Democracy and Education
Summary for Shiva, V. (2005). Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace. Boston: South End Press.
Vandiana Shiva defines Earth Democracy as the opposite of corporate capitalist globalization, and embraces local economics, environmental sustainability, democracy, and grassroots activism on the local level. These ideals are similar to those of Chief Seattle and other indigenous leaders who resisted European colonialism in that they are organic, communal, based on a linkage between human beings and the earth as well as between past, present and future generations. They do not regard the world and other species as raw materials and natural resources to be exploited for profit, but rather holistically. Corporate globalization is based on irrational greed, speculation, corruption and destruction of the entire biosphere, and regards the plant as the private property of the wealthy elites. Its origins are in the enclosure of the common lands of England in the 17th and 18th Centuries, with the resultant displacement of populations and the destruction of native peoples in the Americas...
Global capitalism continues this process of bringing the commons under private control, including land, forests, water and even the genetic code of humans and all other life forms. This type of uncontrolled privatization has led to widespread anxiety, alienation and desperation among the world's poor, pushing them into various right-wing extremist and fundamentalist movements. Earth Democracy is an alternative path to development and a very different way of life, demanding a locally-based economy that is democratically controlled and eco-friendly. Rather than making products with low-wage labor and exporting them to the Western countries, it would be centered on local employment and production for use. It would not be controlled by authoritarian and undemocratic institutions like large corporations, the IMF, WTO and World Bank that have done so much to undermine real democracy in the world, but rather by the people themselves.
Summary of Ryan, W. (1971, 1976). Blaming the Victim. NY: Vintage Books.
Ryan wrote this book at a time when the Nixon administration and neoconservatives…
