Infrastructural cascades: Trophic infrastructures of the capitalist “superomnivore” and their ecological ripple effects

Infrastructure projects are a hallmark of the industrial world and a driving force of the Anthropocene. This article develops an approach for studying the historical emergence and rippling ecological effects of infrastructure within an analytical frame that we call infrastructural cascades (IC). Drawing on the notion of trophic cascade from ecology, we argue that infrastructures should be conceptualized as nodes in metabolic capitalist systems and as alien landforms that disrupt ecosystems. Framed in these terms, infrastructure becomes a key site for tracing how capitalist metabolisms––especially industrial food systems––are transforming landscapes globally. Alert to infrastructure's embeddedness in wider metabolic systems, IC analysis focuses on the concrete ecological impacts of infrastructure, such as fences and feedlots, as well as subsequent human-nature entanglements those impacts engender. Among the many possible responses to an IC is the development of additional infrastructures to contain the effects of the former. Common in conservation contexts, these mitigation infrastructures are often limited in their effectiveness and can spawn their own cascading dynamics. The IC framework points to new forms of collaboration between social and natural scientists. It also presents new opportunities for storying the Anthropocene as a spatially uneven outcome of appetitive capitalist systems that, in aggregate, can be imagined as a “superomnivore” that continuously expands its metabolic range through infrastructural means. We develop this approach through two case studies from Botswana and Spain.