Critical Sustainability Sciences - Intercultural and Emancipatory Perspectives
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Writing transnational corporations from the standpoint of workers
As often the case with titles, the title of this book came to us when we had almost finished writing and realised the true significance of our findings. We had not been able to fit our stories into any orthodox pre-existing scholarly paradigm: labour process theory, workplace ethnography, gender relations at work, analyses of industrial relations, forms of employment, critical management studies. The reason, we finally realised, was not our lack of insight, but was to be found in the ‘material’ that we were analysing. From the point of view of workers, all the dimensions that have sedimented into different scholarly traditions and interests bear on their lives simultaneously. Management strategies determine all aspects of their work as well as their relations to each other. Salaries are elements of workers’ identities as much as the work they are doing and the position they occupy in the factory’s hierarchy. Family relations play into the way they do their work, the salaries they need, the ways they relate to other workers – and vice versa. Gender identities and gender relations influence the ways in which they perceive, want to conduct their work and actually are able to work. Place identities and spatial trajectories give meaning to their work relations, as much as the daily journey to work, from townships into town, from rural ejidos into a modern factory, merging worker and national identities. By no means have we been able to do justice to the contradictory interconnectedness of all these dimensions of workers’ lives. What we have tried to do is to make some of them visible enough to question the appropriateness of the partial approaches that keep us locked into the safe spaces of our specialised knowledge.
To write about transnational corporations from the standpoint of workers does not add yet another point of view to their description. It enables us to understand what makes them work: workers driven by circumstances and company strategies of fear and incorporation, but also by their desire to do a job well for its own sake and to earn the respect of those who use them, are producing and nourishing corporate global power. It is a power of their own making but one which controls them and threatens to crush them when they do not function according to its needs. As long as workers work as they are supposed to, they will continue to strengthen that power. Should workers realise and act upon their own power, should they see that corporations need them more than they need them, then they and their communities might be able to gain control not only over corporations but over their own lives.
La emergencia de la agroecología política es presentada como una derivación de la ecología política aplicada al análisis de las relaciones de poder en la regulación de los sistemas agroalimentarios. Al mismo tiempo que elabora una crítica de los fundamentos institucionales del régimen agroalimentario neoliberal, la agroecología política aporta referenciales teórico-conceptuales y metodológicos para apoyar procesos de cambio institucional para que las prácticas agroecológicas sean empleadas en escalas sociales y geográficas crecientes.
The impacts of food systems on climate change are of growing concern as meat consumption and the soy-meat complex expand. This article explores contrasting ideas, proposals and narratives in the Brazilian context with its significant power asymmetries and identifies two broad discursive repertoires voiced by the private sector, civil society and government to differently address issues of food and environmental justice, social equity and climate change. The influence of these repertoires on public policies can induce or hinder just transitions in food systems. Documents from 2008 to 2021 are analyzed, mainly focusing on multi-scale food systems, dimensions of justice and corporate political action. Contrasting perspectives on the drivers of inequalities and sustainability are also presented, along with respective proposals ranging from paradigm shifts in food systems to topical solutions based on private mechanisms.
Artículo de divulgación científica que presenta una definición de "crisis civilizatoria", una discusión de la aplicabilidad de este concepto a la crisis eco-social global y algunas directrices para la acción ante este escenario.
Agroecologists mainly work with producers from traditional cultures. Ethno-ecological studies conducted in recent decades, clearly demonstrate that the experience these cultures have accumulated can be defined as wisdom, formed as a complex integrating a set of beliefs that lead to a worldview (an ontological dimension), a repertoire of knowledge (an epistemological dimension), and a series of practices (a productive dimension). So far, agroecology has addressed two of these three dimensions interacting with traditional producers (the epistemological and productive dimensions) and, with few exceptions, has neglected the ontological dimension. This paper sets forth the thesis that the ontological perspective leads to spirituality, a theme that has been excluded. Recognizing and integrating spirituality into agroecological practice would reinforce agroecology as a socially and environmentally liberating activity, since it embraces key concepts such as Mother Earth and Harmonious Living (buen vivir, the indigenous principle of harmonizing with the whole of nature).
