The Invention of Scarcity

With the publication of Essay on the Principle of Population and its projection of food shortages in the face of ballooning populations, British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus secured a leading role in modern political and economic thought. This book reveals how canonical readings of Malthus fail to acknowledge his narrow understanding of what constitutes food production. The book returns to the eighteenth-century contexts that generated his arguments, showing how Malthus mobilized a redemptive narrative of British historical development and dismissed the varied ways that people adapted to the challenges of subsistence needs. The book uses history, anthropology, food studies, and animal studies to redirect our attention to the margins of Malthus's essay, where activities such as hunting, gathering, herding, and gardening were rendered extraneous. It demonstrates how Malthus's omissions and his subsequent canonization provided a rationale for colonial imposition of British agricultural models, regardless of environmental diversity. By broadening our conception of human livelihoods, the book suggests pathways to resistance against the hegemony of Malthusian political economy. In doing so, it invites us to imagine a world where monoculture is in retreat and the margins are recentered as spaces of experimentation, nimbleness, and human flourishing.