Each of the four essays reprint­ed here was writ­ten for a spe­cif­ic occa­sion and togeth­er com­prise only the small­est selec­tion from a larg­er cor­pus ques­tion­ing com­mod­i­ty and ener­gy-inten­sive economies. The essays are pre­sent­ed the­mat­i­cal­ly instead of chrono­log­i­cal­ly to offer a bet­ter view of the sweep of Illich’s argu­ment. In the first two, “War against Sub­sis­tence” and “Shad­ow Work,” Illich reveals both the ruins on which the econ­o­my is built and the blind­ness of eco­nom­ics which can­not but fail to see it. The sec­ond two essays, “Ener­gy and Equi­ty” and “The Social Con­struc­tion of Ener­gy,” unearth the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry inven­tion and sub­se­quent con­se­quences of ‘ener­gy’ thought of as the unseen cause of all ‘work’ whether done by steam engines, humans, or trees. The sci­ence of ecol­o­gy relies on this assump­tion and, as Illich explained, unwit­ting­ly fuels the addic­tion to ener­gy. The close dance of ener­gy con­sump­tion and eco­nom­ic growth is char­ac­ter­is­tic of not just indus­tri­al­ly geared soci­eties. After all, ener­gy con­sump­tion steadi­ly increas­es even in so-called post-indus­tri­al soci­eties, fuel­ing the for­tunes of Google and Apple no less than Wal-Mart.

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