Maryam Al-Shamlan -lecture on sustainability

Posted by Maryam Al-Shamlan at Tuesday, March 15, 2011 10:00:08 AM EDT

hi everyone below are the notes i took during a lecture on sustainability from a Harvard professor that visited our anthropology class. Prof. AbuSharaf asked me to post them as some of the points he raised during the lecture are relevant/can be applied to our Gulf Societies class.

Sustainability: the challenge of changing our world

(Harvard professor of public health: John D. Spengler, PhD Akira Yamaguchi professor of health and human habitation).

• Main focus of his lecture: How can we think about our past, present and future in terms of urbanism, sustainable development and anthropological habits?

• Challenges of our time in 2011:

1. Cultural conflicts

2. Energy

3. Climate change

4. International trade.

• Cultural conflicts:

1. Global dynamics:

-think of Huntington’s clash of civilizations

- We see a global march to a multicultural world yet many cultural based alignments are forming.

-Before 1990’s we had a bipolar world:

-Capitalist – democracy / market system

-Communist – dictatorship / central control

-After 2000 six cultures emerged thereby redefining cultural identities based on:

-religion

-government/institutions

-rule of law

-family structure

-economic systems

And this resulted in six basic cultural groups around the world:

-Western Christians

-Eastern orthodox

-Muslims

-Hindus

-Japanese

-Chinese

-There are also nations that are torn between the above identities:

-Australia, Turkey, Taiwan, Ukraine, Middle Eastern countries, Latin American countries.

• Why China is all our future?!

1. When china achieves a standard of living just ½ of USA’s it will have an economy 2 ½ times as large as America’s.

2. The problem here is that human beings forget that they are a part of nature. Capitalism pulls us away from nature and distracts harmony.

Conclusion: what did we learn from the past that we want to sustain= searching for ‘ancient wisdom’.