Cape Town’s two worlds of book lovers and activists met last night to greet Oxfam’s Head of Research, Duncan Green, at the launch of his latest book, From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States can Change the World.
It was a crowded house that listened in on a conversation between the author and Francis Wilson, the founder of the Southern African Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at the University of Cape Town. Green told how when he commenced his job hunt as a newly qualified scientist, the Star Wars projects – for which he didn’t “have the heart” – were the only places employing physics graduates. He opted to go travelling instead.
“I went to Latin America, where I started teaching English – a complete charlatan with no qualifications!” The author also learned to live under a military government. “The opression was palpable. Everyone I knew had a friend or relative who’d ‘disappeared’. I was learning about human rights, not physics.”
When he returned to Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, Ronald Reagan was funding the Contras and so Green turned his attention to thinking about Imperialism and economics. “The more you work in Latin America, the more you realise that economics matters.”
Green travelled on to the East at the time that the Asian economy was collapsing. This opened up questions for the author about how previously successful countries find themselves in economic decline and how some desperately poor countries recover and establish themselves anew. He quoted South Korea, Taiwan and Sweden as examples.
Green continued exploring the combination of active citizenship and the role of the state in effecting successful development. It became a journey of some 20 years that prepared him to write From Poverty to Power, a project which led him deeply into a range of issues including power, poverty, migration, active citizenship, and redistribution (or “rebalancing” for the Americans).
“It was like writing an MA,” said Green, “with the added satisfaction of having a book to show for the effort at the end of the process.”
A question and answer session between the author and members of the Book Lounge audience concluded this vibrant discussion that left guests with a distinct sense of hope for the world’s future.
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