This article examines the emergence, in the Swiss context, of a new category of ecologically oriented 'spiritual' activists. The authors look at empirical studies conducted internationally on the link between religion and environmentalism and argue that 'spiritually oriented activists' are rarely investigated in quantitative studies. The authors then examine the findings of a case study of local milieus in two Swiss cities and nationwide data collected as part of the Swiss Household Panel (SHP). They close the gap between results coming from case studies, on the one hand, and representative studies, on the other, by introducing the variable of spiritua-lity into quantitative research. The results suggest that an ecological milieu is emerging comprised of people who are located politically on the left, do not self-identify as religious, but nonetheless practice meditation and have holistic feelings. The forms of spirituality practiced by these ecologists are 'subtle' in the sense of being adaptable, located in the background, and supportive of sustainability.
En este artículo hacemos una crítica a los ensayos de institucionalización de la agroecología, los cuales con-trastamos con los procesos sociales de los movimientos sociales. Argumentamos que la forma de trabajo de la agroecología popular es muy distinta a la lógica con la que se están diseñando políticas públicas, programas y proyectos por parte de gobiernos, organismos internacionales y organizaciones no gubernamentales, que acá clasificamos, según su orientación política, como "neoliberales" o "reformistas". Mostramos la radical diferencia política, económica, organizativa, metodológica, pedagógica y filosófica entre estas "falsas agroe-cologías" y las "agroecologías emancipadoras". A partir de esta divergencia proponemos seis principios para construir procesos agroecológicos realmente transformadores y revolucionarios: 1) cuestionar y transformar estructuras, no reproducirlas; 2) conformar economías basadas en el valor de uso, no en el valor de cambio; 3) fortalecer la organicidad y pensar en procesos colectivos, no en proyectos individualizados; 4) construir procesos horizontales, no jerarquías; 5) formar para luchar y transformar, no para conformarse; y 6) actuar desde la cultura y la espiritualidad, no desde el productivismo.
A partir de varias investigaciones interdisciplinarias en el ámbito de la administración de la justicia, se propone aprehender distintos acontecimientos recientes que dan cuenta de un racismo y una conflictividad intercultural en la macrorregión sur de Chile. La exploración de las distintas caras de las interacciones actuales y pasadas de los Mapuche con los tribunales estatales permiten visibilizar no sólo una violencia simbólica sino la formación de vínculos de dependencia y de subjetividad donde la justicia aparece a la vez como un ideal y un nudo crítico para lograr una convivencia equitativa. Planteamos que los estudios interculturales constituyen una herramienta que puede contribuir a generar transformaciones sociales hacia una justicia integral, primicia necesaria a la resolución de los conflictos existentes en nuestros territorios.
This article deals with the concept of living work in two authors who interpret Latin American Marxism. The philosopher Enrique Dussel, on the one hand, and the sociologist and vice-president Álvaro García Linera, on the other. With a hermeneutic methodology, using the content analysis, we deepen, in the first moment, on the concept of living work developed by this two intellectuals for, in a second moment, advance in a interpretative exercise that links this with notions of community and social movement, sketching, in this way, the theoretical potentialities for the development of one dimension non economic of the living work.
Agroecology has become an ideological foundation for social and environmental transformation in sub-Saharan Africa. In Senegal, agroecological advocacy coalitions, made up of farmers’ organizations, scientists, NGOs, and IOs, are using agroecology as an umbrella concept for proposing policy changes at multiple scales. We describe the history of the agroecological movement in Senegal in the context of the constitution of a national advocacy coalition. We then examine the “repertoires of collective action” mobilized by the coalition. Four repertoires are identified: technical support and knowledge co-production, territorial governance, alternative food networks, and national policy dialogue. Our analysis highlights the potential that these multi-level approaches have to sustainably transform the current food systems in sub-Saharan Africa. However, our research also reveals the limited agency of farmer organizations and the limitations of a movement that is strongly dependent on NGOs and international donors, leading to a “projectorate” situation in which contradictory policy actions can overlap. We further argue that, although the central government has formally welcomed some of the principles of agroecology into their policy discourse, financial and political interests in pursuing a Green Revolution and co-opting agroecology are pending. This leads to a lack of political and financial autonomy for grassroots farmers’ organizations, limiting the development of counter-hegemonic agroecology. We discuss the conditions under which territorial approaches, and the three other repertoires of collective action, can have significant potential to transform Sub-Saharan Africa in the coming years.
