Economy Of Scarcity Research Articles

Consubstantialities of resistance: Labor process, (bio)materialities, and pathogenicity

As social science scholarship has historically documented, social structure and clinical practice are more commonly as contradictory or incoherent as they are often framed. The increasing emphasis on the rise of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has drawn attention to how social realms of resistance are entrenched and interconnected through varied structural, political, clinical, biological, and ecological relations. In this study, set in São Paulo, Brazil, I sought to unpack relational consubstantialities of AMR within the healthcare labor process and their enfolded (bio)materialities and pathogenicity by drawing on a series of interviews with primary care-based health professionals, health services managers, and policymakers, completed between late 2021 and early 2023. Participants’ accounts reveal how the reproduction of the labor process in primary care foregrounds (bio)material relations in which antimicrobial resistance finds timely and proper coextensive social conditions of reproduction. In their turn, the study results highlight how work intensification relates to economies of scarcity, teamwork coerciveness, AMR virulence and pathogenicity, destabilizing ecological (bio)materialities amid structural and clinical practice interrelations. Building on renewed materialisms of the political economy of health, I propose an approach to complexify understandings of relational interconnectedness of resistance by instilling relational tension lines of objects against their pragmatic reification in health interventions and theory.

RESILIENCE AND LESSONS LEARNED IN COLOMBIAN FAMILY FARMING DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

<p><strong>Background: </strong>A health crisis exposes people to food vulnerability by restricting the mobilization and commercial exchange of food. During the COVID-19 pandemic, an ample food supply was available to ensure the basic consumption of the population, prompting two questions: What resilient practices did farmers adopt to produce under conditions of high sanitary restriction, and what lessons did they derive to confront future crises? <strong>Objective:</strong> The article presents and collects the experiences of 59 small family farmers in Colombia in implementing good practices for economic and financial resilience and the lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic, constituting a new source of knowledge to understand human behaviors and actions in the face of adversity and the experiential learnings gained to act in future crisis scenarios. <strong>Methodology</strong>: To characterize the resilient practices of agricultural producers in the department of Norte de Santander, Colombia, amid the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, researchers conducted interviews with 59 smallholder farmers from 12 municipalities. The study encompassed 11 agricultural products and 6 animal products, ultimately identifying three overarching categories: economic resilience, financial resilience, and lessons learned.<strong> Main Results: </strong>The results indicate strategies for diversification of production, use of local resources, solidarity-based family work, short marketing chains and an economy of scarcity in family spending. <strong>Implications: </strong>These lessons can inform future policies and practices to better prepare for and respond to similar challenges. <strong>Conclusion: </strong>The study's findings provide valuable insights for policymakers and small farmers, emphasizing the importance of local resource utilization, community cooperation, and adaptive strategies to enhance resilience and sustain livelihoods during crises. </p>

Food Herstories and Everyday Life in Times of Crisis. Women’s Experiences in Food Production, Distribution and Consumption

The aim of this article is to analyze women’s experiences of household food production, distribution and consumption as a response to the difficulties and challenges of daily life. The adopted perspective integrates research from food studies, historical sociology, and gender studies. The author’s intention is to discuss the multifaceted, gendered nature of food practices, highlighting their transformations, and modes of continuation. References to the analysis of alternative food networks draw attention to both contemporary and post-WWII food practices and introduce to the discussion concepts which remain important for contemporary society, e.g. community and sustainable solutions. This analysis is based on a review of literature, particularly oral histories and autobiographical accounts by both urban and rural women, and references various documented food-related activities. As demonstrated in the article, presentation of women’s food-related stories involves exploring alternatives to the scarcity economy of state socialism and contemporary anonymous mass production. These alternatives, embedded in the space of the kitchen, the farm field, or the allotment garden, are more than just coping strategies – they appeal to such values and ethical norms as mutual assistance, trust, and reciprocity. They can be interpreted through the lens of creativity and resourcefulness, as well as in terms of power relations and resistance in the context of everyday crises.

Legal Aid and Social Policy: Managing a Political Economy of Scarcity

Civil legal systems structure Americans’ relationship to the welfare state, offering grounds for contesting denials of benefits and preventing material harms like eviction. I draw on data from interviews with legal aid providers and tenant organizers to show how civil legal resources facilitate access to the safety net, and I argue that yoking legal aid and social policy is a strategy for managing a political economy that systematically undersupplies essential resources and protections. Notwithstanding the democratic ideal of social and civil rights as self-reinforcing and mutually constitutive, the relationship between social policy and civil legal aid underscores how these domains operate as substitutes rather than complements. Politically induced scarcity makes it necessary to leverage legal mechanisms to protect vulnerable Americans. Such necessity implicates acute democratic deficits that are most aptly addressed through fundamental changes to existing power relations.

Review: The Masjid in Contemporary Islamic Africa

Review: <i>The Masjid in Contemporary Islamic Africa</i>

Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai'i by Candace Fujikane (review)

Reviewed by: Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai'i by Candace Fujikane Mary Tuti Baker (bio) Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai'i by Candace Fujikane Duke University Press, 2021 THE ACT OF MAPPING ABUNDANCE for a planetary future is audacious and necessary for planetary survival. Candace Fujikane works toward this goal in Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai'i. "The struggle for a planetary future," she argues, "calls for a profound epistemological shift" from economies of scarcity to economies of abundance (3). To engage this shift, she takes readers on a journey along fault lines of capitalist economies of subdivision and accumulation that are laying waste the 'aina (land, that which feeds) and she maps the procreative pathways of abundance through Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) stories of resistance, struggle, and transformative social practice. Her analysis of this epistemological shift uses two parallel cartographic methodologies: Kanaka Maoli mo'o'āina cartography and critical settler cartography—interlaced methodologies that she frames with the following questions: How are the exhausted cartographies of capital being transformed by the vibrant cartographies of Indigenous and settler ally artists, scientists, writers, and activists to restore more sustaining arrangements of life? How can abundance be mapped to show functioning Indigenous economies not premised on the crises of capital? How are lands mapped as an ontology—a life, a will, a desire, and an agency—of their own? How can such cartographies help us to grow a decolonial love for lands, seas and skies that will help to renew abundance on this earth? (4) She addresses these questions through a thoughtful study of mo'olelo (storied histories), cutting analysis of the failures of the occupying state, and loving interactions with Kanaka Maoli whose work on the land and in community bring ancestral knowledge and values to bear in the present to engender future economies of abundance. Fujikane's work begins with critical settler cartography that critiques "the toxic logics and imaginaries of late liberal settler colonial cartography" and then moves into the "expansiveness of Kanaka Maoli cartographies that map familial relationality among humans, lands, and elemental forms, plant [End Page 156] and animal 'ohana (family)" (17–18). These cartographies are set in motion as we traverse the storied landscapes laid out in each of the six chapters. The battle plays out again and again between ancestral knowledge and practice and the practices of wastelanding that destroy relationships with 'aina in order to possess it. The text is dense. Her lyrical writing moves readers deftly through the details of a mo'olelo into a topography of complex land formations that echo and support the claims of stewardship and protection embedded in the stories. A full appreciation of the many references to and invocations of Kanaka Maoli mo'olelo, wahi pana (storied places) and the ancestral knowledge and cultural practices of her companions on the journey requires a careful reading of the text. I wonder if some of the richness of her analysis might be lost to readers outside of Hawai'i and those who do not have direct visceral experience of the elemental forces and ancestors she invokes. Fujikane identifies as a settler aloha 'āina. Aloha 'āina is a highly politicized positionality in contemporary Hawai'i. It is both the act of loving and caring for the land and one who practices aloha 'āina. The term emerged in Hawai'i politics during Kanaka Maoli resistance to settler rule in the nineteenth century and the descendants of these Kānaka Maoli declare allegiance to the sovereign Hawaiian nation with the phrase "until the last aloha 'aina." To what degree can settler aloha 'āina be included in this accounting? There will always be an incommensurable difference between settler and native subjectivity. In the book's introduction, Fujikane engages in a frank assessment of the challenges of this incommensurability. Settler aloha 'aina must navigate the discomfort and, as she maintains, commit to a shift in consciousness with respect to land-based knowledge. It necessitates growing "an intimacy with land that brings about more pono (just, balanced, and generationally...

