#interdependencies

The book reviews yesteryear 50 decades of fund in equally natural-resource and rural economics. It contrasts their distinct rational and functional techniques and thinks how they could be refocused in lighting of urgent needs on individual and normal methods. After that it suggests a ‘fresh rural economics’ that appreciates the total selection of individual-environment and metropolitan-rural interdependencies. It examines the partnership between normal methods and fiscal advancement, and thinks the leads for requirement-powered growth that will profit equally fresh and standard occupants of outlying regions. Later sections examine the politics of area, spatial economics, approaches for decreasing rural poverty, and leads for relating outlying and ecological government. Throughout, the guide highlights progressive study practices that incorporate natural-resource, ecological, and rural economics.

The sudden decline of bee pollinator populations worldwide has caused significant alarm, not least because Apis mellifera, the European honeybee, is thought to be responsible for pollination of 71 of the 100 crop species which provide 90% of the world’s food supply. Here we investigate the response to colony collapse disorder of a committed group of beekeepers who live in southern England, UK. These beekeepers are  inspired  by  the  writings of Rudolf  Steiner  and  the  principles  of  biodynamic  agriculture,  and  they care deeply  about  bees.  Drawing  on  Judith  Butler’s  work  on  vulnerability as  a shared  condition  of  living,  we examine  the  philosophies  and practices of alternative  apiculture  along  two  axes:  the  gifts  of  honey  and poison; longing,  connection  and  bee-worship.  The  first  emphasizes  how poison and  honey  draw bee  and beekeeper together in uneven gift relations; the second axis emphasizes how beekeepers make their bodies and their selves vulnerable to bees. We show how these beekeepers want us to do more than reshape bees’ vulnerability to colony collapse disorder; they want to recognize, and reconstitute, their own vulnerability to the  bee.  The  lessons  to  be  drawn are  less  about  solving  bee  decline  and  more  about  how  becoming  less uncomfortable with vulnerability and seeking to put ourselves at risk to others becomes an ethical practice. The example of these alternative beekeepers suggests that we might learn to accept more generously the risks of cohabiting with awkward nonhumans, so as to loosen the hegemonic grip of a self-certain subject that is disrupted by an outsider.