The unit of resilience: unbeckoned degrowth and the politics of (post)development in Peru and the Maldives

Abstract

This article asks how people envision lives without economic growth in contexts where conventional development ceases to be feasible. It presents ethnographic research I conducted in Peru and in the Maldives, which policymakers see as two climate crisis frontiers. I argue for defining resilience as a grounded, necessarily local, actor's theory of permanence; it is a theory people from diverse social classes and institutions generate in situations of vulnerability and crisis. In the Andes' Colca Valley, which some residents predict has only several habitable decades left due to increasing water scarcity, sustainable development projects are attenuating their presence as their budgets shrink, while mining enterprises and their corporate social responsibility programs have emerged as development's new agenda setters. The Maldives is one of the world's lowest-lying nations, which rising seas could soon render uninhabitable. RésuméCet article interroge comment des personnes envisagent une vie sans croissance économique dans des contextes où le développement conventionnel cesse d'être faisable. Ceci présente des recherches ethnographiques menées au Pérou et aux Maldives, que les décideurs politiques considèrent comme deux frontières de crise climatique. Je soutiens qu'il faut définir la résilience comme une théorie qui est mise à la terre, nécessairement locale, et basé sur l'acteur; c'est une théorie de personnes qui viennent de diverses classes et institutions sociales et qui se génèrent en situation de vulnérabilité et de crise. Dans de la vallée du Colca aux Andes, où certains résidents présagent que celle-ci a seulement quelques décennies habitables à cause du manque d'eau, les projets de développement durable atténuent leur présence tandis que leurs budgets rétrécissent. De plus, les entreprises minières et leurs programmes de responsabilité sociale sont considérés comme des fixateurs de nouveaux programmes de développement. Les Maldives est une des nations ayant l'altitude plus basse au monde, qui à cause de la montée des mers pourraient bientôt rendre inhabitable. Entre 2008 et 2012, le président Mohamed Nasheed décréta la crise climatique une priorité politique en substituant le développement industriel avec une quête de courte durée qui prévoyait atteindre une empreinte de carbone neutre. En faisant l'examen de deux sites frontaliers, ceux-là permettent un contrepoint d'où je soutiens que la définition de l'unité de la résilience est un acte politique: forgeant cette 1 Dr. Eric Hirsch, Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for the Study of International Development, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Email: eric.hirsch "at" mcgill.ca. I would like to acknowledge the staff of the Desco NGO in Lima, Arequipa, and Colca, Peru, the Andean Studies Program of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, and the Bluepeace Maldives NGO. Profound thanks to Lisa Gezon, Susan Paulson, and the other helpful members of the "Culture, Power, Degrowth" group, who heard and read earlier iterations of this article. Resu...

Towards a cultural politics of degrowth: prefiguration, popularization and pressure

“…Selected examples in existing degrowth scholarship study prefigurative practices in a diverse range of global contexts. The contributors of the special section 'Degrowth: culture, power and change' in the Journal of Political Ecology (edited by Lisa Gezon and Susan Paulson, 2017), for example, examine degrowth-aligned prefiguration in the context of property-making practices among rural squatters in Brazil (DeVore 2017), postdevelopment imaginaries in Peru and the Maldives (Hirsch 2017), resource-saving lifestyle practices in the 'Dancing Rabbit' Ecovillage in Missouri (Lockyer 2017), neo-monasticism among Christian communities in North Carolina , time-banking practices in New Zealand (McGuirk 2017), 'beautifully poor' urban planning and architecture in Tokyo and Bologna (Le Blanc 2017), and experimental 'design activism' in Helsinki (Berglund 2017), among many other cases. The motivation to engage with, study and communicate such cases is that … awareness of many possible modes of existence-with myriad sources of richness and pleasure-widens horizons for building unprecedented futures.…”

Islands: balancing development and sustainability?

“…Power relations, where political ecology and economy are evident (e.g. Hirsch 2017), emphasized the challenges.…”

Degrowth: culture, power and change

“…In this Section, Eric Hirsch (2017) describes people scrambling to adapt as their lives are turned upside down by phenomena associated with global warming-melting glaciers in Peru and rising sea waters in the Maldives. Billions of others are affected by earth systems degradation in the form of desertification, deforestation, erosion, desiccation of rivers and springs, depletion of game and fish stock, air and water pollution, and more.…”