The Limits to Scarcity

The Limits to Scarcity PDF Author: Lyla Mehta
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136538941
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
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.

The Limits to Scarcity

The Limits to Scarcity PDF Author: Lyla Mehta
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136538941
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
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.

The Politics of Media Scarcity

The Politics of Media Scarcity PDF Author: Greg Elmer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781032504698
Category : Information behavior
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"This book questions the predominance of "media abundance" as a guiding concept for contemporary mediated politics. The authors argue that media abundance is not a universal condition, and that certain individuals, communities and even nations can more accurately be referred to as media scarce - where access to media technologies and content is limited, highly controlled or surveilled. Through case studies that focus on guerilla militants, incarcerated Indigenous people, and Cold War era infrastructure, including Soviet "closed" or "secret" cities and Canadian nuclear bunkers, the book's chapters interrogate how the once media scarce later 'speak' to - and can be heard by - the predominant, abundant media culture. Drawing from several art projects and diverse cultural sites the book highlights how media scarce communities negotiate and otherwise narrate their place in the world, their past experiences and lives, and escape from subjugation. To better understand media scarce politics, the book asks how and when communities become - by accident or force, by choice or necessity - media scarce. This innovative and insightful text will appeal to students and scholars around the world working in the areas of media and politics, art and politics, visual studies, surveillance studies, and communication studies"--Page i.

The Age of Austerity

The Age of Austerity PDF Author: Thomas Byrne Edsall
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385535201
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
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.

Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity

Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity PDF Author: William Ophuls
Publisher: W.H. Freeman
ISBN: 9780716704829
Category : Environmental policy
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Based on the author's thesis, Yale, 1973. Includes index. Bibliography: p. [249]-284.

Southern Water, Southern Power

Southern Water, Southern Power PDF Author: Christopher J. Manganiello
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469620065
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Why has the American South--a place with abundant rainfall--become embroiled in intrastate wars over water? Why did unpredictable flooding come to characterize southern waterways, and how did a region that seemed so rich in this all-important resource become derailed by drought and the regional squabbling that has tormented the arid American West? To answer these questions, policy expert and historian Christopher Manganiello moves beyond the well-known accounts of flooding in the Mississippi Valley and irrigation in the West to reveal the contested history of southern water. From the New South to the Sun Belt eras, private corporations, public utilities, and political actors made a region-defining trade-off: The South would have cheap energy, but it would be accompanied by persistent water insecurity. Manganiello's compelling environmental history recounts stories of the people and institutions that shaped this exchange and reveals how the use of water and power in the South has been challenged by competition, customers, constituents, and above all, nature itself.

The Politics of Media Policy

The Politics of Media Policy PDF Author: Des Freedman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745657214
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
The Politics of Media Policy provides a critical perspective on the dynamics of media policy in the US and UK and offers a comprehensive guide to some of the major points of debate in the media today. While many policymakers boast of the openness and pluralism of their media systems, this book exposes the commitment to market principles that saturates the media policy environment and distorts the development and application of democratic media policies. Based on interviews with dozens of politicians, regulators, special advisers, lobbyists and campaigners, The Politics of Media Policy considers how governments, civil servants and media corporations have shaped the drawing up of rules concerning a range of issues including: Media ownership Media content Public broadcasting Digital television Copyright Trade agreements affecting the media industries. The book identifies both the institutions and the arguments that dominate the development of these crucial media policies. It will be of interest to public policy and media professionals, researchers, activists and students indeed all those determined to understand and respond to the impact of neo-liberalism on the contemporary world.

Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity Revisited

Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity Revisited PDF Author: William Ophuls
Publisher: W H Freeman & Company
ISBN: 9780716723134
Category : Environmental policy.
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description


Media Consumption and Public Engagement

Media Consumption and Public Engagement PDF Author: N. Couldry
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230800823
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Democracy is based on the belief that the media gets the attention of voters. But is this plausible in an age of multiplying media, disillusionment with the political system and time-scarcity? This book addresses this question, and charts experiences of 'public connection'.

Technocrats and the Politics of Drought and Development in Twentieth-Century Brazil

Technocrats and the Politics of Drought and Development in Twentieth-Century Brazil PDF Author: Eve E. Buckley
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469634317
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Eve E. Buckley’s study of twentieth-century Brazil examines the nation’s hard social realities through the history of science, focusing on the use of technology and engineering as vexed instruments of reform and economic development. Nowhere was the tension between technocratic optimism and entrenched inequality more evident than in the drought-ridden Northeast sertão, plagued by chronic poverty, recurrent famine, and mass migrations. Buckley reveals how the physicians, engineers, agronomists, and mid-level technocrats working for federal agencies to combat drought were pressured by politicians to seek out a technological magic bullet that would both end poverty and obviate the need for land redistribution to redress long-standing injustices.

Cultivating the Nile

Cultivating the Nile PDF Author: Jessica Barnes
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822376210
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
The waters of the Nile are fundamental to life in Egypt. In this compelling ethnography, Jessica Barnes explores the everyday politics of water: a politics anchored in the mundane yet vital acts of blocking, releasing, channeling, and diverting water. She examines the quotidian practices of farmers, government engineers, and international donors as they interact with the waters of the Nile flowing into and through Egypt. Situating these local practices in relation to broader processes that affect Nile waters, Barnes moves back and forth from farmer to government ministry, from irrigation canal to international water conference. By showing how the waters of the Nile are constantly made and remade as a resource by people in and outside Egypt, she demonstrates the range of political dynamics, social relations, and technological interventions that must be incorporated into understandings of water and its management.