Planet Dialectics: Explorations in Environment and Development (Critique Influence Change) - Softcover

Sachs, Wolfgang

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783603402 ISBN 13: 9781783603404

Verlag: Zed Books, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

In this classic text, Wolfgang Sachs, one of the world's leading post-development thinkers shows how the notion of 'sustainable development' is fundamentally flawed.

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Wolfgang Sachs is an author and research director at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, in Germany. He has been chair of the board of Greenpeace Germany, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and is a member of the Club of Rome. Amongst the various appointments he has held are co-editor of the Society for International Development's journal Development; visiting professor of science, technology and society at Pennsylvania State University and fellow at the Institute for Cultural Studies in Essen. He regularly teaches at Schumacher College and as Honorary Professor at the University of Kassel.

Wolfgang Sachs's first English book, For Love of the Automobile: Looking Back into the History of Our Desires, was published by the University of California Press in 1992. Several of his works have been published by Zed Books. They include the immensely influential Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power (edited, 1992), which has since been translated into numerous languages; Global Ecology: A New Arena of Political Conflict (edited, 1993); Greening the North: A Post-Industrial Blueprint for Ecology and Equity (co-authored with Reinhard Loske and Manfred Linz, 1998); Planet Dialectics: Explorations in Environment and Development (1999) and (with T. Santarius et al) Fair Future: Resource Conflicts, Security, and Global Justice (2007).

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Planet Dialectics

Explorations in Environment and Development

By Wolfgang Sachs

Zed Books Ltd

Copyright © 2015 Wolfgang Sachs
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78360-340-4

Contents

Foreword to the critique influence change edition Susan George, 
Preface to the first edition, 
Bibliographical note, 
Part I The Archaeology of the Development Idea, 
1 The Archaeology of the Development Idea, 
Part II The Shaky Ground of Sustainability, 
2 Global Ecology and the Shadow of 'Development', 
3 The Gospel of Global Efficiency, 
4 Environment and Development: The Story of a Dangerous Liaison, 
5 Sustainable Development: On the Political Anatomy of an Oxymoron, 
Part III In the Image of the Planet, 
6 One World – Many Worlds?, 
7 The Blue Planet: On the Ambiguity of a Modern Icon, 
8 Globalization and Sustainability, 
Part IV Ecology and Equity in a Post-development Era, 
9 Ecology, Justice and the End of Development, 
10 The Two Meanings of Resource Productivity, 
11 Speed Limits, 
12 The Power of Limits: An Inquiry into New Models of Wealth, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

The Archaeology of the Development Idea

A Guide to the Ruins

Ruined buildings hide their secrets under piles of earth and rubble. Archaeologists, shovels in hand, work through layer upon layer to reveal underpinnings and thus discover the origins of a dilapidated monument. But ideas can also turn out to be ruins, with their foundations covered by years or even centuries of sand.

I believe that the idea of development stands today like a ruin in the intellectual landscape, its shadows obscuring our vision. It is high time we tackled the archaeology of this towering conceit, that we uncovered its foundations to see it for what it is: the outdated monument to an immodest era.

A world power in search of a mission Wind and snow stormed over Pennsylvania Avenue on 20 January 1949 when, in his inauguration speech before Congress, US President Harry Truman defined the largest part of the world as 'underdeveloped areas' (Truman 1950: 1366). There it was, suddenly a permanent feature of the landscape, a pivotal concept that crammed the immeasurable diversity of the globe's south into a single category: underdeveloped. For the first time, the new world view was announced: all the peoples of the earth were to move along the same track and aspire to only one goal – development. And the road to follow lay clearly before the president's eyes: 'Greater production is the key to prosperity and peace.' After all, was it not the USA that had already come closest to this Utopia? According to that yardstick, nations fall into place as stragglers or lead runners. And 'the United States is pre-eminent among nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques'. Clothing self-interest in generosity, Truman outlined a programme of technical assistance designed to 'relieve the suffering of these peoples' through 'industrial activities' and 'a higher standard of living'.

Looking back after 40 years, we recognize Truman's speech as the starting-gun in the race for the South to catch up with the North. But we also see that the field of runners has been dispersed, as some competitors have fallen by the wayside and others have begun to suspect that they are running in the wrong direction.

The idea of defining the world as an economic arena originated in Truman's time – it would have been completely alien to colonialism. True, colonial powers saw themselves as participating in an economic race, with their overseas territories a source of raw materials. But it was only after the Second World War that these territories had to stand on their own and compete in a global economic arena. For Britain and France during the colonial period, dominion over their colonies was first of all a cultural obligation that stemmed from their vocation to a civilizing mission. British imperial administrator Lord Lugard had formulated the doctrine of the 'double mandate': economic profit, of course, but above all the responsibility to elevate the 'coloured races' to a higher level of civilization. The colonialists came as masters to rule over the natives; they did not come as planners to start the spiral of supply and demand.

Development as imperative According to Truman's vision, the two commandments of the double mandate converge under the imperative of 'economic development'. A change in world view had thus taken place, allowing the concept of development to rise to a standard of universal rule. In the British Development Act of 1929, still influenced by colonial frameworks, 'development' applied only to the first duty of the double mandate: the economic exploitation of resources such as land, minerals and wood products; the second duty was defined as 'progress' or 'welfare'. At this time it was thought that only resources, not people or societies, could be developed (Arndt 1981). It was in the corridors of the State Department during the Second World War that 'cultural progress' was absorbed by 'economic mobilization' and development was enthroned as the crowning concept. A new world view had found its succinct definition: the degree of civilization in a country could be measured by the level of its production. There was no longer any reason to limit the domain of development to resources only. From now on, people and whole societies could, or even should, be seen as the objects of development.

Truman's imperative to develop meant that societies of the Third World were no longer seen as diverse and incomparable possibilities of human living arrangements but were rather placed on a single 'progressive track', judged more or less advanced according to the criteria of the Western industrial nations. Such a reinterpretation of global history was not only politically flattering but also unavoidable, since underdevelopment can be recognized only in looking back from a state of maturity. Development without predominance is like a race without direction. So the pervasive power and influence of the West was logically included in the proclamation of development. It is no coincidence that the preamble of the UN Charter ('We, the peoples of the United nations ...') echoes the Constitution of the USA ('We the people of the United states ...'). Development meant nothing less than projecting the American model of society onto the rest of the world.

Truman really needed such a reconceptualization of the world. The old colonial world had fallen apart. The United States, the strongest nation to emerge from the war, was obliged to act as the new world power. For this it needed a vision of a new global order. The concept of development provided the answer because it presented the world as a collection of homogeneous entities, held together not through the political dominion of colonial times, but through economic interdependence. It meant that the independence process of young countries could be allowed to proceed, because they automatically fell under the wing of the USA anyway when they proclaimed themselves to be subjects of economic development. Development was the conceptual vehicle that allowed the USA to behave as herald of national self-determination while at the same time founding a new type of worldwide domination: an anti-colonial imperialism.

Regimes in search of a raison d'etat The leaders of the newly founded nations – from Nehru to Nkrumah, Nasser to Sukarno – accepted the image that the North...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Zed Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1783603402
• ISBN 13: 9781783603404
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 2
• Anzahl der Seiten: 248
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchpark GmbH; gpsr@buchpark.de; ; Krügerweg 1; Trebbin; Brandenburg; 14959; Deutschland