*** BLANDINE LAPERCHE, ANNE-MARIE CRETIENEAU, DIMITRI UZUNIDIS (Eds.): Développement durable: pour une nouvelle économie. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: pie@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). 2009, 295 pp, €36-50. ISBN 978-90-5201-562-0.
As is often the case in Europe, it is not until under the pressure of threatened or actually occurring disasters that humanity will agree to change its behaviour. This is how the rising power of the idea of sustainable development over the past thirty years is explained - the dwindling of the planet's resources and deterioration of the environment get the all-powerful economic bubble that is devoted to the exclusive religion of growth, to start to pay attention to the growing concern to preserve planet Earth for future generations and ensure social justice in the here and now, social justice that is at present totally swallowed up to the sole benefit of shareholders and their golden parachute henchmen. The challenge of sustainable development of the economy is therefore a question of how to interpret in practice the simultaneous pursuit of three objectives, namely social equity, economic efficiency and ecological prudence. It goes without saying that this quest will encounter obstacles and pitfalls because the desire to construct a new economy will mean taking on all forms of conservatism by coming up with economic, technological, social and political change. The job will be all the more perilous in that the necessary innovation raises a number of questions and areas of uncertainty: 'Will environmental constraints be a threat to economic growth or do they provide new opportunities to produce goods and services that protect the environment and respect individuals? What will be the role of technological progress and the role of public policies in the second case? On the other hand, because environmental challenges are global in nature, how can a global system be set up to promote sustainable development?'
University experts, mainly economists who came together for a conference in Poitiers, France, a little over two years ago, answer these questions raised by the book's editors, along with a host of other questions, in a scientifically prudent and enlightening manner in twelve essays in which they set out the various stages, trace the outline and consider future prospects and the challenges of a new sustainable economy. The first section of the book looks at the history of the idea of sustainability, describes its contribution to economic analysis and studies its current relevance, linking it with the potential provided by dematerialisation combining information technology with growth of services. Asking whether 'de-growth' would be the way of dealing with the environmental problem, Fabrice Dannequin and Arnaud Diemer point out, for example, that a radical change is needed in the consumption and production model, that needs to be built on a new political programme. The first section also looks at the current state of the foundations of the physiocratic culture that arose in the eighteenth century, and the way objects are no longer built to last (which worried Hannah Arendt back in the 1950's), which is now reflected in loss of a 'world in common' in the form of a connection between generations because this built-in obsolescence attacks living conditions on Earth over and above the actual objects as such…
The second part of the book looks at the economy in flux, with several authors examining changes needed to allow the emergence of a more sustainable economy. Highlighting the mythical nature of the de-materialisation of the economy, Prof. Jean Gadrey (of Lille I University in France) believes it is unlikely that services will remain the only main sources of employment, expecting new clean technology and proximity to create jobs in agriculture, services and industry alike. Blandine Laperche of 'Université du Littoral' and Seattle University sweeps aside traditional economic theories of enterprise, setting out a new vision that is more sociological and political and has become necessary to understand the intermeshing of sustainable development and corporate performance. In the same spirit, Anne-Marie Crétiéneau of Poitiers University argues that citizen involvement, from the areas they are involved in, is inseparable from practical implementation of sustainable development because the time of scientific ecology trusting in experts has recently handed over to political and citizens' ecology. The final essay in this section is on the economy of 'functionality'.
The third and final part looks at the future and challenge of sustainable development in terms of both technology and regulation. Laure Dolique describes the two big challenges of the twenty-first century, namely climate change and shortages of energy, in that they are global dangers that will impact on all communities in all four corners of the world. Believing that technological progress and the invisible hand of the market will not be able to deal with this challenge, she calls for a 'different development, breaking away from the paradigm inherited from the industrial revolution,' which she says will require multilateral regulation. Patrick Matagne says the same in his examination of national, regional and international problems connected with water resource management, explaining that the 'commercialisation' of water by a handful of big multinational companies is damaging for fair management of the resource of water in solidarity. Likewise, the development of biofuels is inconceivable without regulation at both national and global level, asserts Eliane Jahan, while Dimitri Uzunidis and André Gabus argue that a more sustainable society can only arise by 'reconsidering the environment as a common good of humanity and a new vision of the economy in which it has the task of responding to collective needs rather than private interests.'
Michel Theys
*** BERNARD SORDET: Carnets d'un Européen solidaire. Volume II: De l'intérieur. L'Harmattan (5-7 rue de l'Ecole polytechnique, F-75005 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 40467920 - Fax: 43258203 - email: diffusion.harmattan@wanadoo.fr - Internet: http://www.librairieharmattan.com ). 2009, 399 pp, €35. ISBN 978-2-296-10400-6.
