Title: Earthly Politics - Local and Global in Environmental Governance
Author: Edited by: A Jasanoff & M L Martello
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN No.: 0-262-60059-5
Year of Publication: 2004
Website: http://mitpress.mit.edu
BOOK REVIEW – “EARTHLY POLITICS – LOCAL AND GLOBAL IN ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE” EDITED BY A JASANOFF & M L MARTELLO, MIT PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, 2004. pbk. ISBN 0-262-60059-5. http://mitpress.mit.edu
As with most MTI Press books, this one is deep and pondering but for those who want to delve into the complex interrelationships between power, knowledge, environment and trade, this book has much to challenge your traditional views.
The book is divided into three parts, Part 1 – Knowing and Ruling, Part 2 – Globalism and National Politics, and Part 3 – Knowledge Communities. Part 1 explores how development processes managed by “suprastate” (expanded concept of “international”?) bodies deal with local and global issues within the framework of suprastate goals and objectives. Mostly, the “big guys” win but there are clear illustrations of resistance and change. Part 2 addresses the complex trades of information and power across national boundaries. Using climate change as an illustration, it can be seen that unified scientific responses are seriously affected by policy agendas and interpretation variations in states and regions. Part 3 looks at how power and knowledge are affected by environmental politics and democratisation and looks at the various dimensions within the corporate world, local community groupings and power bases in the form of activist groups.
There are some very interesting case studies which track matters such as “the changing of hearts and minds” (the first time that the World Bank pondered upon the human resettlement issues relating to one of the dam projects that it financed); perspectives of indigenous peoples groups on tree planting for carbon sequestration within the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol; and the clash between global Nature and local culture relating to the subsistence nature of whaling by the Makah tribe in the North West of the USA.
On completing the book, I wondered if the various authors had managed to get close enough to the thinking of the “grassroots” people they were talking about and whether their research really got to grips with core issues…or whether they had decided what they wanted the core issues to be….
Excellent academic treatise but the average reader needs to be determined and made of stern stuff to cope with the theories and practices contained in the book.
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