(RE) READING ENVIRONMENT IN A MARKET SOCIETY: THE SOCIO-SPATIALITY OF SOCIAL COSTS

N. Tunga Köroğlu (Middle East Technical University)

The market society has a habit to read the environment as a nonsocial commodity that is presented to individual human exploitation. Doing so, it has created a fictitious commodity that has not only exploited the excluded nature, but has also exploited the whole society. It is argued that, however, such exploitation has its limits. Increasing risks of an end to the ongoing economic development has produced its counter-arguments that differ in a great variety, either applicable or not. Hence, attempts to cope with the environmental damage that it creates do not highlight a reasonable solution, unless digressed from the market society. Well-known approaches rather postpone the problems and suppress the approaching ecological thresholds, than solving them.

Although a pure market oriented solution seems not to be existing, co-institutional regulations underline some applicable alternatives. The aim of this paper, consequently, is to analyze how and why the market society is acting like this. Pointing that, a socio-spatial reading of social cost and revaluation of nature guide to an ecologically less problematic sustainable development.