Skip to main content

The Organic Metabolism

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Social Metabolism

Part of the book series: Environmental History ((ENVHIS,volume 3))

Abstract

All evidence points to that about 5,000 years ago a complex combination of factors—including a leap in mental capacity of humans, a generalized increase in temperatures (end of the Glacial age), and particularly, the management of landscapes and plant and animal species—gave place to a qualitatively different relation between human societies and their environments.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Agnoletti M (ed) (2006) The conservation of cultural landscapes. CAB International, Massachusette

    Google Scholar 

  • Allen TFH, Tainer JA, Hoekstra TW (2003) Supply-side sustainability. Columbia University Press, New Jersey

    Google Scholar 

  • Bartra R (1974) Tributo y tenencia de la tierra en la sociedad azteca. In: Bartra R (ed) El Modo de Producción Asiático. Editorial Era, México, pp 212–231

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu P (2004) El baile de los solteros: la crisis de la sociedad campesina en el Bearne. Anagrama, Barcelona

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu P (1991) El sentido práctico. Taurus, Madrid

    Google Scholar 

  • Burger J (1987) Report of the frontier: the state of the world’s of indigenous peoples. Zed Books, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Calva JL (1988) Los Campesinos ante el Devenir. Siglo XXI Editores, México

    Google Scholar 

  • Cantera-Montenegro E (1997) La Agricultura de la Edad Media. Arco Libros, Madrid

    Google Scholar 

  • Casas A, Caballero J, Mapes C, Zárate S (1997) Manejo de la vegetación, domesticación de plantas y porigen de la agricultura en Mesoamérica. Bol Soc Bot México 61:31–47

    Google Scholar 

  • Cavalli-Sforza L (1996) The spread of agriculture and nomadic pastoralism: insights from genetics, linguistics and archeology. In: Harris D (ed) The origin and spread of agriculture and pastoralism. UCL Press, UK, pp 51–69

    Google Scholar 

  • Cipolla C (1993) Contra un enemigo mortal e invisible. Crítica, Barcelona

    Google Scholar 

  • Cipolla CM (1978) Historia económica de la población mundial. Editorial Crítica, Barcelona

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen MN (1989) Health and rise of civilization. Yale University Press, New Haven

    Google Scholar 

  • Cox GW, Atkins MD (1979) Agricultural ecology. W.H. freeman and Company, San Francisco

    Google Scholar 

  • Crosby A (2007) Infectious diseases as ecological and historical phenomena, with special reference to the influenza pandemic of 1018-1919. In: Hornborg A, Crumley C (eds) The world system and the earth systeam. global socioenvironmental change and sustenainability Since the Neolithic. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, pp 280–287

    Google Scholar 

  • Crosby A (1988) Imperialismo ecológico. La expansión biológica de Europa, 900–1900. Editorial Crítica, Barcelona

    Google Scholar 

  • De Vries, Bert J (2007) In search of sustainability: what can we learn from the past? In: Hornborg A, Crumley C (eds) The world system and the earth systeam, global socioenvironmental change and sustenainability since the neolithic. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, pp 243–357

    Google Scholar 

  • Daly HE (1973) Toward a steady-state economy. W. H. Freem, San Francisco

    Google Scholar 

  • De Vries J (2008) The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present. Cambridge University Press, UK

    Google Scholar 

  • Denevan DW (1992) The pristine myth: the landscape of the Americas in 1492. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 82(3):369–385

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Denevan WM (1982) Hydraulic agriculture in the American tropics: forms, measures and recent research. In: Flannery KV (ed) Maya subsistence. Academic Press, Washington DC, pp 181–204

    Google Scholar 

  • Donkin RA (1979) Agricultural terracing in the aboriginal new world. University of Arizona Press, Tucson

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellis ECy, Wang SM (1997) Sustainable traditional agriculture in the Tai Lake region of China. Ecosyst Environ 61:177–193

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ewald P (1994) The evolution of infectious disease. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Fischer-Kowalski M, Haberl H (1997) Tons, joules, and money: modes of production and their sustainability problems. Soc Nat Res 10:61–85

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fischer-Kowalski M , Haberl H, Krausmann F (2007) Conclusions: likely and unlikely pasts, possible and impossible futures. In: Fisher-Kowalski M, Haberl H (eds) Socioecological transitions and global change. trajectories of social metabolism and land use. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp 233–255

