I’m a nerd about all things museums and archives, which I teach and write about. I was trained as an anthropologist, and got really interested in using anthropology’s methods (namely ethnography) to do long-term, embedded, deep-dive fieldwork in bureaucratic settings, like big museums. I love reading books by journalists, economists, historians, and others who do ethnography and really embed themselves in different communities, places, and cultures.
This is an academic book, but it's beautifully written, and not too, too jargony. Tsing does a kind of commodity ethnography, embedding herself in multiple parts of the lifecycle of the Matsutake Mushroom trade, while depicting the worlds of pickers, restauranteurs, mushroom traders and auctioneers, nature guides, and more. She also weaves in a critique of capitalist markets in which these kinds of natural entities now are embedded, which I dig!
What a rare mushroom can teach us about sustaining life on a fragile planet
Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world-and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the Northern Hemisphere. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing's account of these sought-after fungi offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: What manages to live in the ruins we have made? The Mushroom at the End of the World explores the unexpected corners of matsutake commerce, where we encounter Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions lead us into…
I'm an architect, professor, and director of the School of Architecture at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Throughout my career, I've sought to empower people to improve the designed environment through better knowledge of materials. I've written nine books and many articles on emerging materials, sustainable building technologies, and Japanese architecture and design. Having lived in Japan several times, I also appreciate the importance of developing an expanded worldview of material practices.
Global socioeconomic diversity is an important yet abstract concept, but this book offers tangible evidence.
Household material wealth varies significantly worldwide in both quantity and quality. To reveal this diverse range, sixteen photographers visited thirty countries and lived briefly with families considered statistically average for their nation.
In the book, each family stands before their abode with all their household possessions. Suffice it to say that contrasts abound.
Called “Fascinating! An incredible book” by Oprah Winfrey, this beloved photography collection vividly portrays the look and feel of the human condition everywhere on Earth.
In an unprecedented effort, sixteen of the world’s foremost photographers traveled to thirty nations around the globe to live for a week with families that were statistically average for that nation. At the end of each visit, photographer and family collaborated on a remarkable portrait of the family members outside their home, surrounded by all of their possessions; a few jars and jugs for some, an explosion of electronic gadgetry for others.
My passion for developing entrepreneurial and business instinct is simple. It is all based on confidence. Over time, my experiences have shown me that many leaders (myself included) can end up in “decision paralysis” and default to taking no action at all. Leaders can have all of the information and indicators that a decision is the right thing to do, but they default to doing nothing. By developing a better understanding of my own instincts, I have been able to build confidence in the decisions I have made over the past 20 years, thus eliminating any deterrents from making sound decisions.
Deep Economy takes both macro- and micro-economics and breaks them down to their most simplest levels. Examining what we have learned over time from our expanding economy, McKibben examines all of the positive and negative impacts that have occurred during our country’s growth.
With a focus on understanding how groundbreaking innovations can disrupt numerous industries, Deep Economy takes the approach on what leaders can learn from the past and how breakthroughs can (and will) have unintended consequences whether they are positive or negative. Recognizing these patterns and incorporating them into our business decisions can only help us make better decisions.
In this powerful and provocative manifesto, Bill McKibben offers the biggest challenge in a generation to the prevailing view of our economy. For the first time in human history, he observes, "more" is no longer synonymous with "better" indeed, for many of us, they have become almost opposites. McKibben puts forward a new way to think about the things we buy, the food we eat, the energy we use, and the money that pays for it all. Our purchases, he says, need not be at odds with the things we truly value. McKibben's animating idea is that we need to…
Bill Poorvu is a successful real estate investor and developer who for 35 years headed the real estate program at Harvard Business School, where he taught several generations of students, many of whom went on to become industry leaders. He is also one of the founders of the Baupost Group, a Boston-based investment firm that is considered one of the savviest hedge funds in the world, with some $30 billion in assets under management.
Successful real estate investment and development is in part the result of understanding an economic contextand taking the long view. Toward those ends, there’s no better jumping-off point than Ray Dalio's historical review of the economic “Big Cycle” that has determined the success and failure of nations and economic systems over the past several centuries. And by the way, Ray knows what he’s talking about: his Bridgewater Associates is the world’s largest hedge fund.
