Revisiting the “Subsumption of Nature”: Resource Use in Times of Environmental Change

Global material flows and resource use are increasing rapidly, with dramatic social and environmental consequences (Schandl et al. 2016). “Nature,” in all its different forms and functions, is being put to use for an expanding range of social and economic purposes, including through resource extraction and intensified cultivation. A recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP 2011, 7) report, for example, notes that over the past century, “the annual extraction of construction materials grew by a factor of 34, ores and minerals by a factor of 27, fossil fuels by a factor of 12, biomass by a factor of 3.6, and total material extraction by a factor of about eight”, a trend that shows little signs of leveling off. Meanwhile, an influential Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) agricultural assessment report estimates roughly a doubling of both meat and dairy production over the first half of the 21st century, on the back of already rapid increases over the last decades (80% increase in global meat consumption and 42% increase in global milk consumption for 1980–2002) (Steinfeld et al. 2006).

The unintended consequences of this expanding extraction, exploitation, and productive consumption of materials and organisms are widely known. It has triggered far-reaching changes to socionatural systems, raising widespread concerns over resource depletion, environmental degradation, pollution and—through fossil fuel combustion and livestock rearing—climate change. The depth of these concerns is powerfully illustrated by fears that humankind has now left the Holocene geological epoch, “the only global environment that we are sure is a ‘safe operating space’ for the complex, extensive civilization that Homo Sapiens has constructed” (Steffen et al. 2011, 747), to enter an uncertain Anthropocene, a thoroughly anthropogenic epoch in which “natural forces and human forces become intertwined, so that the fate of one determines the fate of the other” (Zalasiewicz et al. 2010, 2231).

The recent intensification of the Anthropocene debate, in all its controversies (see, e.g., Malm and Hornborg 2014; Moore 2016), and the importance attributed to questions of environmental sustainability raise pertinent questions about the exact character of the relationship between “society” and “nature,” a question that has been of interest to scholars for ages but that, as a consequence of environmental concerns, is receiving increased attention (see, e.g., Goldman and Schurman 2000; Beck 2010; Castree 2010; Clark 2011; Moore 2015).

This special issue aims to contribute to these debates by revisiting one particular thesis on socioecological relations, namely, the idea that resource use and environmental change are characterized by the subsumption of nature to industrial production processes (Boyd, Prudham, and Schurman 2001). While the origins of this idea come from a specific theoretical (Marxist) perspective, it is our contention that it raises larger questions that should be of interest not just to eco-Marxists and scholars of socioecological relations, but also to organizations grappling with environmental issues in a more hands-on way, and policymakers struggling to contain and reverse the environmental effects of economic development. In light of what we think is the larger relevance of the subsumption framework, this special issue presents an opportunity to revisit and evaluate Boyd, Prudham, and Schurman’s original text, put it in conversation with recent economic, technological, political and theoretical developments, and explore avenues for future research.

The Subsumption of Nature, in Brief

Boyd, Prudham, and Schurman (2001) first outlined the subsumption of nature thesis in an article for this journal a decade and a half ago. Drawing an analogy with Marx’s (1977) account of the subsumption of labor (discussed further in Boyd and Prudham’s commentary, this issue), they characterized the relationship between capitalist industrial development and natural resources as comprised of two distinct processes, namely, a formal or a real subsumption of nature. The distinction between the two can be seen as a measure of the degree to which different industries are able to alter the resources and environmental conditions upon which their activities depend, an ability that in turn hinges on the different “natures” they encounter. In nonbiological systems, Boyd, Prudham, and Schurman (2001, 562) argued, firms confront nature “as it is”: “an exogenous set of stocks or flows, biophysical processes, and material characteristics” that are difficult to manipulate. Rather than directly molding nature to their needs, extractive industries are forced to work with or around it. Metal ores, for example, are spread across the planet, and are in different locations found of differing quantities and qualities. These “exogenous” natural conditions provide set parameters that mining companies are forced to accept, providing conditions that can only be formally controlled, or “subsumed” to capitalist production.