La Agroecología es un nuevo campo de conocimientos, que reúne, sintetiza y aplica saberes de otras disciplinas con una óptica holística y sistémica y un fuerte componente ético, para generar conocimientos y aplicarlos al desarrollo de agroecosistemas sustentables. Su aparición y consolidación representa uno de los acontecimientos más importantes en el área de las ciencias agrarias en los últimos años. Pero, ¿es una alternativa productiva económicamente viable para un país como Argentina, frente al modelo agro-químico industrial? Este artículo aborda ésta y otras cuestiones y propone diversos lineamientos para orientar las políticas públicas y producir un cambio del paradigma socio productivo de Argentina y los países de la región.
This article describes a systemic approach to analyzing issues related to food and eating, starting with a review of the different meanings and uses of the notions of food systems and agri-food chains. A systemic, multi-scale approach is developed to support the proposed notion of decentralized food systems in an attempt to account for the complementarities, conflicts, and hybridisms that result from the coexistence of distinct food systems in terms of modes of production and distribution, flows of goods, and the shaping of eating habits. Special attention is paid to localities and respective territories as analytical spheres, with the introduction of empirical evidence from two studies conducted in the Brazilian localities of Juazeiro (Bahia) and Chapecó (Santa Catarina).
This paper is based on research with environmentally engaged trade unionists in India. It follows their trajectories into the trade union and explores their environmental engagements. A short presentation of the history of Indian trade unionism, aims to understand its ‘multi-unionism’. Analysing three exemplary life-histories of unionists, their motivations to engage in unions and their relationships to workers and to poor people, three models of perceiving the labour-nature relationship are offered: the container model, nature as a mediator of survival, and the nature-labour alliance. I show that the way in which unionists perceive the labour-nature relationship is shaped by their practices and influences their environmental policies. Furthermore, trade unions who seek alliances with other social movements on equal terms, develop a more comprehensive perception of the labour-nature relationship and thereby the development of more wide-ranging environmental policies. I conclude suggesting that the conditions enabling a more comprehensive perception of the labour-nature relationship could become possible if workers along the value chain could collaborate to learn from each other about their working conditions and the natures they transform.
Key words: Environmental Labour Studies, The Labour-Nature Relationship, Worker Environmentalism. India.
Article is open access and can be downloaded at DOI
This article provides a rationale for inner transformation as a key and hitherto underresearched dimension of sustainability transformations. Inner transformation relates to various aspects of human existence and interactions such as consciousness, mindsets, values, worldviews, beliefs, spirituality and human–nature connectedness. The article draws on Meadows’ leverage points approach, as places to intervene in a system, to reveal the relevance of inner transformation for system change towards sustainability. Based on insights from a series of dialogue and reflection workshops and a literature review, this article provides three important contributions to sustainability transformations research: first, it increases our conceptual understanding of inner transformation and its relevance for sustainability; second, it outlines concrete elements of the inner transformation-sustainability nexus in relation to leverage points; and third, it presents practical examples illustrating how to work with leverage points for supporting inner transformation. In sum, the paper develops a systematized and structured approach to understanding inner transformation, including the identification of deep, i.e., highly influential, leverage points. In addition, it critically discusses the often contentious and divergent perspectives on inner transformation and shows related practical challenges. Finally, current developments in inner transformation research as well as further research needs are identified.
En este artículo argumentamos la pertinencia y urgencia del debate sobre la autonomía campesina e indígena para los movimientos sociales del campo en
América Latina. La pandemia del nuevo coronavirus Covid-19 evidenció una serie de debilidades y fortalezas de las organizaciones campesinas, indígenas y
afrodescendientes, debilidades que podrían ser abordadas y fortalezas capitalizadas a través de un giro autonómico en las estrategias políticas y de construcción
colectiva de alternativas. En el escrito analizamos: las raíces onto-epistémicas de la autonomía, tanto en los pueblos indígenas como en el pensamiento de
origen Europeo; ciertas renuencias para entrar en el debate autonómico; la autonomía como categoría de análisis, y sus vertientes, tanto explícitas como
implícitas, en la práctica de las organizaciones; y, finalmente, la autonomía como propuesta y estrategia de lucha.
