Technology as the material ‘how’ of socio-ecological (re)production: Reflections on Wassily Leontief’s ‘technological structure of the economy’

Wassily Leontief is widely known for his development of an applied approach in economics known as input-output (IO). In this paper, we turn to Leontief’s analysis to reconstruct a concept of technology based on his work. The concept rests upon an analysis of Leontief’s epistemological-methodological assumptions and the premises of his input-output model regarding interdependence. We argue that Leontief’s concept of technology highlights the physical process of technology in two senses: As concrete flows of material stuff used in economic production in the sense of a particular ‘recipe’; but also as emergent systemic effects of that particular ‘recipe’ throughout an economy, or indeed throughout a socio-ecological system. This contrasts with other approaches in the social sciences that understand the materiality of technology largely in terms of objects, artifacts, and infrastructure. We argue that future research could benefit from incorporating Leontief’s approach with work elsewhere in the social sciences. On the one hand, IO depictions of quantitative and systemic effects could be complemented by aspects that are not explicit in Leontief’s framework, including specific social relations such as power, and the role of certain actors or conflicts. On the other, Leontief’s emphasis on physical material aspects and their systemic effects can also link nicely with ecological research, even beyond the now common environmental extensions of the IO model. We argue that such work could yield interesting synergies in the future, not least in the field of ecological economics.