The vigorous and doux soldier: David Hume’s military defence of commerce

ABSTRACT

If war is an inevitable condition of human nature, as David Hume suggests, then what type of societies can best protect us from defeat and conquest? For David Hume, commerce decreases the relative cost of war and promotes technological military advances as well as martial spirit. Commerce therefore makes a country militarily stronger and better equipped to protect itself against attacks than any other kind of society. Hume does not assume commerce would yield a peaceful world nor that commercial societies would be militarily weak, as many contemporary scholars have argued. On the contrary, for him, military might is a beneficial consequence of commerce.     

Conceptualizing the Survival Sector in Madagascar

Abstract: This article calls for the recognition of a subsector of the informal economy, which is conceptualized as the “survival sector”. Based on empirical evidence from Antananarivo, Madagascar it is suggested that beggars, street children and other marginalized people constitute a separate, non‐productive subsector of the economy, which is also distinguishable from formal and informal economies because of other aspects, such as the character of its social and economic networks, survival strategies, patterns of social and physical mobility, and the social and public spaces occupied. Given the vast number of marginalized people in the world, it seems useful to consider a survival sector of its own that is, despite interlinkages, fundamentally different from other components of the informal economy.     

Alternative Zuliefersysteme im Brauereisektor – Regionalmodelle des Braugerstenbezugs in Bayern

Standort - Seit Jahrzehnten wird Bier größtenteils in standardisierten Wertschöpfungsketten produziert, wobei die Kontexte der Rohstofferzeugung kaum mehr nachvollziehbar erscheinen....