Foster, John | |
| dc.contributor.author | Betancourt De la Parra, Mauricio | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2022-10-26T15:21:15Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2022-10-26T15:21:15Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2022-10-26 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Theoretical studies of imperialism, dependency, unequal exchange, and world-systems have commonly overlooked the ecological foundation of cross-national trade and relations. More generally, in the social sciences the influence –or even the very existence– of external nature upon or beyond society has often been neglected, despite constituting the basis of economic flows. In addition, despite their valuable contributions, environmental sociology notions such as unequal ecological exchange remain undertheorized. Seeking to address these issues and drawing on data from archives in Peru, Great Britain, and France, as well as on primary sources available online and on an exhaustive analysis of secondary sources, this work provides a historical, sociological, and theoretical account of ecological imperialism (understood as the expropriation of the ecological wealth of one country by another) by means of examining a case study of the 19th-century guano (bird dung) trade between Peru and Britain. The lens in this study is derived from ecology in the natural sciences and historical materialism in the social sciences, drawing for their interface on Karl Marx’s concept of the metabolic rift, i.e. the loss of soil nutrients that are drained into cities where they are discarded as waste. This work gives a holistic understanding of the siphoning of Peru’s nutrients into Europe and the United States, provides firsthand archival evidence about the atrocious living conditions of the guano diggers in Peru (chiefly Chinese bonded laborers), and emphasizes environmental conditions as much as social relations vis-à-vis center-periphery dynamics. This way, this study shows how the guano trade can enhance our understanding of the ecological, social, and unequal development effects of imperialism, both historically and today; how further analyses of socioecological phenomena can be carried out; and the importance of history for comprehending current socioecological inequalities within and across nations. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/27727 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | University of Oregon | |
| dc.rights | All Rights Reserved. | |
| dc.subject | Guano | en_US |
| dc.subject | Imperialism | en_US |
| dc.subject | Metabolic Rift | en_US |
| dc.subject | Unequal exchange | en_US |
| dc.title | Ecological Imperialism: A Holistic Analysis of the Guano Trade in Nineteenth-Century Peru | |
| dc.type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Department of Sociology | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Oregon | |
| thesis.degree.level | doctoral | |
| thesis.degree.name | Ph.D. |
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