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The Culture Hack Method

The Culture Hack Method

Deep Dive: Effects

The Metacrisis

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We are in the midst of a profound metacrisis, characterised by unprecedented environmental and social challenges. 

Inequality, ecological collapse, climate change, biodiversity loss, rising authoritarianism and institutional racism are part of a complex network of intersecting crises stemming from a growth-based economic system. Capitalism – a system based on accumulating profit by exploiting the labor of the working classes – especially racialized (Robinson, 1983) and gendered (Federici, 2004) working classes – has entered a new phase since its inception in the 16th century: neoliberalism, or late-stage capitalism (Harvey, 2017). Governance by international businesses, financialization and an ethos of individual responsibility have increased inequality and commodification of resources and social goods worldwide. Today, the richest half of the global population owns 98% of all the wealth on earth whereas the poorest half owns just 2%. Neoliberalism is more than a system of market exchange. It is also a cultural system that reduces the value of life including human labor, living ecosystems, and life-force (Ladha & Murphy, 2023).  

The underlying ontologies of separation from the natural world, hierarchy, white supremacy and exploitation have ushered in a new geological global epoch: the Anthropocene  (Moore, 2016; Malm, 2016; Yussof, 2018).  Six out of nine limits of key global systems (or “planetary boundaries”), such as climate, water and wildlife diversity, have been crossed leading to near ecological collapse. Critics argue that the Anthropocene ignores the uneven historical responsibilities. Alternative terms highlight the specific systems, histories, and actors driving ecological crisis: the Capitalocene (Moore, 2016) points to capitalism; the Plantationocene (Haraway, Tsing et al., 2015) emphasizes colonialism and monoculture; and the Chthulucene (Haraway, 2016) reimagines multispecies futures based on entanglement and relationality.

Post-capitalism is a concept that enables us to better understand what we want to transition out of and transition into. It is a “conceptual container” for a pluriverse of adjacent futures (Escobar, 2018) based on shared values such as relationality, reciprocity, cooperation, equity, interbeing, empathy and solidarity. Living post-capitalist realities exist among Indigenous and spiritual cultures who tend to exist based on animistic, ecocentric and relational principles such as Buen Vivir, Comunalidad, Ubuntu and Interbeing. These post-capitalist realities might offer inspiration as to how to responsibly hospice anthropocentric capitalism.

Read more about inspiration for the transition in our  Deep Dive: Inspiration for Onto-shifts: Embodying Indigeneity

Further reading

Read more through our Issues

Exposing the problem of land ownership (CHL, 2023)

The Carbon Fixation: how Philanthropy and Aid Miss the Real Crisis (CHL, 2024)

Watch: In the Anthropocene (CHL, 2022)

Anthropogenic Effects: Progress against Life and People (CHL, 2022)Issue 01: Culture and the Anthropocene (CHL, 2022)

Footnotes

  1. Read more about the racialized nature of property relations through racial capitalism, E.g. Robinson, Cedric, J. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. 1983.
  2. Read more about the gendered nature of property relations through Feminist-Marxist scholarship, e.g. in Europe: Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch. Autonomedia, 2004
  3. Harvey, David. “The ‘new’ imperialism: accumulation by dispossession.” In Karl Marx, pp. 213-237. Routledge, 2017; Harvey develops Marx’s concept of “primitive accumulation” https://www.exploring-economics.org/en/discover/anti-capitalist-chronicles-accumulation-by-disp
  4. World Inequality Report, 2022, https://wir2022.wid.world/chapter-1/
  5. https://www.postcapitalistphilanthropy.org/knowledge
  6. Anthropocene is a term from the natural sciences that became widely used in the humanities and social sciences. It follows the Holocene (an epoch that started around 12000 years ago during the last glacial retreat, in which the stable and warm climate provided ideal conditions for the invention of agriculture: the Neolithic or Agricultural Revolution). There is disagreement as to when exactly the Anthropocene started: e.g. 8000 years ago when farming and agriculture became widespread (Ruddiman, 2003); or the peak of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century (Steffen et al, 2011). Acknowledging its beginnings as the Industrial Revolution implies historical responsibility for industrialized countries (Chakrabarty, 2018). See an overview of the Anthropocene or read key texts:. Chakrabarty Dipesh, The Climate of History: Four Theses. Critical Inquiry 35(2): 197-222 (2009); Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “Anthropocene time.” History and Theory 57, no. 1 (2018): 5-32;  Zalasiewicz, Jan et al. “Are we now living in the Anthropocene?” GSA Today 18 (2): 4–8 (2008) see further reading page for more information.
  7. Moore, J. W. (Ed.). (2016). Anthropocene or capitalocene?: Nature, history, and the crisis of capitalism. Pm Press; Malm, A. (2016). Fossil capital: The rise of steam power and the roots of global warming. Verso Books; Yusoff, K. (2018). A billion black Anthropocenes or none. U of Minnesota Press
  8. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/13/earth-well-outside-safe-operating-space-for-humanity-scientists-find
  9. Moore, J (2016) Ibid;  Haraway, D (2016).. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene; Haraway, D et al (2016). “Anthropologists Are Talking – About the Anthropocene.” Ethnos 81(3): 535–564.
  10. Escobar, Arturo. Designs for the pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. Duke University Press, 2018
  11. An “animistic” understanding of the world involves the attribution of a living essence or spirit to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena such as weather systems or rivers. Read more on Animism. 
  12.  Buen Vivir is a concept from the Quechua people of the Andes in South America (Abya Yala), in which “the subject of wellbeing is not the individual, but the individual in the social context of their community and in a unique environmental situation” (Gudynas, 2013). See Gudynas, E. (2011). Buen Vivir: today’s tomorrow. development, 54(4), 441-447;  The Guardian, (2013) Buen vivir: the social philosophy inspiring movements in South America.
  13. Communalidad is a framework born from the pueblos in Mesoamerica and Indigenous anthropologists to describe the interconnection of people with their environment and centres around four pillars of communal life: 1) communal governance (popular assemblies); 2) communal territory, 3) work for the benefit of the whole; 4) communal celebration. See Martínez Lunda, J, (2010). Comunalidad as the Axis of Oaxacan Thought in Mexico. New world of indigenous resistance: Noam Chomsky and voices from North, South, and Central America. San Francisco: City Lights Book.
  14. Ubuntu, meaning “I am who I am through you”, is from the Bantu African cosmologies. It emphasises human mutuality and provides a counterweight to rampant individualism to reconsider society/nature/self relations. Ogude, J, (2012) “I Am Because We Are”: the African Philosophy of Ubuntu; Le Grange, L. Ubuntu, ukama and the healing of nature, self and society. Educational philosophy and theory, 44(sup2), 56-67.
  15. “Interbeing” is a perspective attributed to Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh that recognises how inherently entangled “being” is. It’s more than interdependence and relationality: we are not just interconnected but mutually caused. Watch or read more.
  16. Embodying Indigeneity – Culture Hack Labs
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