It is interesting and at first blush ironic that in a time of unparalleled abundance when the proportion of the world’s population that lives in “extreme poverty” is at an all-time low, concerns about scarcity have become increasingly prominent. A little reflection reveals that the new prominence accorded the issue of scarcity is related in complicated but powerful ways to other contemporary concerns, particularly population growth, rising living standards worldwide, climate change, the earth’s carrying capacity, etc. One of the virtues of Scarcity in the Modern World is that the editors and authors generally adhere to the position that abundance and scarcity are subjective and contextual concepts that are linked logically rather than ironically and perforce should be examined and analyzed together. This important insight is but one of many in this challenging but rewarding interdisciplinary collection.
Scarcity in the Modern World is premised on boundary crossing of a particularly...