When confronting biological systems, firms can instead seek to “improve” nature, making it “work harder” and therefore achieve a deeper form of “control.” Cultivation-based industries such as agriculture, aquaculture, and forestry are good examples of this. Inherent to the economic logic in these sectors is a continuous effort (through breeding and lately also by way of genetic modification) to increase yields, drive up reproduction rates, or otherwise alter the genetic composition of organisms to make them more suitable to industrial production. The transformation of broiler chickens over the 20th century is a case in point. Highly selective breeding for more efficient meat production has resulted in contemporary broilers that under equal conditions grow more than 350% larger than their mid-20th-century counterparts (Zuidhof et al. 2014). Reworking biological and ecological processes in this way becomes a strategy to facilitate industrial production and increase profit rates.

As is evident from the way their text has been read and used since it was published, the Boyd et al. thesis speaks to a number of different concerns regarding contemporary societies’ socioecological relations. We here want to emphasize two of them in particular. First, the subsumption framework contributes to what continues to be an animated discussion on the materiality of biophysical nature as a key factor shaping capitalist production (cf. Bakker and Bridge 2006). The subsumption approach understands capitalist development as a material, socioecologically contextual process, from which certain constraints and opportunities arise. Mansfield (2004), for example, draws from Boyd et al. to explore this idea with respect to the neoliberalization of North Pacific fisheries, demonstrating that the ecological and biophysical conditions of marine resources co-determines the organization of the fishing industry, as well as the strategies employed for regulating it. Sneddon (2007) explores a related case for Cambodian riverine fisheries, highlighting dynamics of subsumption under nonindustrial conditions. Prudham’s (2003; 2004) research meanwhile demonstrates how biophysical properties of tree growth help shape the organization and accumulation strategies of North American forestry firms. While these texts go beyond the original context for which Boyd et al. devised their argument, they illustrate how attention to the specificity of natural resources and environmental conditions helps us to understand characteristics of, and developments in, various economic sectors.

A second concern that the Boyd et al. thesis pertains to is the increasing penetration of nature by capital, that is, the subsumption of nature as an accelerating and intensifying process (see, e.g., Moore 2015). Scholars upholding this idea contend that we are witnessing a logical progression in the extent to which nature is enrolled for economic purposes, through the increasing material extraction of resources and seemingly ever-intensifying cultivation of biological nature. As with the focus on nature’s materiality, discussions here go beyond the issue of subsumption, and sometimes oppose the analytical categories of that framework. Smith (2006), for example, in his critique of Boyd et al. dismisses the distinction between biological and non-biological industries, instead centering on what he calls a general intensified production of nature across biological and nonbiological sectors. For Smith, this process is closely linked to the financialization of nature and the concomitant creation of new financial products and derivatives that integrate nature into ever more abstract economic processes. Robertson makes a similar argument for the creation of markets in ecosystem services, noting that “we are moving from a point where nature can merely be represented by money, to a point where money becomes the more perfect abstract reality of the community of nature, something whose survival is tied to discount rates and futures contracts” (Robertson 2012, 388). In this reading of the argument, the main focus is on historical processes involving at least a tendential progression from formal to real subsumption (though see Boyd and Prudham’s commentary, this issue).

The Subsumption of Nature, 16 Years On

This brief sketch summarizes some of the inspiration drawn from the subsumption idea, and the extent to which it has traveled over the past decade and a half. At the same time, of course, much has changed during this time. As already noted, not only have extractivism and attempts to increase biological productivity intensified, but the social and environmental implications of this trend have become magnified. From discussions on resource depletion, to climate change and biodiversity loss—to name but the most obvious examples—scholars debating socioecological relations today inevitably need to confront the contentious dialectic between economic development and global environmental change.

The extent to which such environmental concerns have come to feature in discussions on socioecological relations transforms the foundation for thinking about subsumed natures. It urges us to extend our emphasis from how nature poses a “set of obstacles, opportunities, and surprises” (Boyd, Prudham, and Schurman 2001, 556) for nature-based production, to the subsumption of nature’s broader social and environmental effects. Whatever one makes of the Anthropocene debate, it is clear that the ways in which nature is being transformed and economically utilized matter for a wide range of societal actors beyond nature-based industries. These include policymakers, researchers, and advocates concerned with the state of the earth.

