Description
Book SynopsisArgues that demographic and environmental stress - the interactions among rapid population growth, environmental degradation, inequality, and emerging scarcities of vital natural resources - represents one important source of turmoil in today's world.
Trade Review"[Kahl] describes two main paths by which extreme poverty raises the likelihood of violent conflict and the collapse of a state into lawlessness."--Jeffrey D. Sachs, Scientific American "States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife is an exemplar of cumulative social science research... Colin Kahl is a highly select class: he ranges back and forth across analysis of the natural and social worlds with nimbleness and a mastery of his material. The book he has produced is a tour de force."--Thomas Homer-Dixon, Population and Development Review "An excellent contribution... An important step toward improving our understanding of the demographic and environmental linkages to conflict."--Patricia Kameri-Mbote, ECSP Report "Besides presenting his own neo-Malthusian model, the author also provides critical but fair accounts of its theoretical competitors, e.g., the (neo-Marxist) 'political ecology' paradigm and the (neo-classical) theories of Collier and others. The book is generally well-structured and well-written, requiring neither mathematical nor economic training of the reader. It is highly recommended as an important contribution to general conflict theory."--Bjorn Moller, Economics of Peace and Security Journal "Kahl's study is currently the most theoretically advanced attempt to include environmental degradation and demographic developments into a social science model of the causation of intrastate violence."--Klaus Schlichte, Perspectives on Politics "[T]his book is an essential read for anyone interested in understanding the relationship between population growth, environmental degradation, scarcity, and civil strife. Kahl draws attention to a very serious problem which is likely to lead to more human suffering over time unless efforts are made to address it."--Robert A. Dowd, Development in Practice
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix List of Tables xi Acknowledgments xiii List of Abbreviations xv Chapter 1: Plight, Plunder, and Political Ecology 1 Chapter 2: States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife: A Theoretical Framework 28 Chapter 3: Green Crisis, Red Rebels: Communist Insurgency in the Philippines 65 Chapter 4: Land and Lies: Ethnic Clashes in Kenya 117 Chapter 5: From Chaos to Calm: Explaining Variations in Violence in the Philippines and Kenya 163 Chapter 6: Conclusions and Implications 209 Notes 249 Index 323
