The Limits To Scarcity

Author : Lyla Mehta
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 287 pages
File Size : 48,9 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 : Lyla Mehta
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : Resource allocation
ISBN : 8125043993

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The Limits to Scarcity by Lyla Mehta Pdf

Author : Giorgos Kallis
Publisher : Stanford Briefs
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2019-10-15
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1503611558

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Limits by Giorgos Kallis Pdf

Author : Barbara H. Fried
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 286 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2020-02-27
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780192587091

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Facing Up to Scarcity by Barbara H. Fried Pdf

Facing Up to Scarcity offers a powerful critique of the nonconsequentialist approaches that have been dominant in Anglophone moral and political thought over the last fifty years. In these essays Barbara H. Fried examines the leading schools of contemporary nonconsequentialist thought, including Rawlsianism, Kantianism, libertarianism, and social contractarianism. In the realm of moral philosophy, she argues that nonconsequentialist theories grounded in the sanctity of "individual reasons" cannot solve the most important problems taken to be within their domain. Those problems, which arise from irreducible conflicts among legitimate (and often identical) individual interests, can be resolved only through large-scale interpersonal trade-offs of the sort that nonconsequentialism foundationally rejects. In addition to scrutinizing the internal logic of nonconsequentialist thought, Fried considers the disastrous social consequences when nonconsequentialist intuitions are allowed to drive public policy. In the realm of political philosophy, she looks at the treatment of distributive justice in leading nonconsequentialist theories. Here one can design distributive schemes roughly along the lines of the outcomes favoured—but those outcomes are not logically entailed by the normative premises from which they are ostensibly derived, and some are extraordinarily strained interpretations of those premises. Fried concludes, as a result, that contemporary nonconsequentialist political philosophy has to date relied on weak justifications for some very strong conclusions.

Author : D. H. Meadows
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 205 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 1974
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 0330241699

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The Limits of Growth by D. H. Meadows Pdf

Author : Sendhil Mullainathan,Eldar Shafir
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 303 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2013-09-03
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781429943451

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Scarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan,Eldar Shafir Pdf

In this provocative book based on cutting-edge research, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir show that scarcity creates a distinct psychology for everyone struggling to manage with less than they need. Busy people fail to manage their time efficiently for the same reasons the poor and those maxed out on credit cards fail to manage their money. The dynamics of scarcity reveal why dieters find it hard to resist temptation, why students and busy executives mismanage their time, and why the same sugarcane farmers are smarter after harvest than before. Once we start thinking in terms of scarcity, the problems of modern life come into sharper focus, and Scarcity reveals not only how it leads us astray but also how individuals and organizations can better manage scarcity for greater satisfaction and success.

Author : Michael N. Dobkowski,Isidor Wallimann
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 380 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 1998-03-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0815627440

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The Coming Age of Scarcity by Michael N. Dobkowski,Isidor Wallimann Pdf

Michael Dobkowski and Isidor Walliman have edited a book that, although ominous, is not a fatalistic look at the future. The Coming Age of Scarcity lays out the perils of not recognizing the reality of genocide or of acknowledging the full implications of warfare. Showing how scarcity and surplus populations can lead to disaster, The Coming Age of Scarcity is about evil. It tells of "ethnic cleansing" and excavates the world's expanding killing fields. The writers in this volume are all too aware that the future suggests that present-day population growth, land resources, energy consumption, and per capita consumption cannot be sustained without leading to greater catastrophes. The essays in this volume ask: What is the solution in the face of mass death and genocide? As philosopher John K. Roth says in the Foreword, "The essays can sensitize us against despair and indifference because history shows that human-made mass death and genocide are not inevitable, and no events related to them will ever be."

Author : John Brewer,Neil Fromer,Fredrik Albritton Jonsson,Frank Trentmann
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 442 pages
File Size : 42,6 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 : R. David Professor Simpson,Michael A. Professor Toman,Robert U. Professor Ayres
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 306 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2012-05-23
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781136524721

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Scarcity and Growth Revisited by R. David Professor Simpson,Michael A. Professor Toman,Robert U. Professor Ayres Pdf

In this volume, a group of distinguished international scholars provides a fresh investigation of the most fundamental issues involved in our dependence on natural resources. In Scarcity and Growth (RFF, 1963) and Scarcity and Growth Reconsidered (RFF, 1979), researchers considered the long-term implications of resource scarcity for economic growth and human well-being. Scarcity and Growth Revisited examines these implications with 25 years of new learning and experience. It finds that concerns about resource scarcity have changed in essential ways. In contrast with the earlier preoccupation with the adequacy of fuel, mineral, and agricultural resources and the efficiency by which they are allocated, the greatest concern today is about the Earth‘s limited capacity to handle the environmental consequences of resource extraction and use. Opinion among scholars is divided on the ability of technological innovation to ameliorate this 'new scarcity.' However, even the book‘s more optimistic authors agree that the problems will not be successfully overcome without significant advances in the legal, financial, and other social institutions that protect the environment and support technical innovation. Scarcity and Growth Revisited incorporates expert perspectives from the physical and life sciences, as well as economics. It includes issues confronting the developing world as well as industrialized societies. The book begins with a review of the debate about scarcity and economic growth and a review of current assessments of natural resource availability and consumption. The twelve chapters that follow provide an accessible, lively, and authoritative update to an enduring-but changing-debate.

