This book cultivates visions and practices of integral development of the self, society, and the world. It builds upon deconstructions of development discourse and practice and strives to reconstruct and reconstitutes it as integral development. It addresses entrenched dualisms in development studies and practices such as between the self and the other, the providers of development and its recipients, materialism, and spirituality, and cultivates pathways of integral development. The book explores the many challenges facing development studies and practice such as poverty, creativity, political economy, moral economy, leadership, sustainable development, and evolutionary flourishing. It also opens the discourse and practice of development to cross-cultural dialogues by undertaking discussions between Euro-centric approaches to development and other visions and practices of development such as Purusartha, Swadhyaya, Sarvodaya, integral yoga, and Lokasasamgraha from Indic traditions.
Drawing on multiple cultural and philosophical resources and traditions, Cultivating Integral Development is a pioneering work and will be of great interest to scholars, researchers, and actors of development studies, political science, and philosophy as well as concerned human beings around the world.
Introduction Part One: Cultivating Integral Development: Ethics, Aesthetics, Responsibility and Creative Spirituality 1. Integral Development 2. Cultivating Integral Development: Art, Spirituality and Social Transformations 3. Poetics of Development 4. Transforming Democracy and Development: Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics, Creative Spirituality and Responsibility 5. Swaraj as Blossoming and Satyagraha as Co-Realizations 6. Socio-Spiritual Mobilization for Development: Swadhyaya and Beyond 7. Development and the Challenges of Creative Cross-Cultural Understanding: Multi-topial Hermeneutics, Planetary Conversations and Dialogues with Confucianism and Vedanta 8. Evolutionity and the Calling of Evolutionary Suffering and Evolutionary Flourishing: Dialogues Among Epochs and Cultivating New Pathways of Planetary Realizations Part Two: Cultivating Integral Development: New Pathways of Economies, Co-Creative Meaning, Leadership and Planetary Well-Being 9. Cultivating Integral Development: Political Economy, Moral Economy, Moral Sociology and Spiritual Ecology and the Contemporary Challenges of Critique, Creativity and Transformations and Alternative Planetary Futures 10. Beyond the Chains of Illusions of Inclusive Development: Poverty, Creativity and the Challenges of Transformations 11. Rethinking the Ethics of Leadership and Management: Towards Atmic Planetary Leadership and a New Purusartha of Development 12. Rethinking and Transforming Corporations, Development and Society: Corporate Spiritual Responsibility 13. With and Beyond Sustainable Development and the Calling of Evolutionary Flourishing: Towards a New Poetics, Politics and Spirituality of Thriving 14. Cultivating New Movements and Circles of Meaning Generation: Integral Development as Planetary Lokasasamgraha 15. Integral Development and the Calling of Grace: Truth, Travel and Translation 16. Towards a New Yoga and Tantra of Development 17. Gardens of God Afterword: A Mundo Imaginal by Marcus Bussey Afterword by Ori Z. Soltes
Biography
Ananta Kumar Giri is a Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India.
“Drawing on classical traditions and their contemporary re-thinking from across the world, Ananta Kumar Giri seeks to repair the losses that the desperate, competitive race for a modern industrial society has inflicted on the world. Drawing on aesthetics, ethics, dialogue and narrative, among other absent virtues in developmentalism, he proposes a planetary charter for ‘integral development.’”
Prasenjit Duara, Oscar Tang Professor of East Asian Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
“In another innovative, inter-disciplinary monograph, Ananta Kumar Giri tackles development from a unique angle: the richness and complexity of human nature. Moving past homo economicus and its critiques, the author explores the possibility of organically integrating aesthetic, ethical and even spiritual dimensions into the mainstream discourse of development. As with Giri's other books, Cultivating Integral Development approaches the subject from a planetary consciousness, invoking elements of Gandhi's praxis, as well as living traditions such as Confucianism, Buddhism and Vedanta. The book will spark the imagination of any student of development studies, IR, sociology, philosophy, politics, economics, and beyond.”
Aakash Singh Rathore, International Fellow, ETHOS, Rome, Italy
“Development policies and programs are common to many human societies, but in the Western world, development is often considered narrowly according to criteria for demographic, economic and material growth. In stark contrast, Ananta Kumar Giri explains that integral development is more complex and transcultural than development, or common interpretations of sustainable development. He creatively combines holistic thinking with altruism, ethical and moral principles, and spirituality, in his crucial and captivating contribution.”
Roderick J. Lawrence, University of Geneva, Switzerland
“In Cultivating Integral Development Ananta Kumar Giri sets himself an ambitious goal: to find a common theoretical frame for different aspects of positive transformations at national and global levels. Giri’s attempt is even more ambitious and interesting, as he pays much attention to the aspects of development which are rarely discussed: ethics, aesthetics, spirituality and others not directly social or political. This makes reading the book especially thought-provoking.”
Dmitri Bondareko, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation
