Poverty and Scarcity in Global History,鈥痶he virtual conference organized by 皇冠体育鈥檚 University鈥檚 Global History Initiative and the University of Glasgow鈥檚 Poverty Research Network, successfully concluded on Friday, February 4th, 2022. Throughout its two-day duration, scholars interrogated the interface between poverty, scarcity, and the field of global history through three broad areas: production, power, and affect. In addition to a series of panels, the conference also featured two keynote speakers, Dr. Candace Fujikane from the University of Hawai驶i at M膩noa and Dr. Anya Zilberstein of Concordia University.鈥&苍产蝉辫;
Dr. Candace Fujikane wrapped up the first day of the event with her keynote entitled, "Mapping Indigenous Economies of Abundance against Capitalist Economies of Poverty and Scarcity." Her lecture is based on her recently published book鈥疢apping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai驶i,鈥痺hich begins with the central premise "[that] capital fears abundance."鈥
Dr. Fujikane began her lecture by sketching out the rhetorical regimes and tactics of capital, which have been used to represent the abundant lands of Wai'anae as wastelands so that capital can seize control of the means of production. As Dr. Fujikane explains, despite the abundance of food grown by farmers and the wealth of the Kanaka Maoli in their familial relationships and ancestral knowledge and practices, the media and developers have depicted the Wai'anae coast as a wasteland, both geographically and culturally, to make way for urban and industrial development. Dr. Fujikane has coined this strategy employed by land developers as "mathematics of subdivision:"鈥
"cartographies 鈥 dismember land into smaller and smaller pieces isolated from one another to the point that each fragment is, according to the occupying state, no longer agriculturally feasible, culturally significant, or is small enough to be a token easement that can then be built around."
Dr. Fujikane then provides examples of the "mathematics of subdivision" used by developers to get approval in Hawaii. These are: (1) "phased" archaeological inventory surveys, (2) urban spot zoning, (3) individual sites vs. complexes, and (4) isolation of the project area.
The latter half of Dr. Fujikane's