Message-ID: <19981014134543.AAA20232@LOCALNAME> Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1998 10:46:05 -0400 From: Kerry Miller <mailto:kerryo@NS.SYMPATICO.CA> Subject: Re: Requesting for contribution in my field of research To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
{ Various references to this topic will also be appreciated.
Richard Norgaard, _Development Betrayed: The End of Progress and a
Coevolutionary Revisioning of the Future_ (London and NY: Routledge, 1994)
pp 71-73:
The five metaphysical and epistemological beliefs underlying modern rationality
are rarely the basis of thought and action by individuals, families and small groups.
Today, the most innovative scientists and most successful entrepreneurs do not
rely solely on these premises. Yet these suppositions are the only ones which are
*publicly* held acceptable for use in *public* discourse and decision-making.
The challenges of sustained human action with the biosphere require a public
response. But arguments for environmental action that are rooted in other
philosophical premises are weeded out of the public dialogue. Recreating an
understanding of society that is greater than the sum of its individuals, and re-
imaging the future so that we do not all end up as identical, inhuman consumers
choking in a polluted world, requires a new public response. Let me argue that we
have failed to respond adequately to date because the five publicly held
philosophical postulates underlying modernism are inappropriate to the task.
[Atomism: problems can be divided into parts]
...Global climate change, acid rain, and the accumulation of toxins cannot be
treated apart from the high rates of use of energy and materials for industrial
production and transport associated with Western opulence. Similarly poverty and
environmental degradation in the poor countries must be seen as one problem.
Poverty cannot be solved without better environmental management and better
environmental management cannot be attained without the managers of the land
receiving a fair return. Whole systems must be addressed. But our public belief in
atomism legitimates the position of those who argue that fixing the parts is sufficient,
as well as the position of those who argue that fixing the parts has not been
effective in the past and that thus nothing can be done.
[Mechanism: it is possible to predict how systems will respond]
...But we repeatedly delude ourselves when we act on the premise that
ecosystems and societies are analogous to mechanical systems. Our remedies do
not lead to new equilibrium solutions we prefer. On the contrary, new problems
with new relationships between them evolve with every step we take...
The destruction of cultural systems is also facilitated through overdependence on
a mechanical world view. When new technologies, values, types of knowledge
and ways of organizing are accepted by or imposed on cultures, the mechanical
view assumes simply that a new cultural equilibrium will be reached.... Cultural
systems are always evolving, of course, but if changes are introduced with the
expectations generated by a mechanical understanding of systems, the rate of
cultural change will be faster and the types of changes will be quite unexpected.
[Objectivism: natural and social systems can be understood and acted on
objectively, as if people are not part of the system they are understanding and
changing.]
The errors generated by assuming mechanism are compounded by assuming
objectivism. People and how they think, value and organize things are clearly part
of the coevolutionary process.
[Universalism: parts of systems and the relations between the parts have an
underlying nature which is the same everywhere and at all times.]
...Basing action on science girded by false beliefs in universals, in unchanging
parts and relations, continually results in 'unforseen' changes in social and
environmental systems. Thus the unsustainability of past development has an
epistemological explanation.
...[P]roblems, once the principles are known, are not complex or difficult to solve.
Furthermore, since these principles are universally true, explanations can be
detemined and solutions devised from afar. ... Thus universalism, or a belief in
universalism, promotes... large-scale, factory-like operations with many laborers
and few who monitor, think, and manage.
[Monism: one best way to know how any particular system fits, or will fit as science
progresses, into a coherent whole.]
....Alternative lines of reasoning utilizing different types of information are
eliminated from the rational calculus of technocratic agencies when they are
incongruent with dominant patterns and premises... [T]he work of politicians has
been reduced [to] passing problems on to agencies delegated to resolve problems
scientifically.
...[W]e are unable to look upon cultures with different knowledge systems as
equals.
[p 90:
... modernization has entailed a considerable substitution of formal institutions and
objective knowledge for culture and cultural knowledge as we commonly think of
them.
p 151-2:
While science is presumed to expand systematically, scientists know very well that
research findings depend on the path taken and the 'rabbit trails' pursued along
the way. Similarly, to the extent that knowing is a social process, what is eventually
known is determined by the nature of the process. What becomes known is not
predetermined. Who participates and how they are allowed to participate
determines the types of questions raised, information brought to the discourse, and
judgements made and encouraged upon others to make. The participants and the
process determine the product....
The process of reaching collective understanding is in fact, rapidly evolving.
NGOs have added more and more scientists to their staffs and engaged ever more
actively in the process of collective understanding.
NGOs have had a major impact of the international development discourse. The
definition of development goals and strategies used to be firmly in the hands of
international development agencies and their epistemic communities of agricultural
scientists, engineers, and economists. Development was largely framed in terms of
technical possibilities and economic efficiency, as a matter of making 'the pie' grow
as fast as possible. Tension over the distribution of the benefits or how 'the pie'
was divided, have long been felt within the agencies and their epistemic
communities. But serious concern for the environment and the sustainability of
development, for women, for traditional peoples, for the incorporation of
traditional knowledge, for cultural diversity, and for civil rights and justice have
been forced upon the international development agencies, their national
counterparts, and their epistemic communities by nongovernmental organizations.
These are neither concerns over how to speed development nor over how what
development has wrought should be divided. These are concerns over whether
experts know pie from cow paddy.
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