In search of the metabolic rift: Land-use, societal change and environment in the nineteenth century with particular reference to a study of eastern Monmouthshire

Allsopp, Phillip 2024. In search of the metabolic rift: Land-use, societal change and environment in the nineteenth century with particular reference to a study of eastern Monmouthshire. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

This thesis considers nineteenth century rural change in the context of a theory which suggests that the development of industrial capitalism led to a metabolic rift between society and the environment on which it depends. Key to this theory has been the work of Foster and others, who have sought to show how Marx’s critique of capitalism, far from being Promethean, contained important insights that historians have missed, particularly those coming from a twentieth century paradigm. After a discussion of the importance of the theory of metabolic rift and its place in history, the thesis considers an area of south Wales that was a borderland between industrial development of the valleys to the west and the developing marketplaces particularly in southern England. Eastern Monmouthshire remained rural, but life changed for its inhabitants, and this fundamentally altered their relationship with the local environment. The thesis reassesses some of the continuing myths about rurality and its connections with a world that has throughout history been changed by human actors. By highlighting the different ways that the transport revolution, the growth of a consumer society and agricultural changes themselves interacted to produce this rift, it shows a clear interconnection between the rift created by industrialisation and rural society.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	History, Archaeology and Religion
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HE Transportation and Communications
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	12 August 2024
Last Modified:	12 Aug 2024 15:44
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/171303

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