Development as Service: Worldviews, Law and Sustainable Development Goals
This refreshing account of comparative wellbeing perspectives of the Global South of Ubuntu, Buen Vivir and Gross National Happiness sheds a new light on sustainable development debates, arguing for the notion of culture underlying all development. Instead of Development as Freedom, it proposes Development as Service, centering around reciprocity. The central Sustainable Development Goals perspective of “Leaving no-one behind” and sustainable growth is still caught in the development logic of linear growth, individualism, and the hierarchy of developed versus developing states.
This book is a must read for philosophers who are willing to think beyond European philosophy, new economists interested in reshaping today’s paradigms, innovative lawyers with an environmental heart or human rights interest, and all people who seek new meaning in today’s society, as well as for those who yearn for a dialogue between worldviews of the Global South and science.
Dorine E. van Norren is an associate researcher at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands (Law) and Pretoria, South Africa (Decoloniality). She studied law in Amsterdam and Cape Town and French in Lyon. She has a Master’s in International and Dutch Law from Free University Amsterdam, the Netherlands (1995), and a PhD in Law and Development Studies from Tilburg and Amsterdam University, the Netherlands (2017). She did field research for her PhD in Ecuador, Bhutan, South Africa, and at the UN in New York and Paris. She has published articles in world-renowned journals and books with respected publishers. She worked as a diplomat in Sri Lanka and Turkey and held several positions at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Southern Africa, North America, European Integration departments). She worked for the Advisory Council of International Affairs. She was Coordinator for UNESCO, human rights and SDGs at the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture including UNESCO Commission advisory member. Currently she is Strategic Advisor Western Hemisphere.
The book is written on a personal title.
"This book is an impressive effort to bring various wide-ranging worldviews, spanning Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America together, and to expand the horizon of the human rights dialogue as well as the sustainability and development discourse. It is a must read for all those that are interested in working in the multilateral domain or scholars that are involved in truly inclusive sustainable development."
Macharia Kamau Co-chair of the Open Working Group for the SDGs and Former United Nations Ambassador, Kenya
"[This book] is a fascinating introduction to the world of competing value systems and how these might require us to question the dominant development paradigm."
Professor Joyeeta Gupta University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
"This book creates a new horizon for research on human rights and development."
Professor Willem van Genugten Tilburg Law School, the Netherlands
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