Java Jive: Unequal Ecological Exchange in the Nicaraguan Coffee Trade

• In Event: 315 - Open Refereed Roundtables Session. B. Table 01 Shared and Contested Spaces
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 08. Marxism, Exchange and Environment

Abstract

The paper examines central operating principles of neo-classical economics in light of how they are mismatched with the natural cycles of ecological systems. Taking examples from the coffee trade, particularly in Nicaragua, we briefly examine ideas about comparative advantage, externalities to a system, economies of scale, perpetual expansion, and the invisible hand of the free market, and how they operate in economic exchanges. We connect local exchanges, particularly in Nicaragua, with broader processes in the context of globalization. We then turn attention to how operating on those same principles have profound ecological consequences. The article explores theories in the literature that include treadmill of production, recursive exploitation, metabolic rift, the contradictions of global capitalism, and the ecological footprint, and how they apply in this instance. Finally, the article suggests an overarching theoretical framework to understand development in light of the mismatches between global trade practices and ecological degradation in the particular case of the coffee trade in Nicaragua.

Authors

• Thomas J. Burns, University of Oklahoma

• Trent Cason, University of Oklahoma