Impact of Land Rental Market Participation on Smallholder Farmers’ Commercialization: Panel Data Evidence from Northern Ethiopia

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to assess the impact of participation in the land rental market on smallholder farmers’ commercialization using farm household panel data in Tigrai, Ethiopia. Regression results reveal that 1 hectare increase in area rented in by tenant households leads to a 60% increase in the likelihood of participation in the output market as a crop seller and increases the marketed output sold by tenant households by US$ 200/year. The results appear to indicate that land rental market in the land scarcity economy to some extent contributes positively in the facilitation of transformation toward smallholders’ commercialization.

From glutton to gourmet: is gourmandise still a deadly sin?

Drawing from historical literary works and contemporary French literature, this study [1] explored the evolution of the meanings of ‘gourmandise’ as a concept, from its early characterisation as a cardinal sin to a contemporary notion merging with visual textualisation. Furthermore, it argues that the twentieth century paved the way for a transformation in the meaning of gourmandise: its definition now emphasises a visual refinement characteristic, while retaining the element of excess as part of its appeal, thus making ‘gourmandise’ symbolic, accessible and acceptable to the general public.&#x0D; Although the word ‘gourmandise’ appeared in written documents at the end of the Middle Ages, its history is much older since its use dates back to the early days of Christianity, to the first monastic communities of the third and fourth centuries. In addition, while the term still exists today, its significance has had many variations over the centuries.&#x0D; While contemporary lexicographers define it as “the aptitude to appreciate the quality and delicacy of dishes” and the “excessive taste for the pleasure of the table” [2], its meaning has varied over the centuries [3] and is still contested. Philosophical, spiritual and social debates exist over whether the word depicts excess or moderation.&#x0D; In Western society, gourmandise refers to three denotations roughly corresponding to three historical periods. The earliest meaning refers to the big eaters, the heavy drinkers, and all the excesses of the table. Strongly negative, the word ‘gourmandise’ qualifies a horrible vice, one of the seven deadly sins codified by the Christian Church.&#x0D; Gradually, gourmandise was enriched by a second, positive sense, which would triumph in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and introduce the word ‘gourmet’ into European languages. While still reprobated by the Christian Church and moralists, gourmandise became a respectable epithet characterising amateur appreciators of good food, good wines and good company.&#x0D; The eighteenth century brought about a redefinition of the notion of gourmandise, all the more so as the influence of the Christian Church declined considerably. The works of Grimod de la Reynière and, a few years later, Brillat-Savarin saw a semantic change in the meaning of gourmandise, which has been attributed to the transition of an economy of scarcity to one of abundance [4, 5].&#x0D; The twentieth and twenty-first centuries brought a new era for gourmandise. With the advent of digital communication, people began to talk about their experiences more rapidly and to a wider audience. Eating out has become a social event, one which must be shared instantly. Gourmandise has become digital and focuses both on quality and quantity, retaining some of its original meaning but with a new visual dimension [5].&#x0D; Gourmandise is now part of everyday and professional life. It still includes the implications of excess, sharing and exchange, but now denotes transference in an increasingly seductive and interactive way. This rediscovered gourmandise is now voyeuristic instead of the gourmandise of the stomach.&#x0D; The findings of this study suggest that, while the meaning of gourmandise has evolved over a period of two millennia, the aspect of excessive food consumption has been retained from its beginnings right through to the twenty-first century. Paralleling its growing prestige within popular culture and social media, the discourse on gourmandise is thriving. Amidst the ‘explosion’ of food-related blogs, vlogs, websites and television programmes, gourmandise has become an engaging form of entertainment, trying to satisfy the appetites of a contemporary ‘food-crazed’ culture.&#x0D; The original research on which this article is based is available here http://hdl.handle.net/10292/12964&#x0D; Corresponding author&#x0D; Gilles Petit can be contacted at: gilles.petit@aut.ac.nz&#x0D; References&#x0D; (1) Petit, G. From Glutton to Gourmet: Is Gourmandise Still a Deadly Sin? Master’s Thesis, Auckland University of Technology, Jul 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10292/12964 (accessed Apr 20, 2020).&#x0D; (2) Gourmandise. Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française [online], 9th ed. https://academie.atilf.fr/consulter/Gourmandise?page=1 (accessed May, 2018).&#x0D; (3) Bantreil-Voisin, N. Gourmandise: Histoire d'un péché capital [online]. La Cliothèque, Jan 3, 2011. http://clio-cr.clionautes.org/gourmandise-histoire-d-un-peche-capital.html (accessed May 1, 2016).&#x0D; (4) Meyzie, P., Ed. La gourmandise entre péché et plaisir. Lumières 2008, 11. https://www.fabula.org/actualites/lumieres-ndeg11-la-gourmandise-entre-peche-et-plaisir_28260.php (accessed April, 2018).&#x0D; (5) Greene, C. Gourmands &amp; Gluttons: The Rhetoric of Food Excess; Peter Lang Publishing: New York, 2015.

