Paul K. Gellert

Financialization, Shareholder Value, and the Transformation of Timberland Ownership in the US:

In the last two decades, significant portions of US timberlands previously held by vertically integrated corporations have been sold off to institutional investors (known as TIMOs and REITs). This article explains the causes as well as the social and ecological implications of this transformation through a multi-level analysis that combines macrostructural theories of financialization with the shareholder value conception of control in corporate governance. Bringing this integrated perspective to bear on the industrial timber sector and its landownership practices illuminates both how financialization is built through specific institutional practices and how such practices are equally shaped by the broader structural pressures of financialization. By focusing on the so-called ‘real’ effects of financialization through shareholder value in a particular natural resource sector, we begin to outline the construction of an ecological political economy of financialization. We argue that an ecological political economy would address the broader effects of financialization on socio-ecological transformations.

Rival Transnational Networks, Domestic Politics and Indonesian Timber

Abstract Scholars interested in the promotion of “good governance” and those interested in transnational advocacy networks both are concerned with the potential power of external actors to alter domestic political structures. This article analyses the networks promoting neo-liberalisation and democratic practices in Indonesias forestry sector as rival transnational networks. The analysis finds that the Asian economic crisis and collapse of the Suharto regime provided a political opening for alliances between the two rival networks that helped to bring down the ruling oligarchy in timber, but the power of domestic oligarchs controlling the sector remains strong. In brief, there are limits to the power of both external networks vis-à-vis domestic power relations. Given the financial resources and constraints on non-governmental organisations, they may be unable to alter the deep structures of capitalist accumulation and distribution based in Indonesias forest resources.

From Managed to Free(r) Markets: Transnational and Regional Governance of Asian Timber

On the basis of research conducted in Indonesia, the author investigates a key transition in the production of timber for export. The analysis is based on a rich literature focusing on commodity chains. In addition to economic factors, the author gives attention to structures of governance, including the formation and dissolution of political alliances and coalitions. From the late 1980s through 1998, Indonesian plywood producers consolidated power in a state-supported domestic oligopoly, forged a transnational alliance that circumvented the power of Japanese trading houses, and supported domestic accumulation. The Asian crisis of 1997 to 1998 and structural adjustments imposed by the International Monetary Fund radically transformed Indonesias options, diminishing its capacity to compete, as China emerged as a major producer of woodrelated products. The Indonesian case may well illustrate processes of market remarginalization resulting from the implementation of neoliberal policies.

Optimism and Education: The New Ideology of Development in Indonesia

Abstract Based on ethnographic field research conducted in Jakarta, this article argues that there is a new ideology of development in Indonesia that is cosmopolitan, nostalgic and individualist. To understand the new ideology, a historical sociological perspective is taken to examine the nationalist period of anti-colonial struggle, the state developmentalist period of Soeharto’s New Order, and the neoliberal period since 1998. Two interrelated arguments are made. First, the ideology of development in Indonesia has changed from earlier nationalist understandings of Pancasila to a cosmopolitan neoliberal ideology based in a nostalgic nationalism. Second, a modernist Islamic perspective on secularism and Islam both supports and is supported by this ideological shift. These arguments are illuminated through two examples of the advance of cosmopolitan neoliberal ideology: optimism and education. Optimism is focused on individual integrity to redress Indonesia’s problems with corruption. Education is offered by optimists as the escalator to development. Empirically, the Indonesia Mengajar programme of sending young university graduates to teach elementary school in remote parts of the country is examined for its neo-modernisationist assumptions. The article concludes that this dominant ideology abandons earlier solidaristic forms of nationalism and holds little hope for addressing the vast structural inequalities in Indonesia.

Bunker’s Ecologically Unequal Exchange, Foster’s Metabolic Rift, and Moore’s World-Ecology: Distinctions With or Without a Difference?

Bunker, Foster, and Moore all address the unjust manner in which dominant actors in the capitalist world-system simultaneously exploit labor and nonhuman or biophysical nature while undermining sustainability. In the context of recent, largely one-sided criticism of Moore by Foster, this chapter highlights fundamental agreements regarding ecologically unequal exchange across all three of these sociologists. Then, it unpacks distinctions regarding capitalism as causing degradation, nature’s ontology, epistemology and dialectical analysis, and possible futures that might overturn the current unsustainable situation. The conclusion reiterates the importance of Bunker’s foundational work, peripheral vantage point, dialectical view of socio-nature, and realistic future vision, partly based in his posthumously published The Snake with Golden Braids.

Introduction: Ecologically Unequal Exchange in Comparative and Historical Perspective

At a time of increased societal urgency surrounding ecological crises from depleted fisheries (Longo, Clausen, and Clark 2015) to mineral extraction (Bunker and Ciccantell 2005) and potential pathways toward environmental justice (Martinez-Alier et al. 2016; Smith, Plummer, and Hughes 2016), this collection of papers re-examines ecologically unequal exchange (EUE) in historical and comparative perspective. The theory of EUE, grounded in Wallerstein’s (1974–2011) world-systems perspective and the work of Amin (1976), Bunker (1985), and Emmanuel (1972), posits that core or northern consumption and capital accumulation are based on peripheral or southern environmental degradation and extraction. In other words, structures of social and environmental inequality between the Global North and Global South are founded in the extraction of materials from, as well as the displacement of hazardous production processes and wastes to, the Global South (Frey, Gellert, and Dahms 2017; Hornborg and Martinez-Alier 2016; Jorgenson 2016a, 2016b; Jorgenson and Clark 2009a). These unequal relations underscore a large ecological debt owed to the periphery by the core countries; this debt is a key source for many of the previous and current environmental distribution conflicts that have taken place and continue to take place throughout the world-system (Hornborg and Martinez-Alier 2016; Martinez-Alier et al. 2016).