The Coming Age of Scarcity - (Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution) by Michael Dobkowski & Isidor Wallimann (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Michael Dobkowski and Isidor Walliman have edited a book that, although ominous, is not a fatalistic look at the future. The Coming Age of Scarcity lays out the perils of not recognizing the reality of genocide or of acknowledging the full implications of warfare.

Showing how scarcity and surplus populations can lead to disaster, The Coming Age of Scarcity is about evil. It tells of "ethnic cleansing" and excavates the world's expanding killing fields. The writers in this volume are all too aware that the future suggests that present-day population growth, land resources, energy consumption, and per capita consumption cannot be sustained without leading to greater catastrophes.

The essays in this volume ask: What is the solution in the face of mass death and genocide? As philosopher John K. Roth says in the Foreword, "The essays can sensitize us against despair and indifference because history shows that human-made mass death and genocide are not inevitable, and no events related to them will ever be."

Review Quotes

Isidor Walimann and Michael Dobkowski have assembled a series of hardhitting analyses calling attention to the most dire conflicts facing us in the coming era. The issues relating to genocide and mass death will be unpleasant and disturbing to many readers, but they are important warnings--hopefully, not too late. The goal is still to inform and motivate human action to prevent potentially tragic events from being fully realized. After the Cold War, complacency and fatalism are definitely not appropriate. This collection provides the antidote to both.-- "John D. Nagle, Professor of Political Science, Syracuse University"

About the Author

Michael N. Dobkowski is professor of religious studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He is author of The Tarnished Dream: The Basis of American Anti-Semitism, The Politics of lndifference: Documentary History of Holocaust Victims in America, and Jewish American Voluntary Organizations.

Isidor Wallimann is senior lecturer in sociology at the School of Social Work, Basel, Switzerland, and a lecturer at the University of Fribourg. He is author of Estrangrement: Marx's Conception of Human Nature and the Division
of Labor.