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Fischer-Kowalski M, Haberl H (eds) (2007) Socioecological transitions and global change. trajectories of social metabolism and land use. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham

    Google Scholar 

  • Fischer-Kowalski M, Simron JS, Ringhofer L, Grünbühel CM, Lauk C, Remesch A (2010) Sociometabolic regimes in indigenous communities and the crucial role of working time: A comparison of case studies. In: Social ecology working paper 121, Institute of Social Ecology, Vienna

    Google Scholar 

  • Fischer-Kowalski M, Simron J, Ringhofer L, Grünbühel CM, Lauk C, Remesch A (2011) Sociometabolic transitions in subsistence communities: Boserup revisited in four comparative case studies. Human Ecol Rev 18(2):147–158

    Google Scholar 

  • García-Latorre J, García-Latorre J (2007) Almería hecha a mano. Una historia ecológica. Cajamar Caja Rural, Sociedad Cooperativa de Crédito, Almería

    Google Scholar 

  • García-Latorre J, Sánchez-Picón A, García-Latorre J (2001) The man-made desert. Effects of economic and demographic growth on the ecosystems of arid southeastern Spain. Environ. Hist. 6:75–94

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • García-Martínez B (1998) El altépetl o pueblo de indios: expresión básica del cuerpo político mesoamericano. Arqueología Mexicana 32:58–65

    Google Scholar 

  • Garrabou R, González de Molina M (eds) (2010) La reposición de la fertilidad en los sistemas agrarios tradicionales. Icaria, Barcelona

    Google Scholar 

  • Garrabou R, Naredo JM (eds) (1999) El agua en los sistemas agrarios. Una perspectiva histórica. Argentaria/Visor, Madrid

    Google Scholar 

  • Guzmán Casado B, Iniesta-Arandia I, Martín-López B, García-Llorente M, Montes C (2011) Entendiendo las relaciones naturaleza y sociedad de dos cuencas hidrográficas del sureste semiárido andaluz desde la historia socio-ecológica. VII Congreso Ibérico sobre Gestión y Planificación del Agua “Ríos Ibéricos +10. Mirando al futuro tras 10 años de DMA. 16/19 de febrero de 2011, Talavera de la Reina; Spain

    Google Scholar 

  • Giampietro M (2003) Multi-Scale integrated analysis of agro-ecosystems. CRC Press, Boca Raton

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Giampietro M, Mayumi K, Sorman AH (2010) Assessing the quality of alternative energy sources: energy return on the investment (EROI), the metabolic pattern of societies and energy statistics. In: Working papers on environmental sciences

    Google Scholar 

  • Giampietro M, Bukkens SGF, Pimentel D (1993) Labour productivity: a biophysical definition and assessment. Human Ecol 21(3):229–260

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gliessman S (2002) Agroecología.Procesos ecológicos en Agricultura Sostenible. CATIE, Turrielba, Costa Rica

    Google Scholar 

  • Gliessman SR (1998) Agroecology. Ecological processes in sustainable agriculture. Ann Arbor Press, Chelsea

    Google Scholar 

  • González de Molina M (2001) Condicionamientos medioambientales del crecimiento agrario español (siglos XIX y XX). In: Pujol J et al (eds) El pozo de todos los males. Sobre el atraso de la agricultura española. Editorial Crítica, Barcelona

    Google Scholar 

  • González de Molina M (2002) Environmental constraints on agricultural growth in 19th century Granada (southern Spain). Ecol Econ 41:257–270

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • González de Molina M, Guzmán-Casado G (2006) Tras los Pasos de la Insustentabilidad. Agricultura y medio ambiente en perspectiva histórica. Icaria, Barcelona

    Google Scholar 

  • González de Molina M, Ortega Santos A (2000) Bienes comunes y conflictos por los recursos en las sociedades rurales, siglos XIX y XX. Historia Soc. 38:95–116

    Google Scholar 

  • González de Molina M, Sevilla Guzmán E (2001) Perspectivas socio-ambientales de la historia del movimiento campesino andaluz. In: González de Molina M (ed) La Historia de Andalucía a debate. I. Campesinos y jornaleros. Anthropos, Barcelona, pp 239–287

    Google Scholar 

  • Goody J (1986) La evolución de la familia y del matrimonio en Europa. Herder, Barcelona