This study illustrates how, despite the diversity of women environmental defenders and their movements around the world, there are near-universal patterns of violence threatening their survival. Violence against women environmental defenders, often perpetrated by government-backed corporations, remains overlooked. Research on this issue importantly contributes to discussions about environmental justice because women defenders make up a large proportion of those at the frontlines of ecological distribution conflicts. Through comparative political ecology, this research analyzes cases from the Environmental Justice Atlas, an online open-access inventory of environmental distribution conflicts, in which one or more women were assassinated while fighting a diverse array of extractive and polluting projects. Although the stories showcase a breadth of places, conflicts, social-class backgrounds, and other circumstances between women defenders, most cases featured multinational large-scale extractive companies supported by governments violently targeting women defenders with impunity.
Keywords: Violence, murder, women environmental defenders, EJAtlas, comparative political ecology
Abstract Food systems must become more sustainable and equitable, a transformation which requires the transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge. We present a framework of food sustainability that was co-created by academic and non-academic actors and comprises five dimensions: food security, right to food, environmental performance, poverty and inequality, and social-ecological resilience. For each dimension, an interdisciplinary research team—together with actors from different food systems—defined key indicators and empirically applied them to six case studies in Kenya and Bolivia. Food sustainability scores were analysed for the food systems as a whole, for the five dimensions, and for food system activities. We then identified the indicators with the greatest influence on sustainability scores. While all food systems displayed strengths and weaknesses, local and agroecological food systems scored comparatively highly across all dimensions. Agro-industrial food systems scored lowest in environmental performance and food security, while their resilience scores were medium to high. The lowest-scoring dimensions were right to food, poverty and inequality, with particularly low scores obtained for the indicators women’s access to land and credit, agrobiodiversity, local food traditions, social protection, and remedies for violations of the right to food. This qualifies them as key levers for policy interventions towards food sustainability.
Previously I have suggested that the fate of the global food chain rests on a moral question. Customers will either come to believe that sustainable organic local and ethical (SOLE) food can feed the globe, or they will acquiesce to the narrative of the industrialised food system on the decisive grounds of moral necessity–that only pesticides, corporate concentration, and GMOs can forestall mass starvation. The defining assertion in this space is the claim of a potential global food production deficit: the supposed challenge of 'feeding the 10 billion'. The crisis narrative has been led by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) whose mathematical modelling of the food system has predicted a 70% increase (now 60%) in the annual amount of food needed by 2050. By carefully examining the assumptions underlying its modelling, however, I show here that FAO modellers have consistently underestimated global food supplies and consistently overestimated food demand. But, as shown by its ability to adjust to the biofuel boom, the food system contains massive amounts of under-utilised capacity which goes uncounted by current quantitative models.
El objetivo de esta tesis es describir y analizar etnográficamente la agencia de las mujeres a partir de diversas prácticas y relaciones de cuidado en un distrito sojero del interior rural de la provincia de Buenos Aires. El estudio se basa en el análisis de un trabajo de campo etnográfico realizado entre 2014 y 2017, en el que se siguió a coordinadoras y participantes de un grupo de teatro comunitario, otro de medicina comunitaria y un tercero de promoción de la horticultura familiar agroecológica. El enfoque teórico construido para el abordaje de este trabajo se inspira, matiza y diversifica la propuesta de los estudios feministas del cuidado y dialoga con ciertas teorías sociales sobre la agencia humana.
Como consecuencia de un proceso de sojización que impactó en la vida económica, doméstica y laboral, la nueva dinámica productiva en el interior bonaerense habilitó una transformación en la agencia de las mujeres. A su vez, los espacios de desarrollo comunitario en los que se centra el campo etnográfico de esta tesis, al promover una política disidente de mujeres y contribuir a su constitución como sujetos políticos, influyen también en su capacidad de agencia. Así, se puede observar que son principalmente las mujeres –que cuidan a sus hijas e hijos, a personas de los barrios periféricos, al medioambiente y hasta a sí mismas− quienes rompen la barrera de la “discreción” y, como ellas dicen, “pierden la vergüenza” y proponen repertorios morales alternativos para la vida de la comunidad en transformación.
