The next gathering of the Community for Belonging Reading Group will examine Scarcity: Exploring an Abundance of Creative Possibilities for Social Challenges inspired by the books—Field Notes on Scarcity, edited by Tosin Oshinowo and Julie Cirelli, and Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis, by Frederick Albritton Jonsson and Carl Wennerlind. 

All Daniels Faculty community members are invited to participate in an abundance of conversation about innovative, inspiring and ingenious strategies to address climate change and economics.  

Date: Friday, February 7 
Time: 12:30-2:00 p.m. 
Location: Eberhard Zeidler Library 
Register in advance. 

Oshinowo, a Lagos-based Nigerian architect and the co-editor of Field Notes on Scarcity, will participate in the conversation following her public lecture at the Daniels Faculty titled “An Alternative Urbanism: The Culture of Self-organising Systems.” 

Published in conjunction with the 2023 Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Field Notes on Scarcity examines what scarcity looks like on the ground, and the challenges and opportunities it presents across architecture and design. Sixty scholars and practitioners from across the Global South—including Lesley Lokko, Yinka Shonibare, Formafantasma, Rahul Mehrotra, Olalekan Jeyifous, Abeer Seikaly, Ilze and Heinrich Wolff, Chitra Vishwanath, and Deema Assaf—contribute reflections, poems, visual essays, and dialogues exploring what scarcity represents, what it inspires, and what it reveals.  

The second text, Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis, presents “a sweeping intellectual history of the concept of economic scarcity—its development across five hundred years of European thought and its decisive role in fostering the climate crisis.” 

Limited copies of the books will be available for free on a first-come, first-served basis in the Eberhard Zeidler Library beginning Thursday, January 16.  

The Community for Belonging Reading Group is sponsored by U of T Affinity Partners, Manulife and TD Insurance.