Food banks and the production of scarcity

This paper contributes to critical discussions of austerity by examining the constructions of scarcity that underpin it. Specifically, it shows how notions of scarcity (re)emergent in a period of austerity have shaped materially insufficient and stigmatising welfare systems. We do this through the example of UK food banks. We suggest that under austerity a particular moral economy of scarcity has become embedded at the level of common sense, including in the common sense of many of those distributing food aid. In UK food banks this moral economy is shaped by images of the “empty cupboard” and discourses of absolute hunger which normalise practices of (self)rationing and exacerbate food insecurity. Tracing attempts by some food bank managers and volunteers to challenge this moral economy, we conclude with a critical agenda for academics and practitioners to rethink relationships between welfare, austerity, and scarcity.

Biomimicry as a Meta-Resource and Megaproject

This literature review of biomimicry and related models of treating nature as a meta-resource on a mega-scale integrates concepts of resources and abundance. Biomimicry, which lies at the intersection of biosciences and industrial design, is a praxis for drawing on designs and processes found in nature and using them as inspirational sources for technologies. Environmental anthropology often focuses on processes such as extraction and commodification that position nature as governed by an economy of scarcity with its existential state characterized by attenuation. The paradigm of biomimicry, on the other hand, construes nature as an infinitely renewable and generative mega-resource and meta-resource, one that is governable by an economy of abundance rather than scarcity. This literature review analyzes intellectual and epistemological trends and frameworks that have served as precursors to and have emerged around biomimicry across disciplines that treat the paradigm of biomimicry as a highly variable epistemological object.

Sustainable economic development and post-economy of artificial intelligence

The world is currently becoming involved into a most dangerous of systemic nature: into the from postindustrial type to of (AI). The portent to such a transition crisis manifests itself in the fact that the wage level has become stable in all industrially developed countries, however, the center of revolutionary qualitative change has by now shifted to a change of the employment structure – the proportion of less qualified workers group keeps decreasing, what is more, exponentially. Meanwhile, bearing in mind that live labor is the major source of increment of national wealth in sustainable postindustrial economy, it can be stated that it has reached the limit of its constructive capacities and urgently demands bringing the personal factor of production beyond boundaries of the latter. It is post-economy of intelligence that is up to this imperative. It is characterized by the priority of the new source of energy and social communicating technology, it forms a brand-new economic basis which exceeds the potential of postindustrial production. What actually happens is the from the economy of scarcity to the economy of abundance. This entails new architectonics of a social order. In of intelligence, software-controlled production, service and transaction structures gain the global nature initially. As a result, artificial intelligence appears to be the creative software. In the new situation, the emergence of more complicated forms of is inevitable. Market institutions – competition, innovation, marketability – will be put to comprehensive tests too. A bunch of theoretical questions arise that can be answered by the economic science. It is searching for answers to the set questions that is in the focus of attention of this paper.

