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The Sun
interviews David Korten September 2007
"Living Wealth"
YES! Fall 2007
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David C. Korten
UW Interview
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In Loving Memory
Donella H. Meadows (1941-2001)
The Global Citizen |
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Dr. DAVID C.
KORTEN |
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Cofounder and Board
Chair,
Positive Futures
Network
publishers of YES! A Journal of
Positive Futures
Founder and President,
The
People-Centered
Development Forum
Board Member,
Business Alliance for Local Living
Economies
Associate,
International Forum on Globalization
Member,
Social Ventures Network
Member,
The
Club of Rome
Dr.
David C. Korten
has over thirty-five years of experience
in preeminent business, academic, and
international development institutions
as well as in contemporary citizen
action organizations. Trained in
economics, organization theory, and
business strategy with M.B.A. and Ph. D.
degrees from the Stanford University
Graduate School of Business, his early
career was devoted to setting up
business schools in low income countries
— starting with Ethiopia while still a
doctoral candidate at Stanford — in the
hope that creating a new class of
professional business entrepreneurs
would be the key to ending global
poverty.
After graduation,
Korten completed his military service
during the Vietnam War as a captain in
the U.S. Air Force, serving in Air Force
headquarters command, the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, and the Advanced
Research Projects Agency.
He then served for
five and a half years as a Visiting
Associate Professor of the Harvard
University Graduate School of Business
where he taught in Harvard's middle
management, M.B.A. and doctoral
programs. He also served as the Harvard
Business School advisor to the
Nicaragua-based Central American
Management Institute. He subsequently
joined the staff of the Harvard
Institute for International Development,
where he headed a Ford Foundation-funded
project to strengthen the organization
and management of national family
planning programs.
In the late 1970s,
Korten left U.S. academia and moved to
Southeast Asia, where he lived for
nearly fifteen years, serving first as a
Ford Foundation project specialist, and
later as Asia regional advisor on
development management to the U.S.
Agency for International Development
(USAID). His work there won him
international recognition for his
contributions to pioneering the
development of powerful strategies for
transforming public bureaucracies into
responsive support systems dedicated to
strengthening community control and
management of land, water, and forestry
resources.
Disillusioned by the
evident inability of USAID and other
large official aid donors to apply the
approaches that had been proven
effective by the nongovernmental Ford
Foundation, Korten broke with the
official aid system. His last five years
in Asia were devoted to working with
leaders of Asian nongovernmental
organizations on identifying the root
causes of development failure in the
region and building the capacity of
civil society organizations to function
as strategic catalysts of national- and
global-level change.
Korten came
to realize that the crisis of deepening
poverty, growing inequality,
environmental devastation, and social
disintegration he was observing in Asia
was also being experienced in nearly
every country in the world — including
the United States and other "developed"
countries. Furthermore he came to the
conclusion that the United States was
actively promoting — both at home and
abroad — the very policies that were
deepening the resulting global crisis.
For the world to survive, the United
States must change. He has since had a
leading role in raising public
consciousness of the political and
institutional consequences of economic
globalization and the expansion of
corporate power at the expense of
democracy, equity, and environmental
health.
 In
1990 he joined with colleagues from
around the world to found the
People-Centered Development Forum as a
support network for those who were
seeking to challenge the dominant
development paradigm. He has since
served as the Forum's president and
principal spokesperson. As his own
analysis of the global crisis deepened,
his Asian colleagues suggested that he
might best help them in their own cause
by returning to the United States to
educate other Americans in the
devastating consequences of U.S.
policies for the rest of the world. He
returned to the United States in 1992
where he lived until 1998 in the heart
of Manhattan in New York City
between Madison Avenue and Wall Street —
a setting that provided the proper
inspiration to write
When Corporations Rule the World. By
1998 his attention was increasingly
focused on the search for alternatives
and he was becoming deeply involved in
the Positive Futures Network, publishers
of
YES! A Journal of Positive Futures,
which he co-founded and served as chair.
