Alternate ROutes: A Journal of Critical Social Research

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ALTERNATE ROUTES: A JOURNAL OF CRITICAL SOCIAL RESEARCH

BOOK REVIEW

Making Peace with the Earth, by Vandana Shiva. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Fernwood Publishing,

2013. $ 24.95 CAN, paper. ISBN: 978-1-55266-566-4. Pages: 1-267.

Reviewed by Christoph Neusiedl1

In April 2017, a demonstration of some 40 farmers from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu

grabbed nation-wide attention: By putting live mice in their mouths, flogging themselves, stripping

naked, carrying with them skulls of farmers who committed suicide, and threatening to drink their

own urine, the drastic protest was intended to highlight the never-ending plight of India’s farmers,

due to which about 300,000 of them have committed suicide over the past 20 years (Lakshmana,

2017). In the state of Maharashtra alone, an average of seven farmers committed suicide every

single day between January and April 2017 (Kakodkar, 2017).

Vandana Shiva’s Making Peace with the Earth shows how the mass-suicide of Indian

farmers is one of the many terrifying outcomes of what she calls a global war against the earth.

This war is fought, as Shiva explains, by multinational corporations (MNCs) and nation-states as

their faithful vassals: “Governments mutate from welfare states to corporate states as they

deregulate corporations and over-regulate citizens (...). The enlargement of ‘free-market

democracy’ becomes a war against Earth Democracy” (21). Throughout the book and with a focus

on India, Shiva explores the different yet interrelated wars being fought against the earth, the

means of war applied by MNCs and the Indian state, and the human and non-human costs of it.

We learn how ‘land wars’ displace millions of people and devastate the environment in order to

make room for Special Economic Zones (SEZs), mega-development projects, and the large-scale

exploitation of natural resources; how ‘water wars’ based on the increasing privatisation of water

services and assets exclude a huge part of the population from access to safe drinking water as well

as to water needed for irrigation; how ‘forest wars’ replace an abundancy of native tree families

by monoculture plantations, in the process destroying local livelihoods and the ecosystems on

which they are based; or how ‘seed wars’ lead to an ever-increasing dependency on highly

expensive, and highly damaging, chemical inputs that in turn result in degraded soils and health

risks on the one hand, and indebtedness and suicides of farmers on the other. The chapter on ‘seed

wars’ in particular manages to explain a highly complex, technical set of issues around genetically

modified organisms, biodiversity and intellectual property rights in an easily understandable and

comprehensible way, a testimony of Shiva’s long-term research and activism in this field.

The emphasis on themes of land, water, climate and seed conflicts then clearly links Shiva’s

most recent publication with earlier books such as Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age

of Climate Crisis (2008), Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability and Peace (2005), and Water

Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit (2002). What all of Shiva’s work also has in common is

an analytical focus on the role of the nation-state and MNCs from an eco-feminist perspective

which sees the transformation of capitalist structures of domination as ultimate goal (Curran, 2007,

118).

1 Christoph Neusiedl is a PhD student at the Department of Asian and International Studies (AIS), City University of

Hong Kong. Email: cneusiedl2-c@my.cityu.edu.hk

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ALTERNATE ROUTES: A JOURNAL OF CRITICAL SOCIAL RESEARCH

Based on this framework, Making Peace with the Earth provides a vivid and descriptive

account of the politics and concrete impact of what Carroll and Jarvis (2015) call ‘deep

marketisation,’ the latest phase of neoliberalism which is characterised by “an aggressive pro-

private sector agenda that seeks to rapidly extend market exchange and social relations using

means that work on, through, and around the state” (295). The state here no longer is the focal

point and implementer of ‘Development,’, but a facilitator and accelerator of ‘Development,’ the

achievement of which is being ‘outsourced’ to the globalised private sector. This “corporate-

centric” (Shiva, 18) world demands that “local communities and the country should both give up

their sovereign rights for the benefit of global free trade” (40).

One of the examples Shiva provides for this is the Indian state’s massive support for SEZs

in order to promote exports and attract foreign direct investment. This is being achieved by

employing ‘means of war’ such as handing out massive tax breaks, deregulating employment and

labour laws, and seizing land for the private sector (33). As Shiva explains, these means of war

“dispossess farmers and peasants and destroy agriculture, in favour of privileged corporate

enclaves, which pay no taxes but burden the entire society with increased fossil fuel use and

greenhouse gas emissions” (35). This is typical for deep marketisation projects based on the rule

of the ‘free market’ which subjects all social relations to the price form at the expense of any forms

of social protection, including access to the commons and public goods (Da Costa and McMichael,

2007). Ironically, of course, such market processes are everything but free - the ‘free market

democracy’ is, as Shiva shows, accompanied by an excessive force of violence employed by both

the Indian state, through police, military and paramilitary units, and by MNCs themselves through

local goons and private armies tolerated by, and sometimes even collaborating with, the state.

