The Invention Of Scarcity

Author : Deborah Valenze
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2023-06-27
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780300271829

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The Invention of Scarcity by Deborah Valenze Pdf

A radical new reading of eighteenth-century British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus, which recovers diverse ideas about subsistence production and environments later eclipsed by classical economics With the publication of Essay on the Principle of Population and its projection of food shortages in the face of ballooning populations, British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus secured a leading role in modern political and economic thought. In this startling new interpretation, Deborah Valenze reveals how canonical readings of Malthus fail to acknowledge his narrow understanding of what constitutes food production. Valenze returns to the eighteenth-century contexts that generated his arguments, showing how Malthus mobilized a redemptive narrative of British historical development and dismissed the varied ways that people adapted to the challenges of subsistence needs. She uses history, anthropology, food studies, and animal studies to redirect our attention to the margins of Malthus’s essay, where activities such as hunting, gathering, herding, and gardening were rendered extraneous. She demonstrates how Malthus’s omissions and his subsequent canonization provided a rationale for colonial imposition of British agricultural models, regardless of environmental diversity. By broadening our conception of human livelihoods, Valenze suggests pathways to resistance against the hegemony of Malthusian political economy. The Invention of Scarcity invites us to imagine a world where monoculture is in retreat and the margins are recentered as spaces of experimentation, nimbleness, and human flourishing.

Author : Fredrik Albritton Jonsson,Carl Wennerlind
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2023-04-18
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780674293045

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Scarcity by Fredrik Albritton Jonsson,Carl Wennerlind Pdf

A sweeping intellectual history of the concept of economic scarcity—its development across five hundred years of European thought and its decisive role in fostering the climate crisis. Modern economics presumes a particular view of scarcity, in which human beings are innately possessed of infinite desires and society must therefore facilitate endless growth and consumption irrespective of nature’s limits. Yet as Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Carl Wennerlind show, this vision of scarcity is historically novel and was not inevitable even in the age of capitalism. Rather, it reflects the costly triumph of infinite-growth ideologies across centuries of European economic thought—at the expense of traditions that sought to live within nature’s constraints. The dominant conception of scarcity today holds that, rather than master our desires, humans must master nature to meet those desires. Albritton Jonsson and Wennerlind argue that this idea was developed by thinkers such as Francis Bacon, Samuel Hartlib, Alfred Marshall, and Paul Samuelson, who laid the groundwork for today’s hegemonic politics of growth. Yet proponents of infinite growth have long faced resistance from agrarian radicals, romantic poets, revolutionary socialists, ecofeminists, and others. These critics—including the likes of Gerrard Winstanley, Dorothy Wordsworth, Karl Marx, and Hannah Arendt—embraced conceptions of scarcity in which our desires, rather than nature, must be mastered to achieve the social good. In so doing, they dramatically reenvisioned how humans might interact with both nature and the economy. Following these conflicts into the twenty-first century, Albritton Jonsson and Wennerlind insist that we need new, sustainable models of economic thinking to address the climate crisis. Scarcity is not only a critique of infinite growth, but also a timely invitation to imagine alternative ways of flourishing on Earth.

Author : John Brewer,Neil Fromer,Fredrik Albritton Jonsson,Frank Trentmann
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 442 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2019-02-21
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781350040922

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Scarcity in the Modern World by John Brewer,Neil Fromer,Fredrik Albritton Jonsson,Frank Trentmann Pdf

Scarcity in the Modern World brings together world-renowned scholars in an open access book to examine how concerns about the scarcity of environmental resources such as water, food, energy and materials have developed, and subsequently been managed, from the 18th to the 21st century. These multi-disciplinary contributions situate contemporary concerns about scarcity within their longer history, and address recent forecasts and debates surrounding the future scarcity of fossil fuels, renewable energy and water up to 2075. This book offers a fresh way of tackling the current challenge of meeting global needs in an increasingly resource-stressed environment. By bringing together scholars from a variety of academic disciplines, this volume provides an innovative multi-disciplinary perspective that corrects previous scholarship which has discussed scientific and cultural issues separately. In doing so, it recognizes that this challenge is complex and cannot be addressed by a single discipline, but requires a concerted effort to think about its political and social, as well as technical and economic dimensions. This volume is essential for all students and scholars of environmental and economic history. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollection.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