“A provocative read...There are few tomes that coherently map such broad economic histories as well as Mr. Dalio’s. Perhaps more unusually, Mr. Dalio has managed to identify metrics from that history that can be applied to understand today.” —Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New York Times
From legendary investor Ray Dalio, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Principles, who has spent half a century studying global economies and markets, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order examines history’s most turbulent economic and political periods to reveal why the times ahead will likely be radically…
I am an anthropologist of development who has conducted ethnographic research in India, Indonesia, and more recently, Australia. Throughout my career I have grappled with questions of how power works in development, particularly in and through processes of self-making. I seek new theoretical tools to examine these questions, but always grounded in the realities of the everyday. I came of age when post-development critiques were dominant, but both my idealism and cynicism have been tempered by working alongside local development actors. In my work I try to give readers a sympathetic portrait of their lives, beliefs, and hopes, and how these shape practices, relationships, and consequences of ‘development’.
I have been fascinated with selfhood, the cultivation of ‘subjects of development’ as either targets, or ‘trustees’ of aid, since my PhD.
Anand Pandian’s Crooked Stalks offers a nuanced, careful, and ultimately beautiful account of how moral selves are cultivated among the Kallar caste near Madurai in Tamil Nadu, India.
Development looms large among the Kallar, what Pandian describes as a ‘moral horizon’ that is an impetus to transform people’s lives and the material environment.
In presenting an impressive breadth of historical material alongside ethnographic description he shows the remnants of colonial rule in contemporary virtues, contributing to understanding the ‘postcolonial self’.
How do people come to live as they ought to live? Crooked Stalks seeks an answer to this enduring question in diverse practices of cultivation: in the moral horizons of development intervention, in the forms of virtue through which people may work upon their own desires, deeds, and habits, and in the material labors that turn inhabited worlds into environments for both moral and natural growth. Focusing on the colonial subjection and contemporary condition of the Piramalai Kallar caste-classified, condemned, and policed for decades as a "criminal tribe"-Anand Pandian argues that the work of cultivation in all of these senses…
I have been teaching and writing about economics and the environment for over thirty-five years, and have been inspired by my students to work towards a new ecological economics that can underpin a sustainable planetary future. Many of the crises that I and colleagues have predicted – climate disasters, soil degradation, water shortages, biodiversity loss – are now upon us, but the situation is not hopeless. I am working for a rapid transformation away from fossil-fuel and resource-intensive forms of economic growth, and hope that the expanding field of ecological economics can help to usher in this badly needed change.
This book provides an essential introduction to the expanding field of ecological economics.
Authored by some of the leading figures in the field, it covers the basic evidence of global limits to economic activity such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation. The historical basis for ecological economic theory is explained in non-technical terms.
The book covers issues of sustainable scale, natural capital, and ecosystem services – simple concepts that nonetheless revolutionize economic thinking. It concludes with an analysis of policies needed to achieve sustainability.
From Empty-World Economics to Full-World Economics
Ecological economics explores new ways of thinking about how we manage our lives and our planet to achieve a sustainable, equitable, and prosperous future. Ecological economics extends and integrates the study and management of both "nature's household" and "humankind's household"-An Introduction to Ecological Economics, Second Edition, the first update and expansion of this classic text in 15 years, describes new approaches to achieving a sustainable and desirable human presence on Earth. Written by the top experts in the field, it addresses the necessity for an innovative approach to integrated environmental, social, and economic analysis…
The four authors who worked on this publication all bring different perspectives and have different backgrounds, which make this book very special. A City Manager, an artist/historian, an individual with a Ph.D. in Public Affairs, and is an Executive Director of a Non-Profit Organization, and then myself who has worked in municipalities since age 11 and then transitioned to higher education as an administrator, instructor, and researcher. We all were able to bring together our experiences, expertise, and passion to create a book that is designed to be a useful resource for both practitioners and scholars alike. Most of all, we all feel very passionate about making the places we live better for everyone.
Economic development is critical for municipalities and which helps drive the city planning process.
This book takes actual case studies and discusses each one at length for an entire chapter for a municipality’s planning process since it is heavily dependent upon the economics of an area. This area is critical for practitioners and graduate students understanding economic development and how it impacts a community.
There are a number of case studies throughout the book that cover a wide array of topics (e.g. Non-Profit organization’s involvement), which are important to comprehend how those forces impact the economy for municipalities and counties.
