Planet Dialectics

Part 1 The archaeology of the development idea: the archaeology of the development idea - a guide to the ruins, the discovery of poverty, technology as a Trojan Horse, the economist's blind eye, from "development" to "security" Part 2 The shaky ground of sustainability: global ecology and the shadow of development - Truman and what followed, ambiguous claims for justice, Earth's finiteness as a management problem, bargaining for the rest of nature, efficiency and sufficiency, the hegemony of globalism; the gospel of global efficiency - more out of less, resources everywhere, never enough, always rational; environment and development - the story of a dangerous liaison - setting the stage for the Brundtland report, a successful ambivalence, survival as a new raison d'etat, global knowledge versus local knowledge, towards a global ecocracy? sustainable development - the political anatomy of an oxymoron - at the dawn of the security age, the horns of the dilemma, the context perspective, the astronaut's perspective, the home perspective. Part 3 In the image of the planet: one world - many worlds? one mankind, one market, one planet, space against place, cosmopolitan localism; the blue planet - on the ambiguity of a modern icon - the construction of the Earth through an image, invention of the biosphere, the image and sentimental ecology,the image and technocratic ecology; globalization and sustainability. Part 4 Ecology and equity in a post-development era: ecology, justice and the end of development - point of departure, landslide, impasse, the new colour of justice, an opening; the two meanings of resource productivity - productivity as abundance, productivity as efficiency, can limits be productive? the full sense of resource productivity, the blind spot of efficiency, efficiency and sufficiency; speed limits - body and machine, colliding timescales, double power, in remembrance of time gained, counterproductive effects, selective slowness; the power of limits - an inquiry into new models of wealth - eco-intelligent goods and services, lower speeds and the plurality of time scales, shorter distances and the plurality of spaces, wealth in time rather than wealth in goods, well-being instead of well-having.