Author : Giorgos Kallis
Publisher : Stanford Briefs
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2019-10-15
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1503611558

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Limits by Giorgos Kallis Pdf

Author : Teresa Amabile,Steven Kramer
Publisher : Harvard Business Press
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2011-07-19
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781422142738

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The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile,Steven Kramer Pdf

What really sets the best managers above the rest? It’s their power to build a cadre of employees who have great inner work lives—consistently positive emotions; strong motivation; and favorable perceptions of the organization, their work, and their colleagues. The worst managers undermine inner work life, often unwittingly. As Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer explain in The Progress Principle, seemingly mundane workday events can make or break employees’ inner work lives. But it’s forward momentum in meaningful work—progress—that creates the best inner work lives. Through rigorous analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries provided by 238 employees in 7 companies, the authors explain how managers can foster progress and enhance inner work life every day. The book shows how to remove obstacles to progress, including meaningless tasks and toxic relationships. It also explains how to activate two forces that enable progress: (1) catalysts—events that directly facilitate project work, such as clear goals and autonomy—and (2) nourishers—interpersonal events that uplift workers, including encouragement and demonstrations of respect and collegiality. Brimming with honest examples from the companies studied, The Progress Principle equips aspiring and seasoned leaders alike with the insights they need to maximize their people’s performance.

Author : M.S. Macrakis
Publisher : Springer
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 1997-10-31
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : UOM:39015041762116

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Scarcity's Ways: The Origins of Capital by M.S. Macrakis Pdf

Presents an exploratory critical essay on the Origins of Capital and the Foundations of Thermodynamics, viewing capital as a physical or biological engine that processes materials and transforms energy in an environment of thermal non-equilibrium and showing the importance of capital in the comprehension of thermodynamics. Reviews capital theory, evolutionary biology, the origins of life, and thermodynamics, and argues that the idea of scarcity as the fountain of history and its concomitant concepts of value must be incorporated in the substance of thermodynamics and the meaning of measurement. For historians and philosophers of science and economics, and engineering thermodynamicists. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Author : Bernard Lietaer,Jacqui Dunne
Publisher : Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2013-02-04
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781609942984

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Rethinking Money by Bernard Lietaer,Jacqui Dunne Pdf

This study reveals how our monetary system reinforces scarcity, and how communities are already using new paradigms to foster sustainable prosperity. In the United States and across Europe, our economies are stuck in an agonizing cycle of repeated financial meltdowns. Yet solutions already exist, not only our recurring fiscal crises but our ongoing social and ecological debacles as well. These changes came about not through increased conventional taxation, enlightened self-interest, or government programs, but by people simply rethinking the concept of money. In Rethinking Money, Bernard Lietaer and Jacqui Dunne explore the origins of our current monetary system—built on bank debt and scarcity—revealing how its limitations give rise to so many serious problems. The authors then present stories of ordinary people and communities using new money, working in cooperation with national currencies, to strengthen local economies, create work, beautify cities, provide education, and more. These real-world examples are just the tip of the iceberg—over four thousand cooperative currencies are already in existence. The book provides remedies for challenges faced by governments, businesses, nonprofits, local communities, and even banks. It demystifies a complex and critically important topic and offers meaningful solutions that will do far more than restore prosperity—it will provide the framework for an era of sustainable abundance.

