Bringing in the Work of Nature

• DOI: 10.1177/0090591716638389
• Date: 01 February 2017
• Published date: 01 February 2017
• Subject Matter: Nature Returns

Political Theory

2017, Vol. 45(1) 5 –31

© 2016 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0090591716638389

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Nature Returns

Bringing in the Work of

Nature: From Natural

Capital to Hybrid Labor

Alyssa Battistoni1

Abstract

Ecological concern has recently prompted efforts to assess the economic

value of ecological functions: the “work of nature” must no longer be taken

for granted as a free amenity, but priced and accounted for as “natural capital.”

Critiques of this approach tend to defend nature’s intrinsic value against

intrusions of economic logic, but fail to articulate a compelling politics in

response. I here argue that nature ought indeed to be brought in to the realm

of political economy, but question the category of natural capital: instead,

extending the insights of feminist theorists regarding undervalued forms of

production, I articulate an expanded idea of hybrid labor that understands

the “work of nature” as a collective, distributed undertaking of humans and

nonhumans acting to reproduce, regenerate, and renew a common world.

This approach poses the value of nature as inherently political and suggests

the potential for new forms of more-than-human politics.

Keywords

nature, labor, capital, political economy, environment

Theorists of political economy have long been interested in natural resources:

how they can be obtained and whether they are being depleted; by what

means they are extracted from which regions of the world; how they are used

1Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

Corresponding Author:

Alyssa Battistoni, Yale University, Rosenkranz Hall, 115 Prospect Street, New Haven,

CT 06511, USA.

Email: alyssa.battistoni@yale.edu

638389PTXXXX10.1177/0090591716638389Political TheoryBattistoni

research-article2016

6 Political Theory 45(1)

to justify expansion of territory or contraction of populations; how they

should be divided and distributed. More recently, however, concern about the

effects of human activity on the environment has prompted efforts to assert

the value of nature in economic terms: “nature itself” must no longer be

treated as a free amenity to be taken for granted, but priced and integrated

into economic functions so that it might be valued.1 Dubbed “natural capital,”

the nature in question is not the raw resources needed for commodity produc-

tion in the manner of coal or cotton. Rather, it is composed of the “services”

that ecosystems provide to human societies through continued function: reg-

ulating carbon cycles, pollinating crops, filtering water, decomposing waste.

Political theorists thus far have not paid much attention to the rise of eco-

system services—but they should. At stake are not only the modes of con-

ducting contemporary environmental politics, but perennial concerns and

categories of political thought that are presently of growing urgency—the

relationship of the economic to the political, humans to nonhuman nature,

and intrinsic to instrumental value. Michael Sandel worries that “market val-

ues are seeping into every aspect of human endeavor”; the concept of natural

capital demonstrates that they are seeping into many aspects of nonhuman

endeavor as well.2 Indeed, critiques of the economic appraisal of nature

abound. Yet most tend only to affirm the intrinsic value of nature against

intrusions of economic logic or question the simplification entailed in mak-

ing natural processes legible to economics.3 Few have considered the impli-

cations of this shift for politics or suggested alternatives that do not rely on a

vision of nature kept apart and unsullied.

In this essay, I argue that nature ought indeed to be brought in to the realm of

political economy, and that political theorists ought to be concerned with these

changing modes of value and production. I question, however, the category of

“natural capital.” Extending the insights of feminist theorists regarding underval-

ued forms of production, I instead articulate an idea of hybrid labor that under-

stands the “work of nature” as a collective, distributed undertaking of humans

and nonhumans acting to reproduce, regenerate, and renew a common world.

I begin with a brief history of the concept of natural capital, and consider

the effects of calling things capital more generally. I review ethical arguments

against economic valuations of nature grounded in intrinsic value and explain

my sympathetic disagreement, and I discuss the views of the new materialists

who, from a different vantage point, urge us to consider nonhumans as actors

in our shared world. I consider the significance of labor as a category with

reference first to Karl Marx and then to Marxist feminists, whose efforts to

recognize unvalued forms of labor offer rich resources for understanding

“natural” production. I develop the concept of hybrid labor and explain why

I find it a more politically generative category than natural capital.