Introduction

The breadth of the pressures exerted by capitalism on the environment and populations could signal that this mode of production has reached its limits. Open and under construction, accumulation studies gather researchers that focus on the institutional and economic groundings of the new profit strategies to understand how capital is accumulated in a world threatened with social and environmental collapse. Centers of capital accumulation are therefore indissociably tied to centers of dispossession and institutions that allow for their development by establishing the political rules of the circulation and distribution of capital. This broad definition builds on a revisited version of the Marxist tradition. It contributes to a materialist approach to the social world by showing how economic relationships, that is, the way in which people organise to meet social needs, constitute the matter on which human societies are constructed. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.