In 1998 he moved to Bainbridge Island in
Washington state, the home of YES! and
the heartland of Ecotopia, where he
completed writing
The Post-Corporate World: Life After
Capitalism. He is a major
contributor to the report of the
International Forum on Globalization on
Alternatives to Economic Globalization.
His most recent book is
The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth
Community.
His
publications are required reading in
university courses around the world. He
is also a popular international speaker
and a regular guest on talk radio. An
interview by the University of
Washington Center for Communication and
Civic Engagement on corporate
globalization provides an overview of
how his thinking has evolved and
thoughts on prospects for change.
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From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
Dr. David C. Korten is an author and a
leader in the global resistance against corporate
globalization. He is probably best known as the
author of the book
When Corporations Rule the World. His most
recent book is The Great Turning: From Empire to
Earth Community,[1]
which places corporate globalization within the
context of 5,000 years of "Empire," used as a
generic term for organizing human relationships by
dominator hierarchy. Korten argues that the human
system has now reached the limits of domination that
social and environmental systems will tolerate. To
secure its future, the human species must turn away
from the dominator way of Empire to the partnership
way of Earth Community, as defined by the principles
of the
Earth Charter.
[edit]
Education and early career
Korten was born in
Longview,
Washington in 1937 and is a 1955 graduate of
Longview's
R. A. Long high school. He received a
M.B.A. and
Ph. D. from the
Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
He served during the
Vietnam War as a captain in the
United States Air Force.
[edit]
Korten's Models
In When Corporations Rule the World,
Korten used two models to describe man's
relationship with Earth — the "Cowboy" and
"Spaceship" models. According to the cowboy model,
most people view the Earth having plenty of
resources to support the human race and believe that
these resources are constantly being renewed. In
reality, says Korten, the earth is more like a space
capsule in that resources are much more limited and
steps must be taken to renew them actively.
[edit]
Career and main body of
work
He served as the
Harvard Business School adviser to the
Nicaragua-based Central American Management
Institute. He subsequently joined the staff of the
Harvard Institute for International Development,
where he headed a Ford Foundation-funded project to
strengthen the organization and management of
national family planning programs.
In the late 1970s, Korten left U.S. academia and
moved to Southeast Asia, where he lived for nearly
fifteen years, serving first as a Ford Foundation
project specialist, and later as Asia regional
advisor on development management to the
United States Agency for International Development
(USAID).
His work in Asia gained international recognition
for its pioneering contribution to the development
of strategies for transforming public bureaucracies
into responsive support systems dedicated to
strengthening community control and management of
land, water, and forestry resources.
Disillusioned by what he came to see as an
inability of USAID and other large official aid
donors to strengthen community control over their
natural resource base, Korten broke with the
official aid system. His last five years in Asia
were devoted to working with leaders of Asian
nongovernmental organizations on identifying the
root causes of development failure in the region and
building the capacity of civil society organizations
to function as strategic catalysts of national- and
global-level change.
Korten came to believe that the crisis of
deepening poverty, growing inequality, environmental
devastation, and social disintegration he was
observing in Asia was also being experienced in
nearly every country in the world -- including the
United States and other "developed" countries.
Furthermore he came to the conclusion that the
United States was actively promoting -- both at home
and abroad -- the very policies that were deepening
the resulting global crisis. For the world to
survive, the United States must change.
He returned to the United States in 1992 to help
advance that change. He has since had a leading role
in raising public consciousness of the political and
institutional consequences of economic globalization
and the expansion of corporate power at the expense
of democracy, equity, and environmental health.
Dr. Korten is co-founder and board chair of
Positive Futures Network, which publishes
YES! A Journal of Positive Futures, a
quarterly magazine, a board member of the
Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, an
associate of the International Forum on
Globalization.[2],
and a member of the Club of Ro
Bibliography
See also
References
External links