Author : Lyla Mehta
Publisher : Orient Blackswan
Page : 436 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 8125028692

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The Politics and Poetics of Water by Lyla Mehta Pdf

The book studies the relationship between large dams and water scarcity in Kutch. It argues that water scarcity is not merely natural, but is embedded in the social and power relations shaping water access, use and practices. Scarcity is portrayed as natural rather than human induced and this naturalisation of scarcity is beneficial to those who are powerful. This is a significant book in the light of the growing water crisis in India, and the world.

Author : William Flesch
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2018-10-18
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781501732867

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Generosity and the Limits of Authority by William Flesch Pdf

Generosity is an ambiguous quality, William Flesch observes; while receiving gifts is pleasant, gift-giving both displays the wealth and strength of the giver and places the receiver under an obligation. In provocative new readings of Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton, Flesch illuminates the personal authority that is bound inextricably with acts of generosity. Drawing on the work of such theorists as Mauss, Blanchot, Bourdieu, Wittgenstein, Bloom, Cavell, and Greenblatt, Flesch maintains that the literary power of Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton is at its most intense when they are exploring the limits of generosity. He considers how in Herbert's Temple divine assurance of the possibility of redemption is put into question and how the poet approaches such a gift with the ambivalence of a beneficiary. In his readings of Shakespeare's Richard II, Henry IV, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, and the sonnets, Flesch examines the perspective of the benefactor—including Shakespeare himself—who confronts the decline of his capacity to give. Turning to Milton's Paradise Lost, Flesch identifies two opposing ways of understanding generosity—Satan's, on the one hand, and Adam and Eve's, on the other - and elaborates the different conceptions of poetry to which these understandings give rise. Scholars of Shakespeare and of Renaissance culture, Miltonists, literary theorists, and others interested in the relationship between philosophy and literature will want to read this insightful and challenging book.

Author : Sandra Postel
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2014-07-16
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781134161584

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The Last Oasis by Sandra Postel Pdf

For decades now we have wasted and mismanaged the world?s water supplies. Today, 27 countries are short of water, a quarter of the world?s population has no safe water, 46 per cent have no proper sanitation and each year four million children die of water-borne diseases. As most of the world?s major river systems cross several national boundaries, the scope disputes and the threat to international security is becoming more and more real. In The Last Oasis, Sandra Postel examines the economic, ecological and political factors affecting fresh water supply. She confronts the issues of mismanagement and profligacy and analyses and dangers of confrontation, both between nations and between rural and urban users. She also emphasises that the technology and know-how for effective water husbandry does exist. With methods already in use, farmers could cut their demand for water by 40-90 per cent, and cities by one-third, without sacrificing economic output or quality of life. Investing in water efficiency, recycling and conservation help meet rising demands and stave off disaster. But the priority is a common recognition of the gravity of the position, and with that a widespread push for institutions to manage sustainable use of water.

Author : Sarah Bracking,Aurora Fredriksen,Sian Sullivan,Philip Woodhouse
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2018-10-17
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781351625111

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Valuing Development, Environment and Conservation by Sarah Bracking,Aurora Fredriksen,Sian Sullivan,Philip Woodhouse Pdf

Policy-makers are increasingly trying to assign economic values to areas such as ecologies, the atmosphere, even human lives. These new values, assigned to areas previously considered outside of economic systems, often act to qualify, alter or replace former non-pecuniary values. Valuing Development, Environment and Conservation looks to explore the complex interdependencies, contradictions and trade-offs that can take place between economic values and the social, environmental, political and ethical systems that inform non-monetary valuation processes. Using rich empirical material, the book explores the processes of valuation, their components, calculative technologies, and outcomes in different social, ecological and conservation domains. The book gives reasons for why economic calculation tends to dominate in practice, but also presents new insights on how the disobedient materiality of things and the ingenuity of human and non-human agencies can combine and frustrate the dominant economic models within calculative processes. This book highlights the tension between, on the one hand, a dominant model that emphasises technical and ‘universalising’ criteria, and on the other hand, valuation practice in specific local contexts which is more likely to negotiate criteria that are plural, incommensurable and political. This book is perfect for researchers and students within development studies, environment, geography, politics, sociology and anthropology who are looking for new insights into how processes of valuation take place in the 21st century, and with what consequential outcomes.

Author : Dennis Pirages And Ken Cousins
Publisher : Academic Foundation
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Environmental policy
ISBN : 8171885543

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From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security Exploring New Limits to Growth by Dennis Pirages And Ken Cousins Pdf

Author : Thomas Byrne Edsall
Publisher : Anchor
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2012-01-10
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780385535205

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The Age of Austerity by Thomas Byrne Edsall Pdf

One of our most prescient political observers provides a sobering account of how pitched battles over scarce resources will increasingly define American politics in the coming years—and how we might avoid, or at least mitigate, the damage from these ideological and economic battles. In a matter of just three years, a bitter struggle over limited resources has enveloped political discourse at every level in the United States. Fights between haves and have-nots over health care, unemployment benefits, funding for mortgage write-downs, economic stimulus legislation—and, at the local level, over cuts in police protection, garbage collection, and in the number of teachers—have dominated the debate. Elected officials are being forced to make zero-sum choices—or worse, choices with no winners. Resource competition between Democrats and Republicans has left each side determined to protect what it has at the expense of the other. The major issues of the next few years—long-term deficit reduction; entitlement reform, notably of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; major cuts in defense spending; and difficulty in financing a continuation of American international involvement—suggest that your-gain-is-my-loss politics will inevitably intensify.