Gustavo Esteva

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Gustavo Esteva (2008).

Gustavo Esteva (born August 20, 1936 in Mexico City ) is a Mexican political activist and founder of the independent Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca and a member of the Universidad National Autónoma de Mexico . He is one of the best-known representatives of development criticism (post-development). Characterized by a left-zapatista stance, he describes himself as "deprofessionalized intellectual" ("deprofessionalized intellectuals").

Life

Gustavo Esteva began 15 years ago with the gainful employment to support his extended family after his own statement. He described his further career in his book in 2004: After initially working as a temporary worker, he became the youngest manager at IBM thanks to Truman's development policy . This was made possible by development experts whose educational projects were made accessible to the less privileged Mexicans. In this way he himself could have become the center of further development and see to it that conditions for the workers were improved; under the premise of securing profitable sales for the company and the stakeholders so that everyone could afford something (“gaining a solid income, prestige and a sports car”).

Esteva worked in various companies. Eventually he went into public administration, worked for a foreign trade bank, and joined a revolutionary Marxist group. He left this in 1965. From 1970 to 1976 he was a government official in the social reform government of Luis Echeverría . Disaffected by the development paradigm, he eventually quit his job.

In 1983 he met Ivan Illich . Etseva was invited to a seminar on the social construction of energy with Wolfgang Sachs in Mexico City. Illich was there too. Fascinated by Illich, he studied Illich's writings all night long. He started working with Ivan Illich, and later Illich and Esteva became friends.

Esteva worked as an advisor to the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) in their negotiations with the Mexican government. At the same time he worked at the Center for Intercultural Dialogues and Exchanges (CEDI) in Oaxaca, where he and others founded the independent Universidad de la Tierra . The university sees itself as a community learning place for radical democracy . Today Esteva works with various indigenous groups and NGOs and publishes internationally. He wrote for " La Jornada " and the British " Guardian ".

Development criticism

“Development is a social experiment on a world scale that has failed terribly for the majority of those affected. Their “integration” into the world market on fair and equal terms is increasingly impracticable, while the distance between the center and the periphery is constantly increasing. (...) Development is an insidious myth, the very existence of which threatens the majority of the world's population as it turns their predicament into a chronic nightmare - that is the degrading modernization of poverty. "

- Gustavo Esteva (1995)

The foundations of Esteva's criticism of the development idea of ​​the western states developed from his private and professional experiences: From a model career in development policy, he developed a critical and ultimately negative attitude towards the influence of the north on the countries of the global south. Based on the history of the meaning of the word “development”, Esteva made it clear in his work that “development” was initially used in the 17th century for biological-evolutionary processes. According to Esteva, in the second half of the 20th century there was a semantic shift in the direction of a power imbalance between “developers” and “developed”.

Today he strongly advocates the concept of commons (common property), as it is also understood by the Zapatista movement.

Gustavo Esteva's radical and social revolutionary stance - he said in 1993 that the idea of ​​"development" was a decaying corpse that must finally be buried - also influenced other schools of thought. The much less politically radical Alberto Acosta refers to Esteva in his ideas for the good life (Buen Vivir) .

Publications

(Abstract)

  • Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash (2014): Grassroots Postmodernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures.
  • Gustavo Esteva, Salvatore Babones and Philipp Babcicky: The future of development: a radical manifesto. Bristol: Policy Press, 2013
  • Gustavo Esteva and Catherine Marielle (eds.): Sin maíz no hay país: páginas de una exposición, México: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Dirección General de Culturas Populares e Indígenas, 2003
  • Gustavo Esteva (1998): The Revolution of the New Commons. In Curtis Cook and Juan D. Lindau: Aboriginal Rights and Self-Government. Montreal, Canada. McGill-Queen's University Press.
  • Gustavo Esteva: Fiesta - beyond development, aid and politics 1995

Web links

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  1. ↑ Esteva understands "deprofessionalization" to mean liberation from the structures, conceit and dependencies of intellectuals working in institutions.
  2. ^ Catalog of the German National Library. Retrieved June 30, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Gustavo Esteva: Fiesta - beyond development, aid and politics 1995 page 56 ff.
  4. ↑ The sacred cow of "development". Retrieved August 1, 2017 .
  5. ^ Alberto Costa: Buen Vivir. The right to a good life. Oekom Verlag, Munich
personal data
SURNAME Esteva, Gustavo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mexican activist and author
DATE OF BIRTH August 20, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Mexico city