Drawing the line: Bonds and bounds of civility in a Christianbastiof Karachi

What do situations of chronic violence and resulting polarizations do to civility, and especially to its more horizontal forms? Using an account of everyday pluralism in an impoverished Christian neighbourhood of Karachi, this article addresses this question by examining how marginalized groups of that embattled city have been cobbling together forms of coexistence in the midst of ethnic and sectarian conflicts. Focusing in particular on the moral career of a local strongman, the practical and ethical dilemmas encountered by populations surviving at the margins of the city are considered, as they try to engage with others while struggling with the often violent economy of scarcity that structures their experience and vulnerability. In doing so, this article makes a case for a conceptualization of civility as a matter of building bonds as much as setting certain limits, in relation to identity and violence in particular. Civility, here, does not amount either to the preservation of peaceful coexistence or to the orderly reproduction of society. It thrives on various forms of connections and multiplicities, contesting hegemonic discourses on difference; instead of being external to violence, it operates within a world of violent possibilities, to which it aims to put some bounds.

Jeremy Rifkin’s utopia of the economy of abundance

The article is a voice in the discussion on the directions of the evolution of the global economy. The reference plane is a reflection J. Rifkin's book titled: The Zero marginal Cost Society. The article critically analyzed some of the assumptions and conclusions contained in the work of Rifkin. The main topics of discussion included the reality of such principles as the need to reduce the human population, or total elimination of intellectual property rights. On the other hand, the dubious trends was inter alia dominance of communities production in the world economy already about half the twenty-first century. Also pointed to issues relevant to the future development strategies completely omitted in the work of Rifkin.

Rationing hepatitis C treatment in the context of austerity policies in France and Cameroon: A transnational perspective on the pharmaceuticalization of healthcare systems

New powerful drugs against hepatitis C can cure the disease, but they are not widely distributed because their exorbitant prices are destabilizing healthcare systems in both African and European countries. This article takes access to hepatitis C treatments since 2013 in France and in Cameroon as a lens to analyze the rationing of pharmaceutical treatments in relation to recent transformations of health systems. Access to these treatments is analyzed thanks to ethnographic observation and interviews lead in Paris and Yaoundé, with patients, associations, health professionals and public health experts. In Cameroon, rationing takes place through various layers of socio-economic restrictions, and no patient organization advocates for hepatitis treatment. In France, access to hepatitis C treatments has become politicized, and collective mobilizations have denounced rationing as a threat to the promise of universal social security. In this study, we examine Africa's long experience with rationing in the context of structural adjustment, and we bring together experiences in France and Cameroon. This article analyses the phenomenon of the pharmaceuticalization of healthcare systems, that is to say the growing use of pharmaceuticals in healthcare systems, by documenting the social and political construction of scarcity. Indeed, whereas pharmaceuticalization is a concept that has often been used in situations of drugs abundance, a parallel analysis of rationing highlights a political economy of pharmaceuticals that shapes public health debates and policies according to an economy of scarcity, especially in times of austerity.

Projecting animal economies of scarcity: on Racing Extinction

Projecting animal economies of scarcity: on Racing Extinction

Shortage Economy: Production, Distribution and Consumption of Clothes in Socialist Yugoslavia in the Time of Command Economy (1945 – 1951)

Starting from the concept of the “social life of things” proposed by Arjun Appadurai, the paper considers the “journey” of clothing items from production, through distribution to consumption in post-war Yugoslavia. Even though the rationing of clothing and footwear was caused by the destruction of war and subsequent insufficient production of these items due to the official favoring of heavy industry, the major part of consumers’ frustration was the result of structural characteristics of the command economy. Through comparison with the literature on the economy of scarcity in other socialist countries, we will strive to uncover the anomalies of the production and distribution systems, contradictions between the proclaimed ideological goals and everyday practices, the (non)hidden discontent of the citizens caused by the constant search for clothes that fit, as well as the importance of social bonds for the process of purchasing. The sources of data on bureaucratic planning and specific imbalances built into the system will be news articles and caricatures.

