Self-Devouring Growth Discussion Groups

Please join us in reading and discussing

Self-Devouring Growth: A Planetary Parable as Told from Southern Africa

By Julie Livingston (Duke University Press, 2019)

This is a book for our moment. A parable for our times set within Botswana’s economic miracle. A story that is meant to provoke us to think about the moral and material worlds that we need to build in order to address the health and environmental crises defining the start of the 21st century.

Livingston examines how the imperative for continual uninterrupted economic growth generates ways of living now that destroy the capacity for liveliness in the future. She asks readers to imagine how else we might organize our energies, and calls on us all to examine the groundwork we are laying down for the future. 

Book discussion groups will be held throughout the day on Monday, November 30th in preparation for an author event on Friday, December 4th from 12:00-1:15pm. Please register for the discussion sections below. Registration will close on November 20th to give us time to organize discussion groups, and you will be given a list of one-hour time slots to chose from on November 23. 

This book is free to all Cornell students, staff and faculty through the Cornell library.

Organizer: The Qualities of Life working group at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies

Co-sponsors: 
American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program
Carl L. Becker House
Cornell Botanic Gardens
Cornell Global Health Program (Ithaca)
Cornell School of Public Health
Department of Anthropology
Department of Global Development (formerly Development Sociology)
Department of History
Department of Science and Technology Studies
Policy Analysis and Management
Weill Cornell Global Health Program (NYC)

Collaborating Organizations:
Global Health Student Advisory Board
Partners in Health Engaged
Planetary Health Club