About ‘development‘ :
“… It is a pleonasm because, according to Rostow, development means ‘self-sustaining growth’. And it is an oxymoron because development is neither sustainable nor self-sustaining.
Let us be quite clear about this: the problem has little to do with ‘sustainability’, which is in some sense related to the philospher Hans Jonas’s ‘imperative of responsibility’ (Jonas 1984 [1979]). That imperative is cheerfully ignored by development actors such as the nuclear industry, genetically modified (GM) crops, mobile phones, pesticides and the REACH directive. Without going back to the emblematic cas of asbestosis, the list of areas where it is not applied is endless. The word ‘development’ is…”
– LATOUCHE Serge, “Farewell to growth“, 2007.
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