Perspectives Article
Scarcity in the Arctic: A Colonial Construct?
In European imagination the North Atlantic has been seen as a region on the far borders of civilization and marked by the contrasts of scarcity and plenty.
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Perspectives Article
Environmental Scarcity and Abundance in Medieval Icelandic Literature
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.
Perspectives Article
Anthropocene Blues: Abundance, Energy, Limits
Since fossil fuel consumption has been integral to the project of modernity, energy history offers one way of trying to understand the Anthropocene and link the histories of capital and climate.
Perspectives Article
Curb Your Enthusiasm: On Scarcity and Replenishment in Literature
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.
Perspectives Article
From Anti-Abundance to Anti-Anti-Abundance: Scarcity, Abundance, and Utopia in Two Science Fiction Writers
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.
Perspectives
Out of Sight, Out of Mind: The Politics and Culture of Waste
Waste is never completely or permanently “out of sight.” Once discarded, it undergoes transformations, often reappearing elsewhere in new forms. In this volume of RCC Perspectives, scholars from different disciplines—from history and art history, urban geography, environmental studies, and anthropology—investigate the traces waste leaves behind in the course of its travels.
Perspectives Article
The “Urban Mine” in Accra, Ghana
Urban mining—reclaiming valuable metals from discarded electronic devices—has become an important economic activity in the informal sector in places such as Agbogbloshie, a slum in Accra, Ghana. This article examines the material flows linking Ghana with the rest of the world, the politics of waste recycling, and the hazards faced by those processing e-waste.
Perspectives Article
When Waste Disappears, or More Waste Please!
Energy-from-waste plants in places like Britain were designed help reduce waste and carbon emissions, but they have had unintended side-effects.
Perspectives
A Future without Waste? Zero Waste in Theory and Practice
Is a world without waste truly achievable? The essays in this volume of RCC Perspectives discuss zero waste as a vision, as a historical concept, and as an international practice. Going beyond the motto of “reduce, reuse, recycle,” they reflect on the feasibility of creating closed material cycles and explore real-world examples of challenges and successes on the way to zero waste.
Perspectives Article
Learning to Celebrate Our Human Footprint
Society’s approach to environmental protection has so far relied on certain prevailing, but perhaps specious, beliefs—that we cannot impact the environment positively, or that environmental protection is incompatible with economic growth. Braungart explores how, rather than making ineffective changes to an already broken system, it would be more beneficial to rethink that system entirely.