Abstract
Through the realist genre of the parable, this marvellous little book discusses an interconnected world organized by ‘self-devouring growth’, defined as ‘the ways that the super-organism of human beings is consuming itself’ (p. 1). While the parable’s protagonist is Botswana, a paradigmatic developmental ‘success story’, the plot could easily be transplanted to California or Cambodia. Indeed, Livingston’s point is that these places are ‘two sides of a single relationship’ (p. 8). Of Botswana, Livingston repeatedly reminds us that the country did its best to ‘grow their economy’ and improve the material conditions of their people in the wake of colonial impoverishment. Nonetheless, the country’s current conditions are emblematic of our alarming planetary plight—extreme weather, species extinction and water scarcity.
The root of the problem is that ‘growth has become this unmarked category granted magical powers’ (p. 4), viewed as the solution to everything even as it brings enormous destruction. Yet Livingston is not nostalgic for the past, noting that we cannot and should not go back, for that could mean a world without insulin and with enslavement. These parables do not offer any simple solutions, but through them, Livingston masterfully traces out the web of connections that shape the thorny predicament of growth.
The parable plays out in three parts—through the essential human needs of water, food and movement, translated here as rain, beef and roads. The book deploys these material objects as metaphors to examine the paradoxes of development—that the mining of diamonds, the country’s national wealth, has allowed for the building of schools and hospitals but has also led to a shrinking water table and greater income inequality. As Livingston writes, ‘Development has its paradoxes, but its benefits cannot easily be ignored’ (p. 37).
These paradoxes can be clearly seen in water. In Botswana, a century prior, the was seen as sacred, belonging to the ancestors. Rainmaking was a key political technology such that the legitimacy of chiefs was premised on bringing forth the rain. Chiefs and rainmakers were part of an ‘animated ecology’ that brought frogs, cattle, trees, clouds and humans–past and present–into dynamics relations (p. 15). With Christianity and hydraulic technologies, rainmaking was replaced by ‘prayers and pipes’ (p. 17). But, as Livingston eloquently writes, ‘the dam too was dependent on the clouds’ (p. 21) and no technology could easily solve the complex problem of dry weather. Yet, the significance of clean water to public health cannot be underestimated, even as water access is increasingly privatized and health agendas driven by the pharmaceutical industry. More importantly, though, the national development that makes it possible to have piped water and paved roads is itself, ironically, causing water scarcity—whether it is diamond mines or the cattle industry.
While Botswana’s development successes have decreased hunger, it is now confronted with the effects of overconsumption. Beef production has a long history in the region, as the British colonial government drew Bechuanaland into the global market, making it Africa’s largest beef exporter. Given these extractive colonial legacies, though, one wonders to what extent this can be a ‘planetary’ tale. Not only has Botswana been underdeveloped through colonialism, but the models of growth adopted by the post-colonial government are structured by the global capitalist system. In any case, Livingston notices a resulting cultural shift—the cow is transformed from a mechanism of social reproduction, a sentient being rarely sold or slaughtered, into a techno-economic object whose partible body is geared toward commodification. Not only does this alter the social relations previously expressed in the bovine, but the industry has cascading environmental effects—animal disease and mass culling, methane emissions, unaffordable dairy and higher rates of obesity. Indeed, the growth of beef heralds the ‘slow death’ of humans.
The most provocative chapter focuses on road. Roads can be life-saving—bringing food and ambulances, goods and labour. Yet in Botswana, it brings with it automobile and, thereby, road accidents and deaths, traffic jams and carbon emissions. For instance, Livingston tells us that Africa’s traffic-related deaths are double those in Europe. Even more shockingly, the export of used cars from Japan to Botswana has meant the export of pollution and toxic radiation. Cars might be a source of mobility, but they have become ‘objects that produce poverty and economic inequality, all matter of carcinogenic exhaust’ (p. 119). Moreover, Livingston asks, what good is a road if there is no public transportation? What good is a road if there are few ambulances to ply on it?
Even so, Livingston is keenly aware of the desires that animate development—for cars and aeroplanes and air-conditioning. Indeed, one of the most challenging aspects of self-devouring growth is this: ‘As soon as the poor finally get their turn, everyone cries foul’ (p. 114). Blame, and responsibility for this planetary predicament, needs to account for globally unequal patterns of consumption. This is a crucial point that requires further explication. Growth might be self-devouring, but it devours some more than others—most often along patterned lines of class, race, gender and geography. As Livingston acknowledges early on, Europeans consume 20 times as much as Africans, and just 2% of buildings in New York City use 45% of its energy. In this scenario, how do forms of redress account for these stark inequalities? Is a planetary approach even possible in the context of these deep divisions and hierarchies?
The author offers a partial answer, arguing that we need a new imagination of development. Livingston writes, ‘In order to apprehend and face the enormity of our predicament, we must stop cleaving our dreams and nightmares asunder—such that the side effects and the desired effects of consumption-driven growth are considered in isolation from one another’ (p. 125). More specifically, Livingston finds inspiration in rainmaking—in healing and tending to an animated ecology. To build more just and sustainable futures, we must first ‘know ourselves as ancestors, antecedents of the rainmakers of a later age’ (p. 31).
Overall, this immensely readable book will appeal to a broad audience of academics, policymakers and practitioners in international development but is perhaps best suited as a short and accessible introduction to critical development studies for undergraduates.