Coppering the Industrial Revolution: History, Materiality and Culture in the Making of an “Ecological Regime”

• In Event: 3555 - Section on the Political Economy of the World-System Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 2. Environmental Disaster, Power, and Conflict

Abstract

Data about the Industrial Revolution in Britain (ca. 1750-1850) might lead to the interpretation that the copper industry was of minor importance, as it was one of the sectors that added the least value, and only a very small fraction of that generated by the cotton industry. However, by using the figure-ground method proposed by Terence Hopkins, it is shown that copper was part of a complex constellation of relations, configuring an “ecological regime” (Jason W. Moore) that could only work in conjunction. By means of “zooming in” on different material processes, historical contingencies and cultural valuations involving copper throughout the world-economy and subsequently “zooming out” again, it is shown that the removal of copper from the picture would have provoked a cascade of consequences that would have made the Industrial Revolution unrecognizable. This procedure shows that British hegemony should be characterized as an “ecological regime” formed by a complex constellation of relations, instead of as the predominance of a single or a few “sectors” external to each other.

Author

• Daniel de Deus Cunha, Binghamton University