This research project examines the political and ideological implications of different ways of framing the relationship between humanity, nature, and the world of goods.
Scarcity can sometimes be viewed as a fact of nature and at other times as a product of historically specific cultural practices. An improved understanding of how political economists have conceptualized scarcity in the past allows for a recognition of alternative worldviews within which new ways of theorizing economic phenomena might emerge. By realizing that past thinkers have conceived of scarcity in a wide variety of ways, this project invites economists to question one of their most inviolable axioms and to start thinking about new ways of framing their analyses.