At the same time, processes of subsumption itself now frequently occur on the back of self-proclaimed environmentalist discourses, practices, and regulations. As the mainstreaming of environmentalism brings it more in line with economic imperatives, nature is increasingly being reworked through practices that promise win–win solutions (see, e.g., Heynen et al. 2007), delivering environmental benefits while also furthering economic interests (a trend to which a majority of the articles in this issue bear witness). In this sense, it is worth pushing the subsumption argument somewhat beyond its original industrial context. Many of the proposals of techno-optimist environmentalists, for example, appear in line with ideas of nature’s real subsumption. To take one of the most radical illustrations of this, the fight-fire-with-fire approach of geoengineering proposes that problems resulting from human-induced changes in the atmosphere’s composition can be resolved by further changing the composition of the atmosphere or managing solar radiation, for example, through artificially seeding clouds or spurring global dimming (for discussions see Wigley 2006; Barrett 2008). While the intention here is not strictly profit oriented, the promotion of such strategies does appear to have a compelling economic logic and therefore serves to ring-fence established economic practices (Barrett 2008; Buck 2012; Anderson and Peters 2016). Theoretically, the conscious reworking of atmospheric conditions invokes the logic of subsumption on a planetary scale, and suggests that the real subsumption of nature need not apply to nonbiological systems or industrial processes alone (see also Labban 2014).

Equally remarkable is how what Boyd, Prudham, and Schurman (2001, 564) considered “the primary vehicle driving the real subsumption of nature,” namely, the manipulation of the genetic program, has increasingly become hailed as a possible strategy for rendering nonhuman animals more environmentally friendly. Purpose-bred species such as the Enviropig, mentioned by Cooper (this issue), illuminate how nature’s real subsumption is framed as good environmentalism. Reflecting Castree’s (2002, 141) observation that capitalism “is all about creative destruction, not simply ecological degradation”, the objective here is not just to make nature work “harder, faster, stronger,” but also to make it more sustainable, breeding animals that produce less environmental pollutants, or designing and managing “forests” that sequester carbon more efficiently (as in Carton and Andersson, this issue). Fears of an unstable and unknown Anthropocene in which geological nature has been irrevocably altered by economic processes are thus met by ecomodernist dreams of a “great Anthropocene” (Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015), where the perceived problem is rather that nature is not subsumed enough. The emergence of “ecosystem services” as an environmental–political strategy that spurs monetarization within ecosystem management appears to rely on exactly this logic. Given this, much interesting work remains to be done at the intersection of discussions on the subsumption of nature—as an intensifying yet differentiated process in which biophysical and ecological specificities play an important role—and the pursuit of environmental objectives. The Boyd et al. analytical framework provides entry points into these discussions and therefore remains relevant to inspire such work, even if constant developments in the natural and the life sciences demand that their arguments are continuously revised and refined.

Contribution and Structure of the Special Issue

The articles compiled for this issue revisit and critically engage with Boyd et al.’s arguments, while exploring how the subsumption argument can be put to use to capture the internalization of environmental concern within capitalist technological development. They do this by exploring the subsumption of nature thesis as a broad lens for understanding the contemporary dynamics of, among others, resource extraction, nature-based production, and contemporary environmental governance. Connecting the subsumption thesis with several current debates and theories, including regulation theory, the neoliberalization and commodification of nature, capitalism as an ecological regime, and the materiality of nature, the articles answer Boyd, Prudham, and Schurman’s (2001, 566–67) call for empirical work on the subsumption of nature, while also problematizing and extending the original argument. The articles engage the idea of nature in its broadest sense, leading some of our authors to go beyond the real/formal divide that Smith (2006) has previously problematized. This breaks down engrained distinctions between, for example, biological and nonbiological systems, matter and discourse, or nature and labor, allowing the authors to explore the subsumption idea in new and innovative ways.

The articles achieve this in a number of ways. First, this special issue engages with the differentiated character of the obstacles, opportunities, and surprises that natural resources create under a variety of production processes. Delgado’s article, for example, offers insights into how the industrialization of solar salt production plays out in Los Olivitos, Venezuela. Scrutinizing the transition from small-scale artisanal salt production in the region to an industrial operation, he argues that the dramatic upscaling of salt production ran into a range of ecological obstacles that were subsequently addressed through far-reaching interventions in the existing landscape. Like many of the other articles in this special issue, Delgado focuses on the broader social and environmental dimensions of this development. But he also makes a theoretical argument, by drawing a parallel with landscape transformations in agriculture that puts in question a clear-cut distinction between formal and real subsumption.

