1st Edition

Transformative Sustainable Development Participation, reflection and change

By Kei Otsuki Copyright 2015
144 Pages
by Routledge

152 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

152 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Recent debates about sustainable development have shifted their focus from fixing environmental problems in a technocratic and economic way to more fundamental changes in social-political processes and relations. In this context, participation is a genuinely transformative approach to sustainable development, yet the process by which participation leads to transformation is not sufficiently... Read more

Introduction  1. Towards Agentive Participation  2. Community-Based Natural Resource Management in the Brazilian Amazon  3. Community-Led Sanitation in Nairobi Slums  4. Community Resilience in a Semi-Arid Rural Settlement in Ghana  5. Community and Citizenship Building in Post-Triple Disaster Japan  6. Agentive Participation to Transform Food Governance  7. Conclusions

Biography

Kei Otsuki is a sociologist and a researcher currently affiliated with the United Nations University, Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability, Japan.

"This is a substantial contribution to the theoretical and political debates on sustainability. Based on the author’s involvement in development projects in settings as different as Brazil, Ghana, Kenya and Japan, the book convincingly shows that the construction of sustainable societies requires both fundamental transformations and pragmatic mechanisms. Key to this is human agency and participation as open ended action. I strongly recommend this reflexive and stimulating work of Kei Otsuki."

Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

"Many of the failures of development can be traced to the technocratic and managerial approach that has come to dominate much of the field. Here Kei Otsuki fluently demonstrates that true development is an art and that true social transformation takes place only when participation is built into the process. This book is an essential reminder of this often forgotten fact."

John Clammer, United Nations University, Japan