    Google Scholar 

  • Grünbühel CM, Haberl H, Schandl H, Winiwarter V (2003) Socioeconomic metabolism and colonization of natural processes in SangSaeng village: material and energy flows, land use, and cultural change in northeast Thailand. Human Ecol 31(1):53–86

    Google Scholar 

  • Guha R, Martínez-Alier J (1997) Varieties of environmentalism. Essays north and south. Earthscan, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Guzmán Casado G, González de Molina M (2009) Preindustrial agriculture versus organic agriculture. The land cost of sustainability. Land Use Policy 26(2):502–510

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hardin G (1968) The tragedy of the commons. Science 162(3859):1243–1248

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harlan JR (1992) Crops and man. American society of agronomy. American Society of Agronomy, Wisconsin

    Google Scholar 

  • Henshilwood CS, Marean CW (2003) The origin of human modern behavior. Curr Anthropol 44:627–651

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holt-Giménez E (2006) Campesino a Campesino: voices from Latin America’s farmer to farmer movement for sustainable agriculture. Food First Books, San Francisco

    Google Scholar 

  • Hornborg A (2007) Footprints in the cotton fields: the industrial revolution as time-space appropriation and environmental load displacement. In: Hornborg A, Mcneill JR, Martínez-Alier J (eds) Rethinking environmental history. World-system history and global environmental change. Altamira Press, Lanhan, pp 259–272

    Google Scholar 

  • Hughes D (2007) Environmental impacts of the roman economy an social structure: Augustus to Diocletian. In: Hornborg A, Mcneill JR, Martínez-Alier J (eds) Rethinking environmental history. World-system history and global environmental change. Altamira Press, Lanhan, pp 27–40

    Google Scholar 

  • Kearney M (1996) Reconceptualizing the peasantry. Westview Press, USA

    Google Scholar 

  • Krausmann F (2008) Land use and socio-economic metabolism in pre-industrial agricultural systems: four nineteenth-century austrian villages in comparison. In: Social ecology working paper 72, Vienna

    Google Scholar 

  • Krausmann F, Haberl H (2007) Land-use change and socieconomic metabolism: a macro view of Austria 1830-2000. In: Fisher-Kowalski M, Haberl H (eds) Socioecological transitions and global change. trajectories of social metabolism and land use. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp 31–59

    Google Scholar 

  • Livi-Bacci M (1990) Historia mínima de la población mundial. Ariel, Barcelona

    Google Scholar 

  • Livi-Bacci M (1992) Concise history of world population. Blackwell, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Lizarralde M (2001) Biodiversity and loss of indigenous languages and knowledge in South America. In: Maffi L (ed) On biocultural diversity: linking language, knowledge and the environment. Smithsonian Institution Press, USA

    Google Scholar 

  • Loukotka C (1967) Map Supplement 8. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 57(2)

    Google Scholar 

  • Malanima P (1996) Energia e Crescita nell’Europa Preindustriale. La Nuova Italia Scientifica, Roma

    Google Scholar 

  • Malanima P (2005) Che cos’è un’economia vegetales? Fonti di energia e sostenibilità. I Frutti di Demetra 5:15–18

    Google Scholar 

  • Margalef R (2006) Ecological theory and prediction in the study of the interaction between man and the rest of biosphere. In: Ökologie und Lebensschutz in IntrenationalerSicht, 3d. H. Siolo, H. Rombach, Freiburg, pp 114–125

    Google Scholar 

  • Marks RB (2007) Peoples said extinction was no possible: two thousand years of environmental change in South China. In: Hornborg A, Mcneill JR, Martínez-Alier J (eds) Rethinking environmental history. world-system history and global environmental change. Altamira Press, Lanhan, pp 41–59

    Google Scholar 

  • Martínez-Alier J (2007) Marxism, social metabolism, and internacional trade. In: Hornborg A, Mcneill JR, Martínez-Alier J (eds) Rethinking environmental history. World-system history and global environmental change. Altamira Press, Lanhan, pp 221–237

    Google Scholar 

  • Marull J, Pino J, Tello E, Mallarach JM (2006) Análisis estructural y funcional de la transformación del paisaje agrario en el Vallés durante los últimos 150 años. Áreas (Revista Internacional de Ciencias Sociales) 25:105–126

    Google Scholar 

  • Marull J, Tello E, Pino J, Mallarch JM (2008) El tratamiento del territorio como sistema. Criterios ecológicos y metodologías paramé́tricas de análisis. Ciudad y Territorio 157:235–249

