What do you think?
Rate this book
How the Other Half Dies
To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.
328 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1976
10 people are currently reading
488 people want to read
About the author
Susan George
90 books58 followersSusan George is a well-known political scientist and writer on global social justice, Third World poverty, underdevelopment and debt. She is a fellow and president of the board of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. She is a fierce critic of the present policies of the IMF, World Bank, and what she calls their "maldevelopment model". She similarly criticizes the structural reform policies of the Washington Consensus on Third World development. She is of U.S. birth but now resides in France, and has dual citizenship.
In January 2007 she received an honorary doctorate from Newcastle University in the UK and in early March the International Studies Association at its congress in Chicago presented her with its first award to an Outstanding Public Scholar.
In January 2007 she received an honorary doctorate from Newcastle University in the UK and in early March the International Studies Association at its congress in Chicago presented her with its first award to an Outstanding Public Scholar.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 5, 2017
I wish that the issues and power struggles described in this book from the 80s were long gone from our society today. That does not appear to be the case sadly. This book was very eye-opening and sets the stage for the economic terrorism that are detailed in books such as "Confessions of an Economic Hitman".
"What [self-reliance] does mean is making maximum use of one's own resources--including people--before calling on external aid, and regaining the capacity to choose and to take initiatives with the ultimate goal of standing on one's own feet. The choices will necessarily include where one wants to go, how fast, and at what economic and social cost."
"The market is supposed, with a kind of cybernetic majesty, to "set" prices through the inexorable forces of supply and demand. Our vocabulary conforms to the myth when we say that "prices rise" as if "prices" were the only available subject of the verb "to rise" and as if no human actors could possibly be involved in raising them. These actors exist, however, and although they are not yet always able to put prices up and sustain them at optimum (for them) levels, they are rapidly progressing towards this goal."
"A former President of the FAO Council, referring to the targets for world grain production in the 1950 and 1960s, complained that 'as soon as production approached quantities equivalent to effective demand, markets become clogged with alleged surpluses. These annoyed governments far more than insufficient food levels did.' In the EEC, governments practice "intervention buying" on a broad scale when gluts threaten to drive prices down. They also destroy food by the hundreds of tons to keep it off the market if need be."
"Agribusiness is harmful to small, family-type farms and to consumers in the affluent countries, but it is no less harmful to ordinary working people who happen to get in the way of corporate 'rationalization of production' or the 'free flow of capital.' It is not 'rational,' for instance, to produce pineapple in Hawaii if cannery workers are going to make unreasonable demands-- like being paid half as much as workers in other U.S. industries. So Del Monte and Dole have shifted part of their pineapple growing to the Phillipines and to Thailand where a worker gets $1.20 a day for eight hours work. This does not mean that the price of a can of pineapple goes down."
"The result of teaching the people that their traditional foods are somehow inferior is what one nutritionist has called 'commerciogenic malnutrition.' If a profit is to be made, one cannot stop to consider at whose expense this will be the case. If an already undernourished person can be made to want junk food, this is not the comapnies' problem."
1807 William Hazlitt replying to Parson Malthus....the dogs and horses of the rich "eat up the food of the children of the poor."
"What [self-reliance] does mean is making maximum use of one's own resources--including people--before calling on external aid, and regaining the capacity to choose and to take initiatives with the ultimate goal of standing on one's own feet. The choices will necessarily include where one wants to go, how fast, and at what economic and social cost."
"The market is supposed, with a kind of cybernetic majesty, to "set" prices through the inexorable forces of supply and demand. Our vocabulary conforms to the myth when we say that "prices rise" as if "prices" were the only available subject of the verb "to rise" and as if no human actors could possibly be involved in raising them. These actors exist, however, and although they are not yet always able to put prices up and sustain them at optimum (for them) levels, they are rapidly progressing towards this goal."
"A former President of the FAO Council, referring to the targets for world grain production in the 1950 and 1960s, complained that 'as soon as production approached quantities equivalent to effective demand, markets become clogged with alleged surpluses. These annoyed governments far more than insufficient food levels did.' In the EEC, governments practice "intervention buying" on a broad scale when gluts threaten to drive prices down. They also destroy food by the hundreds of tons to keep it off the market if need be."
"Agribusiness is harmful to small, family-type farms and to consumers in the affluent countries, but it is no less harmful to ordinary working people who happen to get in the way of corporate 'rationalization of production' or the 'free flow of capital.' It is not 'rational,' for instance, to produce pineapple in Hawaii if cannery workers are going to make unreasonable demands-- like being paid half as much as workers in other U.S. industries. So Del Monte and Dole have shifted part of their pineapple growing to the Phillipines and to Thailand where a worker gets $1.20 a day for eight hours work. This does not mean that the price of a can of pineapple goes down."
"The result of teaching the people that their traditional foods are somehow inferior is what one nutritionist has called 'commerciogenic malnutrition.' If a profit is to be made, one cannot stop to consider at whose expense this will be the case. If an already undernourished person can be made to want junk food, this is not the comapnies' problem."
1807 William Hazlitt replying to Parson Malthus....the dogs and horses of the rich "eat up the food of the children of the poor."
August 6, 2023
A must read, still relevant in 2023.
October 6, 2009
Even though it's older (late 70s?), I feel it is one of the best criticisms of the Green Revolution I have read yet.
September 28, 2009
I imagine the basic messages of this book are as pertinent now as in the late 'seventies. There is enough food, but the people who need it don't have enough money to pay for it....and if they can't pay, they aren't going to get it.
January 17, 2020
It is an old book as written in the 1970s. However, it tells the real symptoms of how liberalism brought us this unsustainable development as criticising the Green Revolution . How agricultural mechanisation and intensification resulted in environmental and social problems.
February 1, 2012
A well-written exploration of world hunger and famine.
Want to read
March 23, 2020وَقَدَّرَ فِيهَا أَقْوَاتَهَا
لو أي حد عربي تعرض للكتاب , ستجد في الكتاب الحقيقة التي اقرها الله عز و جل .. اقرائه بتعمن فهو من القليل الذي يستحق
لو أي حد عربي تعرض للكتاب , ستجد في الكتاب الحقيقة التي اقرها الله عز و جل .. اقرائه بتعمن فهو من القليل الذي يستحق
Want to read
May 17, 2007Harvey Goldberg referred to this book in his lecture on private property. [http://www.brechtforum.org/harvey/gol...]
March 25, 2017
Really, its a bit old to be relevant but still an interesting read. It was written in 1986.
I just hope things and attitudes have changed.
I just hope things and attitudes have changed.
June 1, 2016
تاثیری که این کتاب در زمان خواندنش (۱۰ سال پیش) بر من گذاشت باورنکردنی بود. شاید الان نقدهایی بر آن داشته باشم اما هنوز از این کتاب به عنوان یکی از پرنفوذترینها نام میبرم.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews