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Author: Deane W. Curtin


Publisher: Indiana University Press (1999)


Binding: Library Binding, 218 pages


pricer: $29.95


ISBN-10: 0253335760


editorialreviews

"'s Challenge" claims that cross-cultural disputes over environmental and social problems are extensions of nineteenth century liberal defenses of - and indigenous resistance to - colonialism. Despite the familiar assertion that we live in a 'global village', Cross-cultural environmental and social conflicts are often marked by failures of communication due to deeply divergent assumptions about the scope of the moral and the constitution of moral person hood.Such conflicts include the globalisation of trade vs. the authority of traditional and indigenous peoples to define the terms of change for themselves, the need to control population vs. the demand for social justice and recognition of women as active participants in the framing of social policy, and the need to preserve wild nature vs. the ever increasing need for access to land and to safe food and water. Part one examines the puzzling dual legacy of the great nineteenth century utilitarian reformers: Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill. While advocating radical social change at home, they endorsed, indeed invented, colonial social and environmental policies for the East India Company.This colonial logic is then connected to twentieth century attempts to export 'progress' to the 'third world': the green revolution, and the provisions of the GATT agreement that allow for privatisation of human genes and seeds. Part two asks whether the terms of the American debate over the proper relationship of culture to nature can be exported as a model for other parts of the world. Such attempts have often found self-described 'radical' environmentalists on the side of 'third world' economic elites who oppose the interests of the indigenous peoples. Some, though not all, of the radical, first world environmental philosophies amount to confused extensions of nineteenth-century colonial ideas.Part three articulates a constructive response to these problems in terms of a new, distinctively American, post-colonial, environmental ethic. 's challenge is a work of public philosophy: it is a philosophically sophisticated book about urgent contemporary problems, written for a broad readership. Just who is ? He is one man in India, trying to deal with the competing stresses of post colonialism and environmentalism - a man to whom Deane Curtin introduces us in this sophisticated work of public philosophy and explores questions such as: Can indigenous peoples define the terms of change for themselves? What impact does post colonialism have on population, social justice, and women's rights? How can inhabitants of our global village balance the preservation of wild nature and the ever-increasing need for access to land and to safe food and water?




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