How to Read a Bridge
In this short article, Rob Nixon reflects on a visit to South Africa and the relationship of the various kinds of inequality present in societies.
In this short article, Rob Nixon reflects on a visit to South Africa and the relationship of the various kinds of inequality present in societies.
The contributions in this volume of RCC Perspectives address ways in which scarcity (and abundance) have been represented aesthetically and exploited politically in very different contexts.
The writings of Erik Gustaf Geijer allow us to distinguish between two modes of thought in representations of scarcity: the idealization of scarcity as the “simple life” and its problematization in discourses on poverty.
Although medieval Scandinavian literary texts are heavily symbolic and thus cannot be used as reliable sources of information about environmental conditions of the past, they can shed valuable light on the ways premodern societies perceived and dealt with problems of scarcity and environmental change.
In literature and the arts, scarcity has often been given a positive interpretation as something to be cherished not shunned, actively endorsed and idealized rather than dismissed as an obstacle to artistic success.
The consideration of scarcity as it is represented in literary texts can show us that the distinction of world and language is less stable than it might appear at first sight.
This essay looks at science fiction works by Philip K. Dick and Ursula Le Guin from the 1970s in which visions of scarcity are both critiques of abundance and utopian gestures. Today, Ramírez argues, scarcity has lost its critical power.
Weik von Mossner looks at how we currently tell stories about global environmental change and human agency in the Anthropocene, the limitations of such narratives, and how consumers of these narratives are affected by them.
An excerpt from Alex Carr Johnson’s manuscript “Every Day Like Today: Learning How to Be a Man in Love.”
Melosi analyzes the Emerald City in L. Frank Baum’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to highlight how limited perspectives on urban greenness once were.