Globalization's Shoreline and the Road to a Sustainable Future

Bottling the Gods, a vivid account of two centuries of life in rural Ghana, demonstrates how commonly held beliefs about globalization and development fail to capture the lived experiences of the global poor.  

Over his 13 years of working along what he calls "globalization's shoreline," a world region buffeted by the economic, political, and environmental decisions of those living in wealthier places, Carr has concluded that most experts misunderstand what they are trying to fix, and cannot tell if they are fixing it.  Bottling the Gods is an eye opening, you-are-there book that compels the reader to question conventional wisdom and redefine what assistance to the developing world really means.

EDWARD R. CARR Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of South Carolina. He is also the climate change adaptation coordinator for the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance at the United States Agency for International Development. He is the author of more than 30 publications on issues of development, adaptation to climate change, and the changing global environment. He has been awarded a Science and Technology Policy Fellowship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. He has been covered in the New York Times (http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/climate-panel-struggles-with-media-plan/) and his blog: www.edwardrcarr.com/opentheechochamber receives thousands of unique visitors each month.

Table of Contents

Taking it all Apart
Getting to the 'Beach'
A Day at the Beach 
Living with Uncertainty 
Nothing Has Always Been Like This
The Tide Goes Out 
The Tide Comes Back In
Scaling Up: Why the Lessons of Dominase and Ponkrum Matter to the World 
Losing the Signal in the Noise
The Long Emergency on the Shoreline of Globalization: It's Not Their Problem
Understanding the World Anew
Truly Participatory Development
Two Futures (Out of Many) 
Uncertainty Is Hope 
Bibliography

260 pages, Hardcover