Author : Fredrik Albritton Jonsson
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2023
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:1382409922

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Scarcity:a History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis(ebook). by Fredrik Albritton Jonsson Pdf

Author : Dr Wolfgang Hoeschele
Publisher : Gower Publishing, Ltd.
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2012-08-28
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781409459545

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The Economics of Abundance by Dr Wolfgang Hoeschele Pdf

No matter how many resources we consume we never seem to have enough. The Economics of Abundance is a balanced book in which Wolfgang Hoeschele challenges why this is so. He claims that our current capitalist economy can exist only on the basis of manufactured scarcity created by 'scarcity-generating institutions', and these institutions manipulate both demand and supply of commodities. Therefore demand consistently exceeds supply, and profits and economic growth can continue – at the cost of individual freedom, social equity, and ecological sustainability. The fact that continual increases in demand are so vital to our economy leads to an impasse: many people see no alternative to the generation of ever more demand, but at the same time recognize that it is clearly unsustainable ecologically and socially. So, can demand only be reduced by curtailing freedom and is this acceptable? This book argues that, by analyzing how scarcity-generating institutions work and then reforming or dismantling them, we can enhance individual freedom and support entrepreneurial initiative, and at the same time make progress toward social justice and environmental sustainability by reducing demands on vital resources. This vision would enable activists in many fields (social justice, civil liberties, and environmental protection), as well as many entrepreneurs and other members of civil society to work together much more effectively, make it more difficult to portray all these groups as contradictory special interests, and thereby help generate momentum for positive change. Meanwhile, for academics in many fields of study, the concept of the creation of scarcity or abundance may be a highly useful analytical tool.

Author : Ute Astrid Tellmann
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 350 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2017-11-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780231544078

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Life and Money by Ute Astrid Tellmann Pdf

Life and Money uncovers the contentious history of the boundary between economy and politics in liberalism. Ute Tellmann traces the shifting ontologies for defining economic necessity. She argues that our understanding of the malleability of economic relations has been displaced by colonial hierarchies of civilization and the biopolitics of the nation. Bringing economics into conversation with political theory, cultural economy, postcolonial thought, and history, Tellmann gives a radically novel interpretation of scarcity and money in terms of materiality, temporality, and affect. The book investigates the conceptual shifts regarding economic order during two moments of profound crisis in the history of liberalism. In the wake of the French Revolution, Thomas Robert Malthus’s notion of population linked liberalism to a sense of economic necessity that stands counter to political promises of equality. During the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes’s writings on money proved crucial for the invention of macroeconomic theory and signaled the birth of the managed economy. Both periods, Tellmann shows, entail a displacement of the malleability of the economic. By tracing this conceptual history, Life and Money opens up liberalism, including our neoliberal present, to a new sense of economic and political possibility.

Author : David Ricardo
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 566 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 1821
Category : Economics
ISBN : OXFORD:300151240

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On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation by David Ricardo Pdf

Author : Lyla Mehta
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 287 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2013-05-13
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781136538940

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The Limits to Scarcity by Lyla Mehta Pdf

Scarcity is considered a ubiquitous feature of the human condition. It underpins much of modern economics and is widely used as an explanation for social organisation, social conflict and the resource crunch confronting humanity's survival on the planet. It is made out to be an all-pervasive fact of our lives - be it of housing, food, water or oil. But has the conception of scarcity been politicized, naturalized, and universalized in academic and policy debates? Has overhasty recourse to scarcity evoked a standard set of market, institutional and technological solutions which have blocked out political contestations, overlooking access as a legitimate focus for academic debates as well as policies and interventions? Theoretical and empirical chapters by leading academics and scholar-activists grapple with these issues by questioning scarcity's taken-for-granted nature. They examine scarcity debates across three of the most important resources - food, water and energy - and their implications for theory, institutional arrangements, policy responses and innovation systems. The book looks at how scarcity has emerged as a totalizing discourse in both the North and South. The 'scare' of scarcity has led to scarcity emerging as a political strategy for powerful groups. Aggregate numbers and physical quantities are trusted, while local knowledges and experiences of scarcity that identify problems more accurately and specifically are ignored. Science and technology are expected to provide 'solutions', but such expectations embody a multitude of unexamined assumptions about the nature of the 'problem', about the technologies and about the institutional arrangements put forward as a 'fix.' Through this examination the authors demonstrate that scarcity is not a natural condition: the problem lies in how we see scarcity and the ways in which it is socially generated.