Selling Authenticity in the Bamum Kingdom in 1929–1930

In February 1930, Eugene Pittard, the director of the ethnological museum in Geneva, sought to expand his museum’s collections in an unusual manner. Instead of sponsoring an expedition to Africa or acquiring objects from former missionaries, instead of buying from established dealers in ethnographic specimens or the newer galleries that specialized in l’art negre, Pittard wrote to an African man in Africa, a Bamum man named Mose Yeyap (Pittard 1930) (Fig. 1).1 Yeyap was the head of the relatively new artisanat in Foumban, a school and artists’ cooperative founded in 1927, and he was known as a key figure for collectors seeking to acquire works of art from the Bamum kingdom. Pittard’s letter explained that he “would like to assemble ... as true a picture as possible of the population of which you are a part, that is to say of the material life of this population. I am sending you by the same post [a list of] the kinds of things that would be the most interesting to have” (Pittard 1930). Pittard explained pointedly, “I insist on one point: Our intent is to have the oldest objects; those which have not been subjected to European influence.” He then listed for Yeyap the kinds of objects he had in mind: “sculpted wood masks, statues, sculpted horns, etc. ... sculpted drums with carved animals or other designs. Miss Debarge [a physician known both to Pittard and Yeyap] showed me drawings on paper that you made of sculptures. Is it possible to have these sculptures themselves?” (Pittard 1930). Pittard’s letter, of course, epitomizes how European arrogance and fantasy informed the collection of African art in the first decades of the twentieth century. Pittard condescendingly and absurdly schooled Yeyap about Yeyap’s own culture and, by privileging his desire for “the oldest objects,” those supposedly untouched by “European influence,” Pittard revealed his adherence to the chimerical “ideal” of African cultures as isolated in time and space. In a fascinating twist, however, we also have Yeyap’s response to Pittard. Yeyap answered back:

Good, Clean, Fair … and Illegal: Paradoxes of Food Ethics in Post-Socialist Latvia

If the Soviet Union perpetuated an economy of scarcity, the European Union maintains an economy of purity: in Soviet Latvia a lack of raw materials restricted production, while in the EU, hygiene regulations restrict processing and sale of homemade foods. In both periods, producers and consumers have cultivated informal social networks that challenge relations to structures of power, equating illegally obtained food products with an ethical stance. Positioning local informal networks as illegal obscures persistent inequalities in access to markets for the smallest home producers, and stigmatizes local practices and social networks as backwards without addressing the causes.

Looking for Looking for Mr. Goodbar: Or, Strategies for Sitting with the Abject Archive

When Paramount Pictures released its “controversial classic” Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) for the last time in 1997, it promised viewers, “nothing can prepare you for this film's shocking ending.” That shocking ending turned out to be obscurity: the final VHS copies of Richard Brooks's once controversial film will become unplayable around 2027, but the movie has already been marginalized by film-historical economy of value dependent on commercial distribution. This article thinks through the ways that digital video platforms and economies structure scholars and viewers’ relation to film history. Artificial economies of scarcity are indispensible components of the classic film market, but the critic often feels an urge to save a beloved text, to somehow prevent its loss. That fear of loss engenders an affective response that I call the savior complex, which gives rise to two critical imperatives: an interrogative quest to uncover the truth about the text and compassionate redescription, which sustains viewers’ hope through the embrace of filmic pleasures. Working through both responses in relationship to Looking for Mr. Goodbar, I argue that the film forces a figural and material encounter with loss that pushes its viewer to sit with and accept rather than resist mortality and material transience. In so doing, she gains greater awareness of her own critical motivations and can figure out what it is she truly wants to know about film.

THE OOCYTE MARKET AND SOCIAL EGG FREEZING: From scarcity to singularity

Human oöcytes (eggs) have proved quite resistant to the gift system that regulates much tissue donation in the developed nations. With a few exceptions, they move from donor to recipient through incentive systems, including high rates of compensation and frank payment. Recently, women have turned in small but growing numbers to private oöcyte banking as a way to preserve and defer their fertility. This paper draws on interviews with both clinicians and clients to consider the ways that women use private banking to manage fertility. It argues that the move from purchasing third-party fertility to private banking is a move from a scarcity economy, where lack is resolved in exchange (Simmel), to an economy of singularities (Karpik) where the autologous genetic signature of the materiel renders it non-commensurable. Hence, its value can only be realised through preservation and private retention.