This article asks, what is worth knowing? The concept of objectivity in contemporary philosophy of science is argued to de-value indigenous knowledge-systems and gendered approaches. Community bias is argued to confound rogue research with gendered and indigenous situatedness. This problem is resolved using the innovation of ‘ecosystem services.’ Technoscience is explained as the appropriation of science by capital interests and strong critique from Vandana Shiva in the global South is provided. Finally, because philosophers of science resist discussion of sociopolitical issues, (...) the “very notion of philosophy of science” is argued to be in crisis caused by limited understanding of ‘knowledge’ that has been reduced to post-Enlightenment science, and by neglect of the broader human context within which the sciences work. (shrink)

This paper argues that histories of the Green Revolution are often underpinned by commitments to theoretical models of technology and science which shape the parameters of such narratives in politically normative ways. This paper explores the accounts of the Green Revolution in India given by Vandana Shiva and Govindan Parayil and demonstrates the ways in which these accounts are influenced by their models of technology and science. It is argued that Shiva and Parayil represent key theoretical positions in technological theory, (...) determinist and instrumentalist, respectively, and that examination of their Green Revolution narratives clearly indicates the ways in which such theoretical commitments can determine the scope and content of analyses of technology-driven development, and thereby exclude political content necessary for the evaluation of the efficacy of such development and the validity of the theoretical model. (shrink)

This paper addresses the generally neglected topic of Vandana Shiva’s ontology. It is argued that there is a significant ontological component to Shiva’s ecofeminist philosophy and that this ontology underpins her ecological and feminist views. Shiva’s ontology provides a standpoint from which she can critique dichotomous ontologies of domination and oppression, and from which she can identify life-sustaining modes of existence. It is argued that this ontology is implicit in most of her works and is best grasped through the analysis (...) of her critique of Western scientific metaphysics. It is further argued that this implied ontology is a continuation of the Hindu-ecofeminist ontology of Prakriti explicitly set forth in Shiva’s Staying Alive (1989). Both forms of Shiva’s ontology, the explicit and the implicit, will be reconstructed and their points of continuity detailed. (shrink)

Since the introduction of the concept of “sustainable development” by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, a number of programs and policies have been offered, enacted, and pursued that profess to those ideals. The extent to which they actually accord with them, however, is the subject of a growing body of debate and literature. Some critics have argued that despite its promise, the concept of sustainable development has merely been reformulated and used to continue promoting the goal (...) of economic growth as the primary measure of progress. This viewpoint argues that sustainable development can never be more than sustainable economic growth under the current growth development paradigm. This article examines these arguments through an analysis of sustainable development as pursued in the United States. It focuses on the sustainable development component of the U.S. government's comprehensive approach to solving urban problems through the creation of empowerment zones. (shrink)

The UNCED Earth Summit established two new principles of international justice: an equitable international order and protection of the environment. UNCED was a significant symbol, a morality play about environment and economics. Wealth is asymmetrically distributed; approximately one-fifth of the world (the G-7 nations) produces and consumes four-fifths of goods and services; four-fifths (the G-77 nations) get one-fifth. This distribution can be interpreted as both an earnings differential and as exploitation. Responses may require justice or charity, producing and sharing. Natural (...) and national resources come into tension with the common heritage of humankind, exemplified in disputes about. who owns biodiversity resources. Ethics has to learn planetary home economics. (shrink)

This paper seeks to bring a time perspective to the discourses of globalization and development. It first connects prominent recent gender-neutral discourses of globalization with highly gendered analyses of development, bringing together institutional—structural analyses with contextual and experiential data. It places alongside each other ‘First World’ perspectives and analyses of the changing conditions of people in the ‘developing’ world who are at the receiving end of globalized markets, and the international politics of aid. To date, neither of these fields of (...) expertise has made explicit the underpinning time politics of globalization. Naturalized as status quo and global norm these temporal relations form the deep structure of globalization and its neo-colonialist agenda. The paper uses feminist epistemology to explicate the taken-for-granted time politics of globalization and time-based ontology to render visible the gender politics of globalization. The combined conceptual force makes connections where few exist at present, maps complex processes and traces naturalized relations. It offers not a new or better theory of… but an approach to globalization that makes transparent hitherto opaque relations of power and it identifies openings for change, resistance and alternative political practice. (shrink)

In the developmentalist era,industrialization has simultaneously transformedagriculture and degraded its natural and culturalbase. Food production and consumption embodies thecontradictory aspects of this transformation. Thispaper argues that the crisis of development hasgenerated two basic responses: (1) the attempt toredefine development as a global project, includingharnessing biotechnology to resolve the food securityquestion, and (2) a series of countermovementsattempting to simultaneously reassert the value oflocal, organic foods, and challenge the attempt on thepart of food corporations and national and globalinstitutions to subject the food (...) question to marketsolutions. It is proposed that the power of food liesin its material and symbolic functions of linkingnature, human survival, health, culture and livelihoodas a focus of resistance to corporate takeover of lifeitself. (shrink)

Indigenous Peoples, Consent and Benefit Sharing is the first in-depth account of the Hoodia bioprospecting case and use of San traditional knowledge, placing it in the global context of indigenous peoples’ rights, consent and benefit-sharing. It is unique as the first interdisciplinary analysis of consent and benefit sharing in which philosophers apply their minds to questions of justice in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), lawyers interrogate the use of intellectual property rights to protect traditional knowledge, environmental scientists analyse implications (...) for national policies, anthropologists grapple with the commodification of knowledge and, uniquely, case experts from Asia, Australia and North America bring their collective expertise and experiences to bear on the San-Hoodia case. -/- While much of the focus is on bioprospecting and natural product development, Indigenous Peoples, Consent and Benefit-Sharing also draws important lessons about informed consent and benefit-sharing from the health sciences and sectors such as mining. Policymakers around the world are under significant pressure to resolve the challenges of implementing the CBD. This book’s analysis and recommendations will help them. -/- ‘It is good to see philosophers engaging with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, and doing so by looking in depth at a real situation in which it has been invoked.’ Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University . (shrink)

A sustainable system has all the essential characteristics of an organism?an irreducible whole that develops, maintains and reproduces, or renews, itself by mobilizing material and energy captured from the environment. What is the nature of the material and energy mobilization that makes an organism? I begin with a brief description of a tentative theory of the organism?developed in detail elsewhere (Ho, 1993; 1994a; 1995a,b; 1996b,c)?as a dynamically and energetically closed domain of cyclic non?dissipative processes coupled to irreversible dissipative processes, which (...) effectively frees the organism from thermodynamic constraints so that it is poised for rapid, specific intercommunication, enabling it to function as a coherent whole. I shall then show how this novel theoretical framework may begin to provide normative criteria for sustainable economic systems, thereby also exposing some of the inadequacies of current models and assumptions. (shrink)

The primary focus of agricultural research and extension in eastern Africa is technology generation and dissemination. Despite prior critiques of the shortcomings of this approach, the consequences of such activities continue to be measured through the number of technologies developed and introduced into the supply chain. At best, impact is assessed by the total numbers of adopters and by the household and system factors influencing adoption. While the diffusion research tradition has made substantive advances in recent decades, attention to what (...) happens to technologies after adaptive, on-farm research trials continues to be limited in practice. While a host of newer approaches designed to correct for past shortcomings in diffusion research is now available, integrative methodologies that capitalize on the strengths of these different traditions are sorely needed. This article presents a more encompassing methodology for tracking the fate of technological interventions, illustrating the potential applications of findings for enhancing the positive impact of agricultural research and extension in the region. (shrink)