Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Abbreviations
- Glossary
- Comparative Timeline
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 Transformative Societies
- 2 A Comparative History of Latvia and South Africa
- 3 Indigenous Baltic Knowledge: Daina Philosophy
- 4 Indigenous African Knowledge: Ubuntu Philosophy
- 5 Organic Farming and Slow Food in Post-Soviet Latvia
- 6 Fair Trade and Rooibos Terroir in Post-Apartheid South Africa
- 7 Decolonizing Development
- Notes
- References
- Index
7 - Decolonizing Development
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 April 2024
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Abbreviations
- Glossary
- Comparative Timeline
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 Transformative Societies
- 2 A Comparative History of Latvia and South Africa
- 3 Indigenous Baltic Knowledge: Daina Philosophy
- 4 Indigenous African Knowledge: Ubuntu Philosophy
- 5 Organic Farming and Slow Food in Post-Soviet Latvia
- 6 Fair Trade and Rooibos Terroir in Post-Apartheid South Africa
- 7 Decolonizing Development
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
The corridors of power
The corridors of power are busy places
There are discourses
debates
analyses
assessments
and evaluations
monitoring too.
Then there’s policy-formulation
policy review
and strategies
for successful implementation.
The corridors of power are busy places
Next there’s the inevitable exchange of ideas
it’s a proposal, or other recommendations
or even an inquiry when some or other
misdemeanour has been committed.
The corridors of power are busy places
Too busy to nod in greeting
or acknowledgement of their presence
the invisible women
slipping in and out
bringing tea and refreshments.
The corridors of power are busy places
— Gertrude Fester, South African poetThe existential dimension of development
The early twenty-first century sits at the apex of the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch that has come into being over the last century. The Anthropocene is marked by what Christopher Chase-Dunn (2013) has called a converging set of social and environmental catastrophes, ranging from climate crisis and mass extinction events to sharp increases in social inequality, and the re-entrenchment of authoritarianism in response to global precarity. The Cenozoic Era in which the Anthropocene more broadly is placed is known as the Age of Mammals, and given the demise of large mammals and birds occurring now, the climate scientist Roger Barry (2020) suggests that Cenozoic may be ending.
Unlike previous mass extinction events, however, ours has been induced by human activity, wrought by our dependency upon fossil fuels and more than 4,700 forever chemicals, comprised of per-and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) that do not occur in nature (Chambers et al, 2021). Introduced in the 1940s, PFAS now are found in everything, from food packaging and cookware, to cosmetics, electronics, cleaning fluids and fire-fighting foams. PFAS have been found in every ecosystem on Earth, including in the blood, breastmilk, and umbilical cords of humans and other species, and magnifying across recent generations via a process of bioaccumulation (Kempisty and Racz, 2021).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Decolonizing DevelopmentFood, Heritage and Trade in Post-Authoritarian Environments, pp. 132 - 155Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2023