Fruto del encuentro heurístico con teorías nativas de esta etnografía, este trabajo discute con las miradas metropolitano-céntricas y con las ansias académicas o políticas de los feminismos eurocentrados. En diálogo con el feminismo poscolonial, se invita a pensar la agencia y la politicidad de las mujeres-madres-cuidadoras en universos rurales, desde perspectivas socioantropológicas, históricas y situadas. En tiempos donde el feminismo y las desigualdades de género están en la agenda pública, esta tesis se presenta contra ciertos sentidos comunes y académicos que sostienen que cuidar −en sus diversas formas− sólo quita posibilidades a las mujeres. Por el contrario, este trabajo sostiene que ciertas propiedades atribuidas a las mujeres relativas al cuidado, vía una visión dicotómica de las relaciones de género, motoriza la agencia de las mujeres y es fuente de potencial poder al permitirles convertirse en disidentes a quienes suelen ser percibidas como “las que cuidan”, “hacen pavadas” y no son “peligrosas”. De este modo se construye una división sexual de la participación y del trabajo social y moral, siendo las mujeres las que pueden hacer pública su crítica, con menor riesgo para su reputación que los varones.
Latin America is known for social movement organization and innovation, and for dialog among different types of knowledge (‘dialogo de saberes’). This has included dialog between academic knowledges framed by Western science, popular and ancestral ‘peoples’ knowledges and wisdoms,’ and so-called critical thought from global and Latin American revolutionary traditions. From these conditions, we postulate that a specifically Latin American agroecology has emerged from these dynamics. While the global academy recognizes that agroecology is simultaneously a science (in the Western sense), a movement, and a practice, it is the emergent Latin American version that is the most politically charged and popularly organized. This contribution uses a survey of selected Latin American agroecologists to evaluate the extent to which such a critical Latin American agroecology actually exists, and if so, what its characteristics are.
Este artículo se divide en dos partes. En la primera, propongo entender la reproducción de la vida a partir de la noción de interdependencia, para pasar a indagar en las características que tienen las relaciones que como humanos tejemos con los entornos que habitamos. En la segunda, planteo, a partir de una deconstrucción de la noción de naturaleza, una crítica a la dimensión simbólica y afectiva inscrita en la dinámica capitalista de reorganización de la condición de interdependencia. Concluyo el artículo, con una hipótesis dirigida a explorar la potencia transformadora inscrita en las luchas en defensa de la vida que se despliegan hoy en Abya Yala.
This book explores the complex interrelationships between food and agriculture, politics, and society. More specifically, it considers the political aspects of three basic economic questions: what is to be produced? how is it to be produced? how it is to be distributed? It also outlines three unifying themes running through the politics of answering these societal questions with regard to food, namely: ecology, technology and property. Furthermore, the book examines the tendency to address the new organization of global civil society around food, its production, distribution, and consequences for the least powerful within the context of the North-South divide; the problems of malnutrition as opposed to poverty, food insecurity, and food shortages, as well as the widespread undernutrition in developing countries; and how biotechnology can be used to ensure a sustainable human future by addressing global problems such as human population growth, pollution, climate change, and limited access to clean water and other basic food production resources. The influence of science and politics on the framing of modern agricultural technologies is also discussed, along with the worsening food crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa, food security and food safety, and the relationship between gender inequality and food security. Other chapters deal with the link between land and food and its implications for social justice; the "eco-shopping” perspective; the transformation of the agrifood industry in developing countries; the role of wild foods in food security; agroecological intensification of smallholder production systems; and the ethics of food production and consumption.
The roadmap for Ayurveda education in modern India is a complex exercise. It cannot be treated as a de novo project because Ayurveda education has been imparted from 1500 BCE to this date. The amazing fact related to its long history is that the foundational texts of Ayurveda like Charaka and Sushruta Samhita have remained unchanged across more than 3500 years. Despite its antiquity, the foundational texts contain principles and operational frameworks to solve contemporary medical problems in dynamic and evolving epidemiological contexts. There is historical documentation that shows that Ayurveda spread to Persia, Greece, and to countries in Asia since fifth century BCE. However, the global influence of Ayurveda in the West and East has not yet been introduced in scholarship on history of medicine. This article points out that in order to understand educational processes, it is the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of knowledge and not only goals and pedagogy that determine the uniqueness, commonality or differences in the analysis of education. In the twentieth century, under the powerful influence of the western scheme of higher education in India, the Ayurvedic leadership, perhaps in a temporary loss of self-confidence, thought it prudent to adopt and copy the educational design of western biomedical education, in order to establish parity with the mainstream. The challenge before medical education planners in the twenty-first century is to create new out-of-the-box knowledge institutions which will have autonomy to develop excellence far above the minimum standard set by medical councils.
