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Globalization today is as much a problem
for international harmony as it is a necessary condition
of living together on our planet. Increasing interconnectedness
in ecology, technology, and politics has brought nations
and societies into ever closer contact, creating acute demands
for cooperation. Earthly Politics argues that in the coming
decades global governance will have to accommodate differences,
even as it obliterates distance, and will have to respect
many aspects of the local while developing institutions
that transcend location.
This book analyzes a variety of approaches
to environmental governance that balance the local and the
global in order to encourage new, more flexible frameworks
of global governance. On the theoretical level, it draws
on insights from the field of science and technology studies
to enrich our understanding of environmental and development
politics. On the pragmatic level, it discusses the design
of institutions and processes to address problems of environmental
governance that increasingly refuse to remain within national
boundaries.
The cases in the book display the crucial
relationship between knowledge and power -- the links between
the ways we understand environmental problems and the ways
we manage them -- and illustrate the different paths by
which knowledge-power formations are arrived at, contested,
defended, or set aside. By examining how local and global
actors ranging from the World Bank to the Makah tribe in
the Pacific Northwest respond to the contradictions of globalization,
the authors identify some of the conditions for creating
more effective engagement between the global and the local
in environmental governance.
Sheila Jasanoff is Pforzheimer Professor
of Science and Technology studies in the John F. Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard University. She is the author
of, among other books, The Fifth Branch: Science Advisors
as Policymakers. Marybeth Long Martello is a research
associate at the Kennedy School.
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