Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Carl Wennerlind. Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) 2023. 290 pp. Ill. $35.00. (E-book: $26.49.)
Year: 2024
Type: book-review
Abstract: In Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis, historians Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Carl Wennerlind trace the history of Western economic thought about natural resources from the sixteenth century to the present.Because people have long had to confront the limits of natural resources at any time and place, the authors chose the concept of "scarcity" for their organizing theme.In their view, all economics has had to deal with this primary issue, along with whether and how society might overcome natural limits.Jonsson and Wennerlind divide the concept of scarcity into eleven varieties, grouped under two large categories, "cornucopian scarcity" and "finitarian scarcity".Finitarian scarcity emphasizes limits to resources and to human ability to overcome those limits and argues for restraint of desires.Cornucopian scarcity optimistically expects human inventiveness to overcome limited resources and fulfill constantly expanding desire.Finitarian thought comprises traditional notions of economy back as far as Aristotle.Cornucopians appeared in the seventeenth century and became the dominant strand in Western economic thought by the end of the nineteenth century.Although Jonsson and Wennerlind offer no solution to the issue of growth and natural limits, their sympathies clearly lie with the Finitarians.Through eight chapters, the authors explore variations of these two themes as they emerged in roughly historical order.Finitarian economics include what they term Neo-Aristotelian, Utopian, Malthusian, Romantic, Socialist, and Planetary Scarcity.On the Cornucopian side of the ledger, they discuss Cornucopian, Enclosure, Enlightened, Capitalist, and Neoclassical Scarcity.Enclosure and Socialist Scarcity, in their view, might fit either with the Finitarians or the Conucopians.In their presentations of each type of scarcity, they discuss the work of economists, mostly, as well as occasional ecologists, poets, authors, and social critics.These figures are primarily people one would expect in a history of economics: Francis Bacon; Adam Smith; Gerrard Winstanley; Thomas Malthus; Karl Marx; Stanley Jevons, and others.Less expected are such figures as Dorothy and William Wordsworth or Rachel Carson.The book begins with what the authors call traditional ideas about scarcity, from Genesis to Thomas More and Luther (although not Calvin or the Puritans).Traditional notions of scarcity centered on various ways to accommodate to the scarcity of periodic famine.Unfortunately, the rest of the book neglects or discounts religious conceptions of scarcity.The influence of ancient authors on modern thought is also outside the scope of the work.
Author: Mark Stoll
Institution: Texas Tech University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4404772998