Hélène Tordjman

Hélène Tordjman is an economist, lecturer at the Sorbonne Paris Nord University, and member of the CEPN (Paris Nord Center for Economic Studies, UMR-CNRS 7234). She has worked on speculation and instability in financial markets and directed her research towards the dynamics of the extension of markets to new domains, especially to nature (genes, plant varieties, “ecosystem services”), a characteristic feature of the so-called green growth. The study of the creation processes of these new fictitious commodities (Karl Polanyi) highlights the fundamental role played by science and technology, or what Max Weber called rationalization. Today’s responses to the degradation of the planet are part of the market and technical phenomena that have brought us to where we are now: high technology, “environmental markets,” and “green” finance. Therefore, they are not appropriate to the ecological emergency, which requires a major conceptual and material rethinking of our economic and social models. She is the author of Green Growth Against Nature. Critique ofMarket Ecology, published in March 2021, in French, by La Découverte.