Today I attended Alf Hornborg's lecture at the Department of semiotics in Tartu "Submitting to Objects: Fetishism, Dissociation, and the Cultural Foundations of Capitalism". Previously I have heard him present at an environmental history conference (the First World Congress of Environmental History, Copenhagen, 2009), but this time around I have also gotten to meet him in person (yesterday a group of us were out for dinner). I consider him, like Almo Farina, a fellow practioner of 'semiotic economy', and have suggested he checks out Farina's work.
I have a lot to learn from Alf Hornborg's work, and I am eager to read more by him from the crossroads ecosemiotics / ecological economics / world-systems theory. As became clear during today's lecture, however, I have some reservations with regard to how accurate his depiction of the global economy is (and how far we can get in understanding the current and future economy by basing our theorizing on models derived from 19th century examples).
I have a lot to learn from Alf Hornborg's work, and I am eager to read more by him from the crossroads ecosemiotics / ecological economics / world-systems theory. As became clear during today's lecture, however, I have some reservations with regard to how accurate his depiction of the global economy is (and how far we can get in understanding the current and future economy by basing our theorizing on models derived from 19th century examples).
