in contrast to natural resource production, starts and ends at the same time as the labour that defines it (Bunker 1989: 591). From this perspective, it becomes apparent how resources which take thousands or millions of years to regenerate are traded, through international trade, for things that get produced on an on-going basis, resulting in a form of unequal trade. Furthermore, the additional value created when extracted materials are transformed by labour is generally realised in the industrial centre rather than at the peripheral origin of raw materials. These various differences in the internal dynamics of extractive and productive processes, and the uneven energy flows between them, provide an important understanding of geographical uneven development.
economy, and therefore does not enhance social complexity nor remains embodied in complex social organisation. The organisational simplification which results from this loss of energy limits the amount of human energy which can be directed and coordinated, and this in turn limits the total amount of power which can be generated in a social formation (Bunker 1985: 247). In contrast, the accelerated energy flows through productive systems permits social complexity, specialised technical and social organisational knowledge in an increased division of labour, and coordination of research and development of new technologies (Ibid. 26). Technical innovation and powerful social organisational forms allows productive economies to change world market demands by freeing production systems from shortrun dependence on particular extractive commodities as they become depleted. This increases the productive economies dominance over extractive economies and their periodic disruption.
Unequal relations between extractive and productive systems can therefore be explained by the informational and organisational forms which can only evolve in energy-intensive productive systems, and which generate increasing social power and the technology to extend this power over wider geographical areas (Ibid. 35). Because of the discontinuous social development in extractive regions and lack of self-sustaining communities, they often lack the dense political and economic linkages necessary for local inhabitants to pressure the state to stop repeated disruption through extraction. As the social relations of extractive regions become simplified, and regional or local specificities disappear beneath the culture of industrialised societies, extractive regions become progressively less able to defend their own social and physical environment.
Hornborg adds that in order to understand “development” or modern technology itself, it is necessary to examine the way in which market institutions organise the net transfer of energy and materials to world system centres. As he explains,
“Industrial technology does not simply represent the application of inventive genius to nature, but is equally dependent on a continuous and accelerating social transfer of energy organised by the very logic of market exchange”
(Hornborg 1998: 133). All centres of civilisation must be able to appropriate from their peripheral sectors the goods and services which they require for their metabolism (Yoffee in Ibid. 134). In order for this appropriation to continue, it is helpful if it is represented as a reciprocal exchange (Godelier in Ibid. 134). As an example, Hornborg notes how the Inca emperor offered “chicha” or maize beer to the locals in exchange for their work in his maize fields. He points out, however, that the amount of chicha used to “pay” the labourers could only have represented a fraction of the maize harvest which the emperor gained from their labour, thereby illustrating the exploitative nature of the arrangement. It is in effect the same situation which can be seen to occur in modern market exchange, permitting the import of energy to industrial sectors. With modern
technology, however, the productive input that is being underpaid is resources rather than labour (Ibid. 134).
The way in which the export of entropy or extract of energy by industrial centres from their peripheries gets represented as reciprocal exchange is through the notion of market price. The notion of market price conceals that what is being exchanged are intact resources for products representing resources already spent.
Hornborg explains that since industrial processes necessarily entail a degradation of energy, then the sum of products exported from an industrial centre must contain less energy than the sum of its imports. In addition, in order to stay in business, the finished products will need to be sold for more money than the amount spent on the fuels and raw materials used in their manufacturing. Hornborg points out that if a finished product is priced higher than the resources required to produce it, then “production” (i.e. the dissipation of resources) will continuously be rewarded with ever more resources to dissipate. (Hornborg 1998: 133). Furthermore, his research reveals that for any given set of fuels and raw materials to be used in manufacturing a particular product, the more that its original energy is dissipated, the higher the finished product will be priced, such that “the more energy dissipated by industry today, the more new resources it will be able to purchase tomorrow” (Ibid. 133). It is this logic, he argues, which has given industrial sectors, in the past few centuries, access to accelerating quantities of energy. The result has been both ecological destruction and global core/periphery inequalities.
The inequalities inherent in the geographical separation of the different parts of the total process of production can only be fully understood when the differential social and environmental costs to the various regions involved are accounted for. Seen from a thermodynamic perspective, the transfer of raw natural resources from extractive to productive systems must be regarded as one important element contributing towards underdevelopment in poor Southern countries. Conventional economic models cannot adequately explain uneven development between regions, since they focus only on production processes and ignore the environmental and social costs of extraction and the effects of uneven energy flows (Sustainable Europe Research Institute 2001). Unequal exchange however is created not only in terms of the labour value incorporated into products but also through the direct appropriation of rapidly depleted or nonrenewable natural resources. Therefore, the exploitation of resources and ecosystems along with the exploitation of labour and unequal distribution of monetary wealth must be considered as separate but complementary phenomena which affect the potential for long-term regional development.