Originally published in 1989. In this book Nicholas Xenos argues that the assumption that scarcity is a universal human condition is far from universal but rather a product of western influence. Informed by the work of Baudrillard, Bourdieu, Girard, and Sahlins, this historical narrative of scarcity incorporates interpretations of texts and practices from eighteenth-century London to contemporary New York. Lucid and elegant in style, Scarcity and Modernity will appear to those with interests in social and political thought and cultural criticism.

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.

A surprising and intriguing examination of how scarcity—and our flawed responses to it—shapes our lives, our society, and our culture

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."

In this pioneering study of contemporary Chinese urban form, Duanfang Lu provides an analysis of how Chinese society constructed itself through the making and remaking of its built environment. She shows that as China’s quest for modernity created a perpetual scarcity as both a social reality and a national imagination, the realization of planning ideals was postponed. The work unit – the socialist enterprise or institute – gradually developed from workplace to social institution which integrated work, housing and social services. The Chinese city achieved a unique geography made up in large part of self-contained work units. Remaking Chinese Urban Form provides an important reference for academics and students conducting research on China. It will be a key source for courses on Asia in architecture, urban planning, geography, sociology and anthropology, at both the graduate and undergraduate level. The insightful yet accessible introduction to urban China will also be of interest to architects, urban designers and planners – as well as general audience who wish to learn about contemporary Chinese society.

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.

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. The Scarcity Slot is the first book to critically examine food security in Africa’s deep past. Amanda L. Logan argues that African foodways have been viewed through the lens of ‘the scarcity slot,’ a kind of Othering based on presumed differences in resources. Weaving together archaeological, historical, and environmental data with food ethnography, she advances a new approach to building long-term histories of food security on the continent in order to combat these stereotypes. Focusing on a case study in Banda, Ghana that spans the past six centuries, The Scarcity Slot reveals that people thrived during a severe, centuries-long drought just as Europeans arrived on the coast, with a major decline in food security emerging only recently. This narrative radically challenges how we think about African foodways in the past with major implications for the future.