A World In Transition: Humankind and Nature

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxvii

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2. Social Change and the Individual Condition

   1. A Critique of the Competitiveness Imperative and Current Globalisation

      • Riccardo Petrella

      Pages 1-18

   2. Barriers of Human Evolution

      • Borisz Szántó

      Pages 19-31

   3. Altered States of Society: A Tentative Approach

      • Dmitri Spivak

      Pages 33-42

   4. Social Space: From Freedom to Freedom of Movement

      • Diederik Aerts

      Pages 43-82

   5. Hunger Strikes: The Dramaturgy of Starvation Politics

      • Kyra Marie Landzelius

      Pages 83-90

3. Complex Evolution and Fundamental Emergent Transformations

   1. Supra-Human Institutions and the Human Condition

      • Fenton F. Robb

      Pages 91-103

   2. Stability, Turbulence, Chaos?: Systems Analogies and Metaphors, and Change in Contemporary World Politics

      • Czesław Mesjasz

      Pages 105-120

   3. Confronting Health Transition Complexity

      • Marília Bernardes Marques

      Pages 121-132

   4. Non-Natural Cultural Universals Exist

      • Philip L. Peterson

      Pages 133-156

   5. Communication: The Key to Understanding the Very Nature of ‘Life’, ‘Death’ and the Force Driving Evolution

      • Arnold De Loof

      Pages 157-173

4. Ecological Transformation and Responsibility Inquiries

   1. Science and Environmental Law. The Perspectives of Truth-Pluralism

      • Serge Gutwirth

      Pages 175-196

   2. Strength and Weakness (SWOT) Analysis of Humankind to Overcome the Global Ecological Challenges

      • Willy Weyns

      Pages 197-204

   3. “And you, my Mountain, will you Never Walk Towards me?”

      • Jan Fennema

      Pages 205-215

   4. Humankind and Nature

      • Peng Fu-yang

      Pages 217-223

5. Rural Economic-Ecological and Socio-Technical Equilibria

   1. Rural Development Knowledge: Indigenous, Necessary, Appropriate

      • Francis D. O’Reilly

      Pages 225-242

   2. The Predicament of Ecological-Economic Valuation and the Need for Linkage Through an Institutional Framework

      • H. Thomas, R. Mark

      Pages 243-255

   3. The Post-Industrial Society: What Future are we Preparing?

      • Riccardo Petrella

      Pages 257-270

   4. Scarcity Versus Fertility Two Ways of Thinking About Economy

      • Janina Rosicka

      Pages 271-281

6. Back Matter

   Pages 283-287

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A World in Transition, Humankind and Nature is appropriately entitled after its aim for an intrinsic property of reality: change.
Of major concern, in this era of transformation, is the extensive and profound interaction of humankind with nature. The global-scale social and technological project of humankind definitely involves a myriad of changes of the ecosphere. This book develops, from the call for an interdisciplinary synthesis and respect of plurality, acknowledging the evolving scientific truth, to the need for an integrated but inevitably provisional worldview.
Contributors from different parts of the world focus on four modes of change: (i) Social change and the individual condition, (ii) Complex evolution and fundamental emergent transformations, (iii) Ecological transformation and responsibility inquiries, (iv) The economic-ecological and socio-technical equilibria.
Primarily concerned with the deep transformations of humankind and of the relationship between humans and nature, it is addressed to a broad and thinking public that wants to be kept informed.

• Evolution
• Institution
• Transformation
• complexity
• development
• environment
• fertility
• nature
• social change

• Brussels Free University, Belgium

  Diederik Aerts, Jan Broekaert, Willy Weyns

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