Self-Devouring Growth: A Planetary Parable as Told from Southern Africa (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781478006398)

Under capitalism, economic growth is seen as the key to collective well-being. In Self-Devouring Growth Julie Livingston upends this notion, showing that while consumption-driven growth may seem to benefit a particular locale, it produces a number of unacknowledged, negative consequences that ripple throughout the wider world. Structuring the book as a parable in which the example of Botswana has lessons for the rest of the globe, Livingston shows how fundamental needs for water, food, and transportation become harnessed to what she calls self-devouring growth: an unchecked and unsustainable global pursuit of economic growth that threatens catastrophic environmental destruction. As Livingston notes, improved technology alone cannot stave off such destruction; what is required is a greater accounting of the web of relationships between humans, nonhuman beings, plants, and minerals that growth entails. Livingston contends that by failing to understand these relationships and the consequences of self-devouring growth, we may be unknowingly consuming our future.

Author: Julie Livingston
ISBN-10: 1478006390
ISBN-13: 9781478006398
Publisher: Duke University Press
Language: English
Published: 09/20/2019
Pages: 176
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.20w x 0.50d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 02/01/2020