We commented on the first volume of this book in European Library on 21 September 2010: This book has been thought up and written by a fine soul, an engineer, economist and high-flying lecturer who has worked here, there and everywhere around the world. It clearly cuts across categories but is badly written, losing the reader down astonishingly verbose and long-winded side-tracks, but readers who stick with it could well be caught in the trap of striking, strong views founded on 'creative doubt'. The same comments apply in full to this second volume, in which Bernard Sordet storms against the way the world is changing. He sees the world marching unavoidably towards a new world war and the big border-free market European Union heading even faster down a dead-end. The doomsayer calls for a revolution to turn the European Union into a Europe of countries standing side-by-side in solidarity. He writes that by stopping the practice of relocation, this Europe would become the engine of a trans-globalisation.
(MT)
*** CATHERINE CHAPUT, M. J. BRAUN, DANIKA M. BROWN (Eds.): Entertaining Fear. Rhetoric and the Political Economy of Social Control. Peter Lang (29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Frontiers in Political Communication" series, No. 18. 2010, 290 pp, €83-80. ISBN 978-1-4331-0586-9.
This book is part of a series of stormy critical debate and shared frustrations about what the editors see as unfair social conditions and later attempts to deconstruct rhetoric that perpetuates said conditions. Whether the criticism touches on democratic rhetoric, higher education, pedagogy or trade unionism, it is questions of motivation that are focussed upon in these essays. In other words, how can individuals continue to participate in determined defence of social structures that arise from and depend on inequality and exploitation? Why do the same individuals invest so much in practices and beliefs that seem so opposed to what many of them would believe to be a better world? Why are people so afraid of change? And, more simply, why is everyone so afraid? Struck by this question, the authors of this book, all university lecturers in the United States, took the problem of fear as a guide in their reflection and investigations. Dealing exclusively with the United States, the book is divided into three sections, one on political rhetoric, one on institutional communication and one on cultural practices in the US, examining fear in relation to all three. The authors start by explaining that post-9-11 rhetoric is not limited to political discourse or media demagogy alone, but also circulates in a volatile global economic policy, giving it its persuasive power. The author then point out how the general public's ideas and decisions are influenced by this rhetoric of fear, particularly through media coverage and public interest constructed around threatened communities, personal interest and fear of immigration. The final section looks back to the origins of the use of fear, noting that the use of fear to construct, alter and consume culture has been part of the geopolitical landscape in the United States for many a long year and is particularly topical today...
(NDu)
*** WALTER LEAL FILHO (Ed.): Sustainability at Universities - Opportunities, Challenges and Trends. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen, Switzerland. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 376727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Environmental Education and Sustainability" series, No. 37. 2009,230 pp, €46-50. ISBN 978-3-631-59690-6.
In recent years, climate changes have put the question of how to manage resources to ensure they are still present to be handed down to future generations in a prominent position. The authors argue that it is also important for the education system, particularly universities, to make a deeper commitment to the debate about sustainable development. Universities can clearly no longer simply touch on the problem as at present. The book is the fruit of work carried out under the "Jelare" project (Joint European-Latin American Universities Renewable Energy Project), which is a cooperation agreement among German, Bolivian, Brazilian, Chilean and Guatemalan universities to promote areas of research in sustainable development that focus on the labour market. Benefitting from Alfa III Fund, an aid programme between the European Union and Latin America on education, the project was carried out by a team of university lecturers from all four corners of the Earth from areas of expertise as diverse as information technology, forestry, the environment, ecology, adult education, mathematics and public health and infectious diseases. The essays aim to encourage the academic world to join the debate about sustainable development by addressing domains like nutrition, new technology in the service of sustainable development, education, architecture, design, the introduction of new standards and sustainability in the urban environment. The book is targetted above all at academia with the aim of providing new sources of inspiration to further the cause.
(NDu)
*** MICHAL BRON Jr, PAULA GUIMARAES, RUI VIEIRA DE CASTRO (Eds.): The State, Civil Society and the Citizen. Exploring Relationships in the field of Adult Education in Europe. Peter Lang (see above). "European Studies in Lifelong Learning and Adult Learning Research", No. 6. 2009, 229 pp, €39-70. ISBN 978-3-631-58593-1.
Written by scientists specialising in education and working at several universities in Europe, this book makes a complex analysis of the relationship between the state, civil society and citizens, paying particular attention to how these relationships impact on the field of adult education. The authors focus on recent social, economic and political changes due to globalisation, the huge growth in international and supranational organisations and new behaviour patterns among ordinary people. All the experts agree that the current time is a period of major change and it is therefore necessary to develop new analytical approaches in the domain of education. Moreover, they feel that the role of the state is taking on an ever more disruptive connotation, not longer seen as a provider of services but rather as a coordinator and sometimes a highly directive or even coercive coordinator of the measures it itself introduces. The introduction of liberal policies, dictated by globalisation and connected with the impact of the current economic crisis, has been reflected in the crumbling of the old welfare state, and this has had a profound impact on adult education, which tends these days to be a form of emancipation from the state and sometimes even against the state. The book is the authors' contribution to the debate, in which they analyse issues like state involvement in adult education, the policies introduced by the state in this domain and the rising power of what appear to be new forms of citizenship in Europe.
(NDu)