Transformation and survival : in search of human world order

This book brings together the more important of Rajni Kothari's essays on world order, peace and survival. These writings span the long period of his involvement in the World Order Models Project, his Editorship of the journal Alter natives and his work as Programme Director of the United Nations University's programme on Peace and Global Trans formation. The book also includes his Dyason Memorial Lec tures which he delivered in Australia in 1974, his inaugural address to the International Institute of Strategic Studies in 1975, his paper for the United Nations Conference on the Effects of the Existing International Order on the Pursuit of Human Rights in the Developing Countries in 1980 and his contribution to the Committee of Experts convened by the Secretary-General of the United Nations for the Year of Peace in 1985. His latest and most recent in this series, 'Peace as Technological Fix', delivered at the Conference on Con flict Resolution held in New Zealand in November 1987, is also included here. Many of these writings and addresses are either unpublished or published in a variety of scattered pub lications that are not easily accessible. By bringing them together for the first time, this book presents a thematic over view of Kothari's distinctive perspective on international and world affairs.

It is a perspective guided by an understanding of world real ity, thinking on how to intervene in it, and a theoretical and philosophical vision that informs both the understanding and the interventions that diverge from established schools of thought on international relations and the global context of social change in our times. Secondly, it seeks to move away from specialized treatment of issues like peace, development, ecology and human rights, and to explore interrelationships between these various dimensions. Thirdly, it is an attempt to overcome technocratic perspectives on creating a stable world by insisting on the primacy of the political process and, as part thereof, of major social movements for transformation.

In these essays Kothari takes issue with the dominant design of erecting a 'world order' based on the existing concepu of security, economic development and technology He expo ses both the inherent dualism of this order and explore the elements of an alternative to it that builds on emerging teg gles for a just and humane d. Like the first this series, State Against Democracy In Search of h Governance, this book also comtenes stark, ofen chilling capacity of human beings and mine event and communities to intervence and change the course of history.