The growing Environment and Sustainability list is at the heart of our remit to publish quality scholarship that addresses global social challenges.
This list covers a broad spectrum of issues and focuses on the social justice dimensions of environmental sustainability, including in: climate change; environmental politics; developing sustainable economies; transport and sustainability; and environmentalist thought and ideology.
The new Open Access Global Social Challenges Journal incorporates these themes to facilitate critical thinking across disciplines and fields.
Environment and Sustainability
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Chapter 7 considers the relationship of poverty and inequality to development. It begins by looking at how poverty has been measured globally, for example using the International Poverty Line (IPL) devised by the World Bank. The chapter goes on to question the extent to which monetary indicators of poverty such as the IPL accurately define and measure poverty levels, and proceeds to outline and discuss alternatives such as the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). Drawing on a number of further indicators of poverty, the question is raised as to whether poverty is more about inequality than insufficient resources within countries. Inequalities of income and wealth, and inequalities of assets, such as land, housing and ‘human capital’, are examined, together with spatial inequalities within and between countries. The role of politics in relation to inequality is also given consideration as the chapter goes on to conclude that there is growing recognition of the connections between poverty and inequality, and the need to address inequality in its various forms at national, regional and global levels by moving it to the forefront of development agendas.
International development is a vibrant, interdisciplinary area of the social sciences. This Short Guide offers a uniquely succinct and balanced account of this politically charged subject. It distils both the classic and newer debates together in a clear framework and illustrates them with contemporary examples.
Designed to introduce a wide readership to international development, the book:
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considers how far the field has been reconfigured over time and to what extent it is likely to change in the future;
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reviews contemporary topics including tourism, migration and digital technologies;
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includes distinctive international case studies and examples.
By providing a succinct evaluation of competing approaches to, and perspectives on, the idea and practice of international development, this book offers students across the social sciences a distinct and invaluable introduction to the field.
This chapter offers a critical overview of the main theoretical perspectives on development, from early theories of ‘modernisation’ to later diametrically opposed theories of ‘dependency’, ‘world systems’, and ‘post-development. Variations of some of these theoretical perspectives, such as ‘dependent capitalist development’ are also reviewed. In addition, the chapter explores the later revival of some of the earlier theories, and the emergence of new concepts that have found their way into development theory such as ‘sustainable development’, ‘human development’ and ‘popular development’. The chapter concludes by pointing out that there has been a move towards more open and flexible approaches to understanding development during the 21st century. This is notably reflected in the concept of ‘reflexive development’ and the theoretical approach surrounding it. As a result, there is now greater awareness of the need to address the issues of development not only in the Global South but also in the Global North.
The fourth chapter sets off from the point that, if the Anthropocene marks a time when the human becomes the most salient force in the geological record, then it is high time we took seriously our moral responsibility for geological processes and entities. It is argued that if we set aside human temporality and let go of anthropocentric ideas of integrity and persistence, then we can see the geologic as both interruptive and indifferent, and in both ways a challenge to the human projection into the world that demands careful navigation and responsible communication. This would mark the accession of the geologic to our moral universe. We would then not only assume responsibility for our footprint in the world but also take on the task of being for geology even though these precarious existences are unlike our own.
Before the book begins in earnest, it is established that our environmental catastrophe is marked by our masquerading in the present, refusing the future by refusing a responsibility for the other radical enough that it would reject the present and its deleterious conduct. There is then a brief encapsulation of the idea of moral gravity that will run throughout the book, as humility in the face of vulnerability and enthusiasm for lives that are precarious, as the graveness of existence and acceding to the pull of the other. An overview of chapters then gives the more concrete form of the argument to come for an environmentalism of precarious lives.
At the end of the book there is a brief if tentative conclusion that gives a summary of the work but that also makes the case that the real work of a revolution in morality is to be enacted in and with and for communities of precarious lives. There is then a final conceptual contribution, an elaboration of responsibility as an urgent patience. This is not a patience that is unhurried in the face of climate change, but rather an understanding that whatever we do now in response to environmental catastrophe cannot be done without the endlessly demanding work of listening to others and responding to others and saving the worlds of others before our own, with urgency but not without the patient work of responsibility.
The second chapter takes on calls by tech entrepreneurs to abandon the earth and move our lives to Mars or other extraterrestrial sites. It is argued that not only is this exodus congruent with the rapacious colonial logic that has left us here stricken in the first place, but also that it posits a lifeworld so alien to human experience, and with such little regard for human difference and non-human others, that the human simply would not survive the transplant. As such, it is concluded that we would be better off staying together here on earth rather than embarking on an exodus that is existential as much as it is planetary.
Between chapters there is a brief interruption to consider the need for a humanism of the other that can speak to the peculiarity of human responsibility in the world but that does not exclude non-human others from the moral universe. It is argued that we need an understanding of moral encounter that limits itself to the human encounter of others but that is fundamentally undiscriminating about what it encounters. This interruption then sets us on the path to an account of the moral gravity of animals as an interruptive and moving force.
Thinking about climate change can create a paralyzing sense of hopelessness. But what about the idea of a planetary exodus? Are high tech solutions like colonizing other planets just another distraction from taking real action?
This radical book unsettles how we think about taking responsibility for environmental catastrophe.
Going beyond both hopelessness and false hope in his development of a ‘sociology of the very worst’, Hill debunks the idea of a society that centres human beings and calls for us to take responsibility for sustaining a coexistence of animals, plants and minerals bound by one planet.
We would then find the centre of our moral gravity here together on earth.
The first chapter explores the use of pessimism about climate change, arguing that it need not be a fatalism or a nihilism but instead a responsible narcissism, a yearning for a community of precarious lives in anticipation of our collective death, a community founded on the humility of the individual and its enthusiasm for others. It is argued that in this confrontation with the very worst, the individual in its self-regard is undone and then remade in orientation towards the other, opening to a future that is habitable only because it is a radical break from the present. We can look at the catastrophe and think ‘we’re fucked’ but only if this ‘we’ situates the individual in a heterologous community that in turn situates our hopelessness in a precarious hope.
