How Does Capitalism Change The Environment

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Capitalism, the Environment, and Social Reproduction Fishermen disbanded from their water because of privatization of ponds, now unable to make a dollar a day and unable to provide for their families. Whole communities evacuated from their homes because of the rising sea level caused by global warming, now in search of new homes and struggling to put together one meal a day. Another community without salmon and eels because of dams built and rules made by colonial invaders, now without a strong culture and healthy, traditional foods to eat. Each of these scenarios show how capitalist systems change the environment, social reproduction of certain communities, and culture. Global capitalism and colonialism disproportionately impact certain communities and negatively alters their access to food, shelter, healthcare, water, and employment. In the article, “The shrimp eat better than we do”, global capitalism alters the social reproduction of fishing households of Panguil Bay and the Philippines by causing the, “loss of access to ecological resources, deterioration of local livelihoods, loss of food security, and loss of social services” (Wilma, 316). For example, the waters have become privatized to support the shrimping industry, so …show more content…

“Environmental sociologists theorise about relationships between ecological and social reproduction, highlighting how these processes are simultaneously disrupted under capitalism” (Willette, 5). For the Karuk people, capitalism and colonialism alter their cultural reproduction and accordingly their social reproduction because their culture “…is contingent on, and embedded within, material practices in the landscape” (Willette, 8). Therefore, laws regulating acorn gathering and fishing practices stifle the Karuk’s culture and change their familial bonding time for the

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