Judith Dellheim at Rosa Luxemburg Foundation has instituted a blog for our workshop and some of us have already contributed. It would be nice if we can intensify our interactions in the days that remain until the start of the workshop.
I guess that my book Understanding Sustainability Economics. Towards Pluralism in Economics (Earthscan 2008) will be scrutinized in various ways and you are welcome to ask questions to me. I will do my best to respond. While my book is a starting point for our deliberations, the debate will hopefully lead to a more general discussion about needed social and institutional change in the future to get us closer to a path that can be described as sustainable.
You can begin to ask questions to me about the book as soon as you wish but as a way of initiating a dialogue I will ask some questions to myself (I have checked with Judith that these questions could be useful as a start):
– Peter, why did you write this book? What did you hope to accomplish?
– Can you point to (a short version of) what you see as essential conceptual and other parts of your message?
– Economic crisis these days is largely (if not exclusively) interpreted in financial and economic growth terms. Is the institutional microeconomics that you suggest relevant and useful for the present financial crisis and if so; in what way?
I will focus on these questions and come back with my response within 14 days. But you may ask other questions to me and to other participants who contribute to the blog. Actually, I believe that what we can accomplish in our workshop is asking a number of questions that have too often been avoided by various actors for tactical or ideological reasons.
A possible point of departure is to get some ideas about how we can relate to previous activities at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
A way of focusing our efforts is to point to the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development – Rio+20 in London March 26-29 (www.planetunderpressure2012.net). What is our message as input to that arrangement?
Uppsala and Västerås August 11, 2011
Peter Söderbaum