Several of the articles extend the Boyd et al. arguments by pursuing synergies with other conceptual frameworks. Through a focus on ruminant stomachs, Cooper’s piece connects the Boyd et al. framework to regulation theory to show how the real subsumption of nature is mediated through a particular mode of environmental regulation. The incentive for biotechnological interventions here emerges not from within the production logics of the firm, but in response to increasing concerns about the environmental impacts of the livestock industry, and fears of what this might mean for the industry’s future. Cooper’s article in this way usefully illuminates how the bodily properties of ruminants become framed as a problem in attempts to render animal agriculture more sustainable, and how biotechnological interventions are subsequently envisioned as strategies for reducing ruminant methane emissions while still enabling growth in the livestock industry.

Based on an analysis of the “Trees for Global Benefits” program in Uganda, Carton and Andersson meanwhile connect to discussions on neoliberal natures to illustrate the interlinked dynamics underpinning the subsumption of both nature and labor in nonindustrial sectors—in this case the generation of carbon offsets through a community-based afforestation project. Their article shows how the dynamics of carbon forestry, and the obstacles it poses for the production of marketable carbon offsets, are supported by the subsumption of carbon sequestration, a process that is simultaneously social and ecological, highlighting possible synergies between the subsumption thesis and contemporary discussions on the socioecological outcomes of market-based environmental policies.

The role of environmental discourse is to some degree present in all the articles, but comes to the fore most explicitly in Jönsson’s piece. His article introduces us to depictions of “in vitro” or “cultured” meat to reflect on how discursive interventions form a key moment within the subsumption of nature in biotechnology. Scrutinizing three cases, The In Vitro Meat Cookbook, Catts and Zurr’s bioartistic engagements with tissue engineering, and Terreform1’s meat house prototype, Jönsson contends that the subsumption thesis as framed by Boyd et al. overlooks how every industry is ultimately not only nature-based, but also discourse-based. This in turn exemplifies how entrepreneurs, artists, and environmental activists are all involved in contemporary attempts to subsume meat production within novel production processes.

Taking a similar approach, Elrick draws upon the subsumption thesis to engage with debates about the nature of cities and urban governance in San Francisco. Through a focus on how different natures come to matter in the first place, he scrutinizes contemporary efforts to subsume the lives of city dwellers within a governmental model that both figures subjects as self-investing bits of human capital and divorces emissions from social relations. As such, Elrick’s piece calls attention to the inescapably political character of those discursive and technological instruments that enable subsumption.

This special issue concludes with a commentary by Boyd and Prudham, in which they respond to critiques of their 2001 Society & Natural Resources article and highlight opportunities for further conceptual and empirical development in relation to the arguments made by the different articles in this collection. Their insights on ways forward for future scholarly work on the subsumption of nature are particularly relevant in light of renewed attention to historical materialist understandings of socioecological change.

We hope that the various contributions in this issue contribute to this revival. The articles provide a contemporary rereading of the subsumption of nature thesis, tying the political–economic dynamics that Boyd et al. explored to pertinent concerns with the wider sustainability of industrial processes, thereby broadening the object of analysis to include larger socioecological processes. In the process, the articles in this issue illuminate how the continued value of the subsumption thesis lies in a dynamic and nonsimplifying engagement with the complexities of socioecological relations. The subsumption framework, as elaborated here, recognizes nature as both exogenous, partly unsocial and nonhuman (Clark 2011; Clark and Gunaratnam 2016), a set of conditions that firms and a range of other actors need to work with and around; and socioeconomically endogenous, that is, materially and discursively produced (Smith 2008; Moore 2015). As such, it avoids categorizing a single “nature” as either entirely socially constructed or naturalistically given, instead taking the particularities of production processes as starting point for exploring the different ways that (different) natures come to matter.

In this sense, the Boyd et al. framework allows a conception of nature that is irreducibly multiple. On the one hand, it allows for nature’s continuous transformation at the intersection both of its own distinctive geological and biophysical logics, and as a consequence of socioecological relations increasingly imposed on it. On the other hand, it recognizes that some “natures” are decisively less malleable than others, at least with current technologies, and perhaps inevitably so. Future work on such layered ontology of nature seems necessary in light of the complex environmental challenges we see unfolding. In taking these concerns seriously, a detailed, critical, and nuanced engagement with the subsumption of nature appears well suited to help understand some of the most pressing social and environmental concerns of the 21st century.