El marco teórico de las Epistemologías del Sur fue propuesto por Boaventura de Sousa Santos como una vía para reconocer la diversidad de formas de entender el mundo y dar sentido a la existencia por parte de diferentes habitantes del planeta. Trabajando sobre este marco el presente artículo describe el concepto de ontologías relacionales, ilustrando otro tipo de herramientas teóricas para quienes ya no quieren ser cómplices del silenciamiento de los saberes y experiencias populares por parte de la globalización eurocéntrica. Frente a la idea monolítica de «Mundo» o «Universo», este texto plantea la transición hacia la inspiración zapatista de «Mundos donde quepan muchos mundos» o «Pluriverso». El texto se ilustra sobre algunos ejemplos de reacciones indígenas hacia la extracción minera, que no solo implican ocupación física sino también ocupación ontológica de los territorios. El artículo realiza a su vez el planteamiento de que los saberes derivados a través de las Epistemologías del Sur ofrecen mayor profundidad que los saberes hasta ahora surgidos en el ámbito académico en el contexto de la transformación social.
Just transition is gaining increasing attention. The need to consider social justice in sustainability transitions is finally being acknowledged. Research on this issue has, to date, mainly concentrated on energy systems. In this paper, we examine how the elaboration of dietary transition widens the spectrum of justice questions in sustainability transitions research. We explicate the arising normative questions along the dimensions of distributive, procedural and recognitive justice; widening the considerations further to restorative and cosmopolitan justice. Dietary transition widens the justice considerations to basic needs, food security and nutrition. By doing so, it evokes socio-cultural tensions that require recognition and procedural solutions. The uneven distribution of capacities to innovate and adapt require scrutiny from the just transition scholarship. Likewise, the recognition of non-human animals and integrity of agro-ecological systems. The relational three-dimensional understanding of justice can advance inter- and transdisciplinary research across various systems.
In this comprehensive Handbook, scholars from across the globe explore the relationships between workers and nature in the context of the environmental crises. They provide an invaluable overview of a fast-growing research field that bridges the social and natural sciences. Chapters provide detailed perspectives of environmental labour studies, environmental struggles of workers, indigenous peoples, farmers and commoners in the Global South and North. The relations within and between organisations that hinder or promote environmental strategies are analysed, including the relations between workers and environmental organisations, NGOs, feminist and community movements.
“To tell the history of the Caribbean is to tell the history of the world," write Laurent Dubois and Richard Lee Turits. In this powerful and expansive story of the vast archipelago, Dubois and Turits chronicle how the Caribbean has been at the heart of modern contests between slavery and freedom, racism and equality, and empire and independence. From the emergence of racial slavery and European colonialism in the early sixteenth century to U.S. annexations and military occupations in the twentieth, systems of exploitation and imperial control have haunted the region. Yet the Caribbean is also where empires have been overthrown, slavery was first defeated, and the most dramatic revolutions triumphed. Caribbean peoples have never stopped imagining and pursuing new forms of liberty. Dubois and Turits reveal how the region’s most vital transformations have been ignited in the conflicts over competing visions of land. While the powerful sought a Caribbean awash in plantations for the benefit of the few, countless others anchored their quest for freedom in small-farming and counter-plantation economies, at times succeeding against all odds. Caribbean realities to this day are rooted in this long and illuminating history of struggle.
Starting from a theoretical model of the generation of value in a knowledge-based economy, we explore the local management of immaterial resources in a post-industrial economy. To address this question, we analyse the management of immaterial commons in four representative locations of the artisanal fishing space of southern Chile, specifically the production of two marine species: sea urchins and the local mussel known as chorito. In this analysis, we observe two patterns through which global and/or local elites co-opt the symbolic value generated by local communities. In both cases, commercial intermediation operates as the basic conditioner of the whole process. On the one hand, the industrial and commercial links of the sea urchin production value chain generate a symbolic value through reference to the association established by global consumers with the landscape of Patagonia. On the other, in the case of choritos there is a symbolic substitution which implies the transformation or annulment of the local nature of immaterial resources in the minds of the same consumers. Both dynamics constitute an obliteration of the differentiation of the product, leading to a common result: over-exploitation of the natural resource and degradation of the environment.
