ABSTRACT
The term ‘ecological modernization’ is currently used in the literature for the process by which environmental variables have been internalised by institutions to promote the market economy, political consensus and technological adjustment. Yet what can account for the resistance to adapting the technical and material basis of the accumulation of capital – production model, energy mix, etc. – beyond what the market itself determines? Has the ecological selfcriticism of capitalism proved unjustiable and unconvincing for the agents of capitalism themselves? The critical interpretation associated with some social movements is that no changes have actually been adopted to date in the technical-spatial practices and patterns of capitalist intensive accumulation to the requirements of utilitarian ecosystem reproduction – except to the extent permitted by mercantile dynamics – because of the prevailing socio-spatial divide in environmental degradation. The environmental damage caused by capitalistic development is systematically apportioned to the dominated social and ethnic groups, either through expropriation of the territorial bases of nonhegemonic forms of social production, or through deterioration of the reproductive bases of social groups that are not integrated into the capital circuit. The social mechanism used to achieve the unequal imposition of risks within or between countries in liberalized capitalism is the threat of company relocation, or investment location blackmail, forcing workers to compete not only for their pay but also for the legal rights and conditions designed to ensure social and environmental protection. This chapter will discuss the operation of this kind of social mechanism in Brazil based on case studies of a steel works and a pulp producer.
