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This chapter expands on the material underpinning of popular sovereignty and self-and-other-determination by theorizing racialized alienation from nature and manual labor as allowing for environmental destruction, a process mediated by technology. Diagnostically, Du Bois’s essays on development and economic value first connect the intensification of racism to western technological needs, turning upside down techno-racist claims that equated whiteness and technological superiority. Instead, he argues that racism and colonialism are necessary to procure raw materials on the cheap to secure industrial profits. Racist ideologies operate within this context to confine nonwhite bodies to strenuous manual labor close to nature. Relatedly, Du Bois contests the inferior value assigned to manual labor that follows, showing both the centrality of raw materials and manual labor to high-tech societies and clarifying its political origins. On the critical side, Du Bois first contests the desirability of speedy “development” and forced integration into the global economy, which curtails racialized peoples’ orientation toward their wellbeing. Second, Du Bois claims the technological mindset and orientation toward profit are poor standards of progress because they obscure the cooperative character of production and prevent the political imagination from envisioning new worlds.
The Aztec Economy provides a synthesis and updated examination of the Aztec economy (1325–1521 AD). It is organized around seven components that recur with other Elements in this series: historic and geographic background, domestic economy, institutional economy, specialization, forms of distribution and commercialization, economic development, and future directions. The Aztec world was complex, hierarchical, and multifaceted, and was in a constant state of demographic growth, recoveries from natural disasters, political alignments and realignments, and aggressive military engagements. The economy was likewise complex and dynamic, and characterized by intensive agriculture, exploitation of non-agricultural resources, utilitarian and luxury manufacturing, wide-scale specialization, merchants, markets, commodity monies, and tribute systems.
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