IAS Talking Points Seminar: Self-Devouring Growth - A Planetary Parable

This talk, like the book from which it is drawn, calls into question the imperative of economic growth, tracing the unintended consequences of escalating consumption. Using a series of linked cases of successful economic growth in Botswana as a model (water, roads, and cattle), it shows how insatiable growth, predicated on consumption, will inevitably overwhelm, a process I term self-devouring growth.

Julie Livingston is Professor of Cultural and Social and Analysis and of History at NYU. She is author of Improvising Medicine: an African Oncology Ward in an Emerging Cancer Epidemic (Duke) and Debility and the Moral Imagination in Botswana. In 2013 she was recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.

All welcome. Please note that there may be photography and/or audio recording at some events and that admission is on a first come first served basis. Please follow this FAQ link for more information.