Douglas Watson and John Morris collect 15 case studies to inform our thinking about local economic development. They explain that the local governments have become “major players” in economic development. They frame the book as a collection of cases that will help us better understand the role of local governments in this field. The cases offer descriptions of specific economic development projects from across the United States.
Inequality and fairness are basic issues in human conflict and cooperation that have long fascinated me. Growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, I was confronted with the extreme racial segregation of schools and neighborhoods. My Catholic upbringing taught me to cherish the cardinal virtues of justice, wisdom, courage, and temperance, and my education in political economy taught me that markets can fairly and efficiently allocate resources, when legal power is evenly shared. My formal education culminated in a Ph.D. in Public Affairs from Princeton University, which led me to my current roles: Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Principal Economist at Gallup. I care deeply about the social conditions that create cooperation and conflict.
To understand why some workers are paid more than others, you have to understand how skills are valued and rewarded in the labor market, and how that has changed, as the economy has evolved.
Focused on the United States, Katz and Goldin provide a sweeping overview of how education leads to skills and income, drawing on the most well-established theories in economics. It misses some important causes of inequality, but is essential for understanding the one of the deepest economic forces governing wages: the supply and demand of human capital.
This book provides a careful historical analysis of the co-evolution of educational attainment and the wage structure in the United States through the twentieth century. The authors propose that the twentieth century was not only the American Century but also the Human Capital Century. That is, the American educational system is what made America the richest nation in the world. Its educational system had always been less elite than that of most European nations. By 1900 the U.S. had begun to educate its masses at the secondary level, not just in the primary schools that had remarkable success in the…
Rex Weyler is a writer and ecologist. His books include Blood of the Land, a history of indigenous American nations, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; Greenpeace: The Inside Story, a finalist for the BC Book Award and the Shaughnessy-Cohen Award for Political Writing; and The Jesus Sayings, a deconstruction of first-century history, a finalist for the BC Book Award. In the 1970s, Weyler was a co-founder of Greenpeace International and editor of the Greenpeace Chronicles. He served on campaigns to preserve rivers and forests, and to stop whaling, sealing, and toxic dumping.
Want solutions? Start with our failed economic system. Daly, a World Bank senior economist, examines the economic restructuring necessary to live on a finite planet. He corrects the errors of classic economics by showing that a human economy is a subsystem embedded in a finite, fragile ecosystem, maintained by extracting limited resources and exporting waste. A steady-state economy accounts for the limits of both resources and waste.
First published in 1977, this volume caused a sensation because of Daly's radical view that "enough is best." Today, his ideas are recognized as the key to sustainable development, and Steady-State Economics is universally acknowledged as the leading book on the economics of sustainability.
I came to activism at a young age, inspired by a book given to me by a friend in Grade 10. I also grew up poor; my trajectory into university was unusual for my demographic, a fact I only discovered once I was doing my PhD in the sociology of education. By the time I started interviewing activists for my doctorate, I had a burning desire to understand how social change could happen, what democracy really looked like, and who was left out of participating. I am still trying to figure these things out. If you are, too, the books on this list might help!
The important argument lying at the heart of this beautifully written book is that the trajectory of the current global economy, driven by neoliberal logics, is fundamentally one of expulsions: that is, expelling the poor, the biosphere, democracy, and anything else that gets in the way of maximizing profit. This book takes massive case studies—from palm oil production in Malaysia and Indonesia to water bottling by large corporations in the US—and demonstrates how they are ultimately about pushing people outinstead ofinviting people in. It raises important questions about who the economy is for, and what ends we are ultimately building toward as a global society. I don’t have a pithy personal story about this book; I just think you should read it.
Soaring income inequality and unemployment, expanding populations of the displaced and imprisoned, accelerating destruction of land and water bodies: today's socioeconomic and environmental dislocations cannot be fully understood in the usual terms of poverty and injustice, according to Saskia Sassen. They are more accurately understood as a type of expulsion-from professional livelihood, from living space, even from the very biosphere that makes life possible.
This hard-headed critique updates our understanding of economics for the twenty-first century, exposing a system with devastating consequences even for those who think they are not vulnerable. From finance to mining, the complex types of knowledge…
