Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
and livelihoods in the face of economic development, neocolonialism and political
intervention. For Escobar:
people mobilize against the destructive aspects of globalization from the
perspective of what they have historically been and what they are at present:
historical subjects of particular cultures, economies and ecologies; particular
knowledge producers; individuals and collectivities engaged in the play of living
with landscapes, living and non-living beings, and each other in particular ways.
In regions such as the Pacific, people engage in the defence of place from the
perspective of the economic, ecological and cultural difference that their land-
scapes, cultures and economies embody in relation to those of more dominant
sectors of society.
(2006b: 21)
For Eckersley (2004 and 2005), ecological democratization will require revised
national constitutional and multilateral arrangements, and the emergence of a new
'green state' operating as a facilitator of transboundary democratic processes and
global ecological stewardship. The demand for social and environmental justice
will be incorporated into the broad context of a dialogic communicative justice.
It will also mean culturally embracing both human and non-human emancipatory
politics, putting aside the language of prudence (economic, political and moral), even
though this language may more easily travel across national cultural boundaries, in
favour of realizing intrinsic non-anthropocentric values. In order to make this happen,
democracy will need to be fundamentally radicalized - not a small task, you might
think, but one that is currently being played out between environmental pragmatists
and ecocentrists in the world of real-world democracy, with the former often forgoing
the 'big picture' so as to facilitate 'interest accommodation' and the latter frequently
ignoring practical criticism in favour of realizing broader goals.
Extending democracy to the workplace
It might seem a little odd that although democracy in its various forms is frequently
heralded as the best form of governance (or, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, the
least worst form) democratic participation and decision-making in the workplace
and business has rarely captured the popular imagination except at times of acute
economic and political crisis. However, democracy, in the form of producer/
consumer or worker/employee co-operatives has a long history dating back at least
to the Rochdale Pioneers in mid nineteenth-century England. In the Basque country
of Spain, the Mondragon co-operative has expanded since its inception in the early
1940s and now involves over 100,000 people. Co-operatives can be big business
and quite successful, as the United Nations recognized when it declared 2012 'The
Year of the Co-operative', articulating the slogan 'Cooperative Enterprises Build a
Better World'. In the vast majority of cases private business corporations are run
by relatively few major shareholders, who in turn determine the composition of the
board of directors who themselves tend to organize work in a highly stratified and
hierarchical manner. This type of organization does not necessarily lead to either
good job satisfaction or optimum company performance as high levels of job
insecurity, precariousness and unemployment or under-employment in many of the