Dinerstein (2015) describes this as the ‘political construction of hopelessness,’ a key

instrument of deep marketisation, which systematically uses violence, fear and frustration to

oppress resistance and realise the state- and elite-favoured form of economic and social

transformation, forcefully constructed as being without any alternative. In this vein, Shiva argues

that what we can observe in the war against the earth and resistance against it is actually a war

between two worldviews - the onslaught against the earth and its (non-elite, ‘poor’, ‘native’,

‘lower-caste’, minority…) inhabitants is embedded within a dualist Cartesian system that puts

humans above nature and thus justifies the subordination and exploitation of nature. What is

required then is “a shift in our worldview (…),” (Shiva, 265), however it remains rather vague how

this shift can materialise itself and what it concretely entails.

The movements and resistance against processes of deep marketisation which Shiva

describes in her book under the label of ‘Earth Democracy’ then are based on a worldview and a

politics that includes “all life on earth and all humans who are being excluded by so-called ‘free

market democracy’ based on corporate rule and corporate greed” (Shiva, 20). However, while

Shiva provides numerous examples of resistance, such as the early Chipko movement to save

forests, the Niyamgiri Hills movement against mining of Bauxite, or the Anti-Posco Movement to

prevent a South-Korean steel plant joint venture, she avoids delving into details, which is also one

of the biggest weaknesses of her work.

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ALTERNATE ROUTES: A JOURNAL OF CRITICAL SOCIAL RESEARCH

While ‘Earth Democracy’ is always being highlighted as a reaction against the threats

emanating from the state and MNCs, it is often unclear what concrete actions, strategies and tactics

Earth Democracy entails and how it is internally organised, as well as how its impact can be

maximised. All the different movements featured in the book are portrayed in a rather

homogeneous way, despite their rather different backgrounds and membership base. Questions of

power are almost completely left out, for instance when it comes to strategies of leadership and

equal participation within the movements featured, or the rights of women and other minorities.

At times, Shiva also tends to portray small-holder and indigenous farmers as rather passive victims

of the state and MNCs that can easily escape their situation by listening to the ‘vanguard’ of

enlightened scholars, activists and NGOs which, not least, include her own organisation Navdanya

that is prominently featured throughout the book.

Additionally, while Shiva takes great effort to make the case for the ‘environmentalism of

the poor,’ she glosses over the fact that, at times, environmental conservation and economic

interests are indeed in conflict with each other, which can for instance be seen in the aftermath of

the Chipko Movement (see Mitra, 1993). Another aspect that can be seen critically is Shiva’s

exclusive, class-based focus on the state and MNCs, which tends to assign the state a redemptive

role once it is ‘freed’ from the dictates of national elites, the private sector and institutions such as

the World Bank which impose their (neoliberal) demands on the state. Thus, once liberated from

these constraints, the state is seen as rather unproblematic institution that protects empowered local

communities (Shiva, 26). As can be seen in Making Peace with the Earth, such an attachment at

class analysis eschews important questions of hierarchy and domination outside capitalist

structures and overlooks other important sites of struggle.

Except for these shortcomings, Vandana Shiva’s book provides a useful entry-point for

readers who want to learn more about the impact of globalisation and contemporary Development

policy on marginalised people and the environment, especially within an Indian context but also

beyond. Together with books such as Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The

Climate (2014), it is an essential read for both lay persons as well as undergraduate students and

anyone interested in issues of Development, climate change and the environment in order to

understand and realise the scale of contemporary social, economic and environmental problems

and the challenges we face and need to tackle in the future, considering the effects of both

increasing climate change and an expansion of neoliberal market rule across the globe.

References

Carroll, T., and D. Jarvis. (2015) The New Politics of Development: Citizens, Civil Society, and

the Evolution of Neoliberal Development Policy. Globalizations. 12 (3), 281–304.

Curran, G. (2007). 21st Century Dissent: Anarchism, Anti-Globalization and Environmentalism.

New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Da Costa, D., and P. McMichael. (2007). “The Poverty of the Global Order.” Globalizations. 4

(4), 588-602.

Dinerstein, A.C. (2015). The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America: The Art of Organising Hope.

New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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ALTERNATE ROUTES: A JOURNAL OF CRITICAL SOCIAL RESEARCH

Kakodkari, P. (2017). 852 farmer suicides in four months in Maharashtra [online]. Available

from: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/852-farmer-suicides-in-four-months-

in-mah/articleshow/58723266.cms [Accessed 25 May 2017].

Klein, N. (2014). This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate. New York: Simon &

Schuster.

Lakshmana, K. (2017). In Tamil Nadu, debt more than drought is driving farmers to commit

suicide [online]. Available from: http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/in-tamil-nadu-

debt-more-than-drought-is-driving-farmers-to-commit-suicide/story-

GA2WV9kvF3nkG8nfEtkJIJ.html [Accessed 25 May 2017].

Mitra, A. (1993). Chipko: An Unfinished Mission [online]. Available from:

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/chipko-an-unfinished-mission-30883 [Accessed 23

May 2017].

Shiva, V. (2008). Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in a Time of Climate Crisis. Cambridge,

Mass: South End Press.

Shiva, V. (2005). Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace. Cambridge, MA: South

End Press.

Shiva, V. (2002). Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit. Cambridge, MA: South End

Press.