Sustainable Development…

Date July 19, 2007 | 1:54 AM

I’ve been reading Bob Roberts’ Glocalization along with some other books, like Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s Freakonomics, and Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us. First my mind was on nation-building, then it transitioned into sustainable development. I remember an old economics professor of mine repeating to us every week, “Economics is a social science.” Usually it had to do with the impact of fear and greed on society. Now I’m reading these books and seeing how they all connect. More on all this later.


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Category Posted in Books, Business, Environment, Life, Politics

4 Responses to “Sustainable Development…”

  1. Lu said:

    I got the Glocalization book recently but I’ve been too busy with Marketing and Accounting classes to read it yet. Looking forward to it though, with all the buzz its gotten.

    Also looking forward to hearing how you see all these connected…

    July 19th, 2007 at 8:40 AM

  2. Lu said:

    PS — Glad you got back home SAFE! :)

    July 19th, 2007 at 8:41 AM

  3. Alan Cross said:

    Joe,

    If you’re interested in this, stop everything, go straight to Amazon, and order Lawrence Harrison’s Underdevelopment is a State of Mind. Do not do anything else on this subject until you read that. Then, order Culture Matters, edited by Harrison and Samuel Huntington. It contains presentations from a Harvard symposium on the role of culture in development. They are both professors at Harvard and Harrison was the director of US AID in Latin America for around 20 years.

    These guys are not believers, but they end up saying that culture is the determining factor in economic development around the world. They list several cultural factors and say that whenever these factors are present, then societies develop. I read the first book around 10 years ago and it changed my thinking on all of this. Roberts actually cites Harrison in Glocalization and he mentioned the books to me the ONE time that we talked (shameless name dropping). Anyway, I couldn’t point you in a better direction. I am familiar with Jared Diamond, but the other books are much more straightforward. Actually, start with Culture Matters because it has a bunch of short essays on different subjects. Both books are great, though.

    July 22nd, 2007 at 5:54 PM

  4. Joe Kennedy said:

    Thanks, Alan. I’ve added them to my Amazon.com wishlist, so maybe I’ll get’em sometime. I just ordered several books on Colossians (and others by NT Wright) and the disciplines that I’m going to get to next. Too much to learn, too little time to learn it in.

    July 22nd, 2007 at 8:53 PM