Review on

Wolfgang Sachs�s book �Planet Dialectics, explorations in environment and development�, London, Zed Books, 1999, pp. 226 + xiv, by Daniel Mittler

Wolfgang Sachs has long been a master at unmasking and debunking the myths that keep our destructive societies heading full speed towards the abyss. In the 1980s, he exposed the libidal nature of our addiction to the car society (in English: Sachs, 1992). In the early 1990s, he was the first to bring together a rigorous critique of the "development game" (Sachs, 1992). With this book, Sachs has successfully done the trick again. This time his target is the much talked about phenomenon of �globalisation�. Sachs, in his usual erudite yet readable style, explores the contradictions of that powerful new symbol the undivided globe - the famous image of the blue planet as seen from space. Sachs argues convincingly that the image of the "one earth" is both a chance and a threat. Seeing the world as one makes a new sense of global citizenship possible. But it also opens the door to seeing the world as a uniform surface on which capital and people can easily be moved in the pursuit of profit. The one earth can at once be a call for living within the globe�s limits and a rallying cry to create one homogeneous world in the image of the current North. Marvelling at the one earth can lead to a fascination and concern with the diversity that this earth continues to maintain or spur a new global managerialism uninterested in local diversity as long as the whole is kept in reasonable order.

Sachs, as one would expect, sides with those who call for a new localism and insist that our One World has limits. He therefore critiques the increasingly hegemonic global managerialism in no uncertain terms. Planet Dialectics brings together insights from anthropology, history, economics, cultural studies and environmental science to show that the rapidly expanding global market economy is designed to benefit only the few (what he calls the "global middle class") and will inevitably cause disastrous environmental overshoot. Its points are sometimes overstated. Sachs, for example, warns of cultural homogenisation but pays scant attention to the diverse ways in which "Western" cultural phenomena are adapted and transformed in new cultural settings. Nonetheless, the overall description of the global economy and its social and environmental impacts is as well researched and written as it is frightening. Tales of social dislocation and environmental statistics are woven together into a powerful political panorama.

Along the way, Sachs shows that environmentalists who have tried to ride the environmental management bandwagon by advancing global environmental efficiency, are dangerously naive about the dynamics of capitalist development. Of course, Sachs is not opposed to "doing more with less", as the slogan goes. Who would oppose achieving the same result (a heated house, say) with less environmental impact? However, Sachs forcefully reminds us that such strategies can never be enough to achieve the radical reductions in environmental through-put that sustainability requires. The history of capitalism is, after all, a history of increasing input efficiency per unit of output. Yet, "so far in the history of industrial society, efficiency gains have quite consistently been converted into new opportunities for expansion" (p. 136). Efficiency gains must therefore be embedded in a strategy of sufficiency. Society must set limits to economic growth and tame the expansionist instincts of capitalism if it is to overcome its addiction to devouring more and more resources. Environmentalists, therefore, must lead a concerted social efforts to develop new ways of living which tread more lightly on the earth. Sachs tries to give pointers for such a life of "comfortable frugality" in the last two chapters. His account remains sketchy, but his vision of a more localised, less hectic and increasingly co-operative economy is powerful enough to make the possibility of "living well with less" both clear and desirable.

Planet Dialectics, then, is an impressive book. It is the first social history of our age of globalisation and a stark warning against its pitfalls. Sadly, for those familiar with Sachs�s output over the last decade, little in this book is new. That the book brings together various journal articles, some of which were previously difficult to find, may be a good thing. However, that three chapters are exact reprints from previous books by the same publisher is simply bizarre. Even that may not have mattered much, if the resulting repetitions had been edited out. Unfortunately, this has not been done. Even the best phrase loses its power when it is repeated too many times. In this book, many insights that one chuckles or gasps at the first time around are spoiled by repetitive overkill. That is a shame. But it does not devalue Planet Dialectics as the most comprehensive guide to and critique of the destructive myths of our globalisation age.

Daniel Mittler is a Member of the Sustainable Europe Research Institute and a researcher at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London.

References

Sachs, W. (1992) For the Love of the Automobile: Looking Back into the History of Our Desires, Berkeley: University of California Press

Sachs, W. (1992) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London: Zed Books