    Google Scholar 

  • Mayrhofer-Grünbühel C (2004) Resource use systems of rural smallholders. an analysis of two lao communities. Dissertation, University of Vienna

    Google Scholar 

  • McKeown T (1990) Los orígenes de las enfermedades humanas. Crítica, Barcelona

    Google Scholar 

  • McMichael P (2008) Peasants make their own history, but not just as they please. J Agrarian Change 8(2 and 3):205–228

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McNeill JR (2007) Social, economic and political forces in environmental change: decadal scale (1900-2000). In: Costanza R et al (eds) Sustainability or collapse?. The MIT Press, Massachussette, pp 301–330

    Google Scholar 

  • McNeill W (1980) The human condition. An ecological and historical view. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • McNeill W (1976) Plagues and peoples. Garden City, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • McNetting R (1993) Smallholders, householders: Farm families and the ecology of intensive, sustainable agriculture. Stanford University Press, Stanford

    Google Scholar 

  • Modelski G (2003) World cities: -3000 to 2000. FAROS 2000, Washington

    Google Scholar 

  • Modelski G (2007) Globalization as evolutionary process. In: Devezas T & Thompson W (eds), Globalization as Evolutionary Process. Modeling, Simulating, and Forecasting Global Change. Routledge, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore JW (2007) Silver, ecology, and the origins of the modern world, 1540-1640. In: Hornborg A, Mcneill JR, Martínez-Alier J (eds) Rethinking environmental history. World-system history and global environmental change. Altamira Press, Lanhan, pp 123–142

    Google Scholar 

  • Myrdal J (2007) Food, war, and crisis: The seventeenth century Swedish empire. In: Hornborg A, Mcneill JR, Martínez-Alier J (eds) Rethinking environmental history. World-system history and global environmental change. Altamira Press, Lanhan, pp 83–99

    Google Scholar 

  • Neumann K (2003) New Guinea: a cradle of agriculture. Science 301:180–181

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Odum EP (1992) Ecología: bases científicas para un nuevo paradigma. Editorial Vedrá, Barcelona

    Google Scholar 

  • Pascua Echegaray E (2011) Communities and sustainability in medieval and early modern Aragon, 1200–1600. Intl J Commons 5(2):535–556

    Google Scholar 

  • Reale O, Shukla J (2000) Modeling the effects of vegetation on mediterranean climate during the Roman classical period, part II: model simulation. Global Planet Change 25:185–214

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ringhofer L (2010) Fishing, foraging and farming in the Bolivian amazon. On a local society in transition. Springer, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rostow WW (1960) The stages of economic growth: a non-communist Manifesto. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Sandor JA (2006) Ancient agricultural terraces and soils. In: Warkertin BP (ed) Footprints in the soil. Elsevier, London, pp 505–533

    Google Scholar 

  • Schandl H, Krausmann F (2007) The great transformation: a socio-metabolic reading of the industrialization of United Kingdom. In: Fisher-Kowalski M, Haberl H (eds) Socioecological transitions and global change. Trajectories of social metabolism and land use. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp 83–115

    Google Scholar 

  • Schandl H, Grünbühel C (2005) (Guest Eds.) Southeast Asia in Transition. Intl J Global Environ Issues 5(3/4):115–118

    Google Scholar 

  • Sevilla Guzmán E, González de Molina M (2005) Sobre a evoluçao do conceito de campesinato. Editora Expressao Popular, Sao Paulo

    Google Scholar 

  • Sieferle RP (2001) The subterranean forest. Energy systems and the industrial revolution. The White Horse Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Sieferle RP (2003) Sustainability in a world history perspective. In: Benzing B (ed) Exploitation and overexploitation in societies past and present. LIT Publishing House, Germany, pp 123–142

    Google Scholar 

  • Siemens AH (1989) Tierra configurada: Investigaciones de los vestigos de agricultura precolumbiana en tierras inundablescosteras desde el norte de Veracruz hasta Belice. Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, DF

    Google Scholar 

  • Siemens AH (1998) A favored place. University of Texas Press, Austin

    Google Scholar 

  • Singh SJ, Grünbühel CM, Schandl H, Schulz N (2001) Social metabolism and labour in a local context: changing environmental relations on Trinket. Popul Environ 23(1):71–104

