Uncertainty Is Hope

This book, at its heart, is an effort to lay bare a colossal failure of imagination behind the creation of economic and environmental policy and development projects. If there is one thing the histories of so many of these policies and projects have in common, it is the urge to organize, control, and somehow influence a complex, unruly world to create new opportunities for people, wherever they might live. While these efforts have usually been undertaken with the best of intentions, they have resulted in a woefully inadequate, often incorrect understanding of life along globalization’s shoreline. The urge to control and fix the events and processes in play in these areas is evident in existing policy initiatives, such as PRSPs. This urge pervades efforts to address the long-term failure of development and globalization in order to meaningfully change the situations of those living along this shoreline. The clearest example of this, but hardly the only, is the MVP, which is predicated on problems and solutions designed in advanced economies and implemented in villages along globalization’s shoreline in a manner that marginalizes community participation.