Author : Thomas Jacob
Publisher : Thomas Jacob
Page : 52 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2024-03-04
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Disrupting Scarcity: Unveiling the Exponential Technologies Shaping Abundance by Thomas Jacob Pdf

Do you feel trapped by the limitations of scarcity? Are you worried about running out of time, money, or resources? This book will challenge your perspective and introduce you to a future brimming with abundance. Disrupting Scarcity explores the exciting world of exponential technologies – artificial intelligence, robotics, renewable energy, and more – and reveals their potential to revolutionize every aspect of our lives. You'll discover: How advancements like AI and automation are creating abundance in various sectors, from healthcare and agriculture to manufacturing and logistics. Why human skills like critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving remain irreplaceable in an AI-driven world. Practical strategies for cultivating an abundant mindset and building a fulfilling life aligned with your values and passions. Disrupting Scarcity is not just a glimpse into the future; it's a call to action. This book will equip you with the knowledge and inspiration to: Embrace lifelong learning and develop the skills needed to thrive in the abundant future. Leverage exponential technologies for personal and professional growth. Become an active participant in shaping a future of shared prosperity and opportunity. Disrupting Scarcity is your guide to a future where abundance is not a privilege for a select few, but a reality for all.

Author : Robert Vitalis
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 197 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2020-07-14
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781503612341

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Oilcraft by Robert Vitalis Pdf

“A valuable addition to the new wave of critical studies on the history of oil and energy policy”—and a bracing corrective to longstanding myths (James M. Gustafson, Diplomatic History). Conventional wisdom tells us that the US military presence in the Persian Gulf is what guarantees American access to oil; that the “special” relationship with Saudi Arabia is necessary to stabilize an otherwise volatile market; and that these assumptions in turn provide Washington enormous leverage over Europe and Asia. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. Robert Vitalis debunks the myths of “oilcraft”, a line of magical thinking closer to witchcraft than statecraft. Oil is a commodity like any other: bought, sold, and subject to market forces. Vitalis exposes the suspect fears of oil scarcity and investigates the geopolitical impact of these false beliefs. In particular, Vitalis shows how we can reconsider the question of the US-Saudi special relationship, which confuses and traps many into unnecessarily accepting what they imagine is a devil’s bargain. Freeing ourselves from the spell of oilcraft won’t be easy, but the benefits make it essential.

Author : M.S. Macrakis
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 194 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2013-03-09
Category : History
ISBN : 9789401588614

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Scarcity’s Ways: The Origins of Capital by M.S. Macrakis Pdf

invoking the fluctuation-dissipation theorems of Einstein and 2 more recently those of Callen and Kubo in order to get to manageable results. In this manner, great strides have been made in the development of the many-body problem without reaching the necessity to legitimize thermodynamics. Ther modynamics and statistical mechanics were used successful ly as bridges and guides to get the new ideas to conform to the macroscopic experiences (measurements). Hence the dis 3 interest of theoreticians. The frustration in attracting the at tention of the working physicists on this problem is vividly described in Carnap's (1978) account on the reception of his ideas and efforts at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Prin ceton where he worked on the Two Essays on Entropy; it al most amounted, he thought, to a conspiracy of silence. The priorities of theoretical physicists remain with the puzzles and the cranking at hand: Quantum Field Theory (QFT) and "creation and annihilation" physics, solid state physics, - to mention only a few research areas - command the attention of those working on the research frontiers. Thermodynamics is taken for granted and is thought to be an almost depleted research area. Whatever the subterfuges, the hand-waving arguments, the paedagogical red herrings, the procedures work and nothing can be gained by allocating intellectual re sources to resolve ambiguities with few, if any, expected rewards. Down deep, all believe that the regularization of the field will one day be accomplished.