Notice bibliographique
- Notice
Type(s) de contenu et mode(s) de consultation : Texte noté : sans médiation
Auteur(s) : Mayhew, Robert John (1971-....)
Titre(s) : Malthus [Texte imprimé] : the life and legacies of an untimely prophet / Robert J. Mayhew
Publication : Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014
Description matérielle : 1 vol. (284 p.) ; 24 cm
Comprend : Prologue: opening the door on Malthus's rollercoaster ; Before Malthus: population,
economy and environment in eighteenth century England ; Prophets of perfection: a
revolutionary triptych ; The first inconvenient truth: Malthus's essay and the quiet
revolution of 1798 ; "Diarrhoea of the intellect": Malthus as the malign muse of
romanticism ; Malthus and the making of environmental economics ; Malthus and the
Victorians: age of eclipse or éminence grise? ; Devils disclosed: Malthus and the
dismal age ; Spaceships and slums, bets and bombs: Malthus the transatlantic celebrity
; Malthus today: new population bombs, climate change and collapse ; Epilogue: high
time for the untimely prophet.
Note(s) : Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-275) and index
Thomas Robert Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population was an immediate succès
de scandale when it appeared in 1798. Arguing that nature is niggardly and that societies,
both human and animal, tend to overstep the limits of natural resources in "perpetual
oscillation between happiness and misery," he found himself attacked on all sides
-- by Romantic poets, utopian thinkers, and the religious establishment. Though Malthus
has never disappeared, he has been perpetually misunderstood. This book is at once
a major reassessment of Malthus's ideas and an intellectual history of the origins
of modern debates about demography, resources, and the environment. Against the ferment
of Enlightenment ideals about the perfectibility of mankind and the grim realities
of life in the eighteenth century, Robert Mayhew explains the genesis of the Essay
and Malthus's preoccupation with birth and death rates. He traces Malthus's collision
course with the Lake poets, his important revisions to the Essay, and composition
of his other great work, Principles of Political Economy. Mayhew suggests we see the
author in his later writings as an environmental economist for his persistent concern
with natural resources, land, and the conditions of their use. Mayhew then pursues
Malthus's many afterlives in the Victorian world and beyond. Today, the Malthusian
dilemma makes itself felt once again, as demography and climate change come together
on the same environmental agenda. By opening a new door onto Malthus's arguments and
their transmission to the present day, Robert Mayhew gives historical depth to our
current planetary concerns
Identifiants, prix et caractéristiques : ISBN 9780674728714 (hbk.). - ISBN 0674728718 (hbk.)
Identifiant de la notice : ark:/12148/cb44271230j
Notice n° :
FRBNF44271230
(notice reprise d'un réservoir extérieur)