    Google Scholar 

  • Singh SJ, Ringhofer L, Haas W, Krausmann F, Fischer-Kowalski M (2010) Local studies manual: a researcher’s guide for investigating the social metabolism of local rural systems. In: Social ecology working paper 120. Institute of Social Ecology, Vienna

    Google Scholar 

  • Smil V (1994) Energy in world history. Westview Press, Denver

    Google Scholar 

  • Smil V (2001) Energías. Una guía ilustrada de la biosfera y la civilización. Editorial Crítica, Barcelona

    Google Scholar 

  • Smil V (2008) Energy in Nature and Society: General Energetics of Complex Systems. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Smil V (2010) Energy transitions: history, requirements, prospects. Praeger, Santa Barbara (Cal)

    Google Scholar 

  • Smil V (2013) Harvesting the biosphere. What we have taken from nature. The MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith BD (1998) Emergence of agriculture. Scientific American Library Publication, USA

    Google Scholar 

  • Tainter JA (1988) The collapse of complex societies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Tainter JA (1994) La fine dell’amministrazione centrale: il collaso dell’Impero Romano in Occidente. In: Guilaine J, Settis S (eds) Storia d’Europa, Volume Secondo: Preistoria e Antichità. Einaudi, Turin, pp 1207–1255

    Google Scholar 

  • Tainter JA (2007) Scale and Dependency in World Systems: Local Societies in Convergent Evolution. In: Hornborg A, McNeill R, Martínez-Alier J (eds), Rethinking Environmental History: World System History and Global Environmental Change. AltaMira Press, Lanham MD, pp 361–377

    Google Scholar 

  • Tainter JA (2011) Energy, complexity, and sustainability: A historical perspective. Environ Innovation Societal Transitions 1:89–95

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tello E, Galán E, Sacristán V, Moreno D, Cunfer G, Guzmán G, González de Molina M, Krausmann F, Gingrich S (2013) A proposal for a workable analysis of energy return on investment (EROI) in agroecosystems. In: Social ecology working paper, Institute of social ecology, Vienna, 2013

    Google Scholar 

  • Toledo VM (1990) The ecological rationality of peasant production. In: Altieri MA & Hecht SB, Agroecology and small farm development. CRC Press, Boston, pp 53–60

    Google Scholar 

  • Toledo VM (1993) La racionalidad ecológica de la producción campesina. In: Sevilla E, González de Molina M (eds) Ecología, campesinado e Historia. Ediciones La Piqueta, Madrid, pp 197–218

    Google Scholar 

  • Toledo VM (1994) La Apropiación Campesina de la Naturaleza: una aproximación etno-ecológica. Ph.D dissertation, UNAM

    Google Scholar 

  • Toledo VM, Barrera-Bassols N (2008) La Memoria Biocultural. La importancia agroecológica de las sabidurías tradicionales. Icaria, Barcelona

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Zanden JL (1991) The first green revolution: the growth of production and productivity in European agriculture, 1870–1914. Econ Hist Rev 2:215–239

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vasey DE (1992) An ecological history of agriculture. State University Press, USA

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallerstein I (1974) The modern world system. Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. Academic Press, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Warde P (2009) The environmental history of pre-industrial agriculture in Europe. In: Sörlin S, Warde P (eds) Nature’s end: history and environment. Macmillan Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilken GC (1991) Sustainable agricultura is the solution but what is the problema? In: Occasional paper 14. BIFADEC, Washington

    Google Scholar 

  • Wrigley EA (1987) Urban growth and agricultural change: England and the Continent in the Early Modern Period. In Wrigley EA (ed), People, Cities and Wcalih. Blackwell, Oxford, pp 157–193

    Google Scholar 

  • Wrigley EA (1988) Continuity, chance and change. The character of the industrial revolution in England. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Wrigley EA (2004) Poverty, progress, and population. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Wrigley EA (1989) Dos tipos de Capitalismo, dos tipos de crecimiento. Estudis d’Història Econòmica 1:89–109

    Google Scholar 

  • Wrigley EA (1992) Cambio, continuidad y azar. Carácter de la Revolución Industrial inglesa. Crítica, Barcelona

    Google Scholar 

  • Wrigley (1987)

    Google Scholar 

  • Wynn T, Collidge FL (2008) A stone-age meeting of minds. Am Sci 96:44–51

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Manuel González de Molina .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

González de Molina, M., Toledo, V.M. (2014). The Organic Metabolism. In: The Social Metabolism. Environmental History, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06358-4_10

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics