Susan George (political scientist)

Last updated
Susan George
Susan George, 2010 (cropped).jpg
Susan George, in 2010
Born (1934-06-29) June 29, 1934 (age 89)
Education Smith College (BA), Sorbonne (BA)
University of Paris (PhD)
SpouseCharles-Henry George

Susan George (born June 29, 1934) is an American and French political and social scientist, activist and writer on global social justice, Third World poverty, underdevelopment and debt. She is the president of the Transnational Institute, a think-tank located in Amsterdam. [1] She is a fierce critic of the present policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (IBRD) 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 had dual citizenship since 1994.

Contents

Personal life

Early life

Born Susan Vance Akers on June 29, 1934, in Akron, Ohio, she was the only child of Edith and Walter Akers, Episcopalians who could trace their residency in the United States back to 1632. [2] Her father was an insurance broker, and her mother was a homemaker and a member of the Junior League. Born during the Great Depression, she was raised in a privileged environment; she had a nursemaid and took dance classes, music lessons, and, at a YMCA, swimming lessons. [2]

After attending a public, co-educational primary school, she went on to enroll at all-girls private preparatory academy. She stated that single-sex schooling "made me not a feminist. It was normal that women do whatever anybody did. Women were the sports experts. Women were the brains. You weren't in competition with men. You weren't expected to shut up—on the contrary! Even in my era, I never felt that I was particularly put down as a woman ever." [2]

George's father encouraged all her interests, including those outside the realm of traditional femininity, such as science and baseball, and when he went to serve in World War II, George assisted in planting a victory garden. [2]

Academic career

As a young student, George was an outstanding student who developed a strong interest in the French language and French culture. [2] As a teenager she chose to attend Smith College, [1] with the desire to study abroad in France. [2] While studying abroad, she took courses at Sciences Po. [2] She attained her bachelor's degree from Smith College in French and philosophy. [1] George later attended the Sorbonne, attaining a license, a three-year degree, in philosophy. [1] George also attained her doctorate in political science from the University of Paris. [1]

Personal life

During her time abroad in France, she met French lawyer, Charles-Henry George, 12 years her senior, and later moved to France to marry him in 1956. [2] Quoted about her early years in France she said she felt homesick "for my women friends, probably, but not for America, per se. I'd made my choice." [3] The couple soon started a family. [2] Susan George obtained her French citizenship in 1994. [2] In 2002 Charles-Henry George died. [1] As of 2013, George had three children and four grandchildren, [1] which she says has further inspired her activism, saying in an interview "Either we achieve together a new level of human emancipation, and do so in a way that preserves the earth, or we shall leave behind us the worst future for our children that capitalism and nature can deal them. No one knows in which direction the balance will tip nor does anyone know which actions, which writings, which alliances may achieve the critical mass that leads us one way or another, backwards or forwards. I am acutely conscious of the precariousness of our moment and my four much-loved grandchildren give me added resolve to address it." [2]

Career

Throughout her career, Susan George has been an antiwar activist as well as criticising what she saw as acts of corporate greed.[ citation needed ] At a time when women were not often allowed places of power in any organizational hierarchy, George established herself as a leader in the anti-hunger movement.[ citation needed ]

Early anti-war activism

She became a political activist in response to France's war in Algeria and U.S. involvement in Vietnam. [4] George said that the Vietnam War "was this sort of gateway to understanding what America could be, which is to say something quite negative, which I had not understood at all when I lived there. I had accepted the usual propaganda." [2] In 1967, she joined the Paris-American Committee to Stop War (P.A.C.S.), [2] and became assistant to the director of an NGO, the American Centre for Students and Artists, in 1969. [2] This sparked the interest of the CIA, who had already been looking into P.A.C.S. [5] [6] In 1971 she began working with the Front Solidarite Indochine, a group that organized antiwar lectures and protests in France. Shortly after, P.A.C.S. was dismantled by the French government. [2] She then collaborated with the directors of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., to form a new NGO devoted to social justice, which, in 1973, became the Transnational Institute . [2]

Anti-hunger activism

In 1974 she attended the World Food Conference in Rome, but was disillusioned due to her feeling that agribusiness representatives dominated the proceedings, saying in an interview that "no one who counted took the real reasons for hunger—power and control in the wrong hands—into account." [2] In 1976 her first book was published: How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger . [7] In 1984 she helped in organizing the World Food Assembly, a meeting held in Rome, Italy. [2]

Organizational involvement

From 1990 to 1995 she served on the board of conservation group Greenpeace International, as well as that of Greenpeace France. [1] George opposed the OECD's proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) in the 1990s, [1] and the ill-fated "Millennium Round" objectives of the World Trade Organization at Seattle in 1999. [2] From 1999 to 2006 she was vice-president of ATTAC France (Association for Taxation of (financial) Transactions to Aid Citizens) and remains a member of the scientific council. [8] She was awarded the title of honorary president in 2008. [9] In 1999 she also participated in the Helsinki Process. [10]

Susan George was involved with the World Social Forum since its inception in 2000, and the spin-off European Social Forum. [11] Though she was critical of the forums' initial structure, and believed that more action outside of forums was needed to bring about change, she applauded the steps they made towards changing "the political landscape". [11]

In 2004 she supported John Kerry for president. [2] [12] She canvassed for Kerry in Pennsylvania, but wrote for in a piece for OpenDemocracy "we all thought [Kerry] had a very good chance, even though everyone admitted it was hard to get really enthusiastic about him.... The man isn't the most charismatic ever to walk the earth. But at least he's not a proto-fascist or a go-it-aloner, and that's what we seem—apart from a last-minute miracle—to be stuck with now. With four years clear ahead of him and no re-election to worry about, I fear Bush and the ghastly neo- con/neo-liberals around him will now go on the rampage. They can continue with impunity their attacks on the Constitution and on hard-won freedoms...". [2]

Throughout the latter half of the 2000s, George continued making appearances, such as partaking in the 2006 Table of Free Voices conference, [13] and appearing in the 2008 documentary film, The End of Poverty?. [14]

George is the honorary president of ATTAC France. [4]

Honors

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vandana Shiva</span> Indian philosopher, scientist and environmentalist

Vandana Shiva is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, ecofeminist and anti-globalisation author. Based in Delhi, Shiva has written more than 20 books. She is often referred to as "Gandhi of grain" for her activism associated with the anti-GMO movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacques Rancière</span> French philosopher

Jacques Rancière is a French philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII: Vincennes—Saint-Denis. After co-authoring Reading Capital (1965) with the structuralist Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser and others, and after witnessing the 1968 political uprisings his work turned against Althusserian Marxism, he later came to develop an original body of work focused on aesthetics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga</span> 6th President of Latvia

Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga is a Latvian politician who served as the sixth President of Latvia from 1999 to 2007. She is the first woman to hold the post. She was elected President of Latvia in 1999 and re-elected for the second term in 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex Callinicos</span> British political theorist (born 1950)

Alexander Theodore Callinicos is a Rhodesian-born British political theorist and activist. An adherent of Trotskyism, he is a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and serves as its International Secretary. He is also editor of International Socialism, the SWP's theoretical journal, and has published a number of books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zygmunt Bauman</span> Polish sociologist and philosopher (1925–2017)

Zygmunt Bauman was a Polish sociologist and philosopher. He was driven out of the Polish People's Republic during the 1968 Polish political crisis and forced to give up his Polish citizenship. He emigrated to Israel; three years later he moved to the United Kingdom. He resided in England from 1971, where he studied at the London School of Economics and became Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds, later Emeritus. Bauman was a social theorist, writing on issues as diverse as modernity and the Holocaust, postmodern consumerism and liquid modernity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carla Anderson Hills</span> American lawyer and public servant (born 1934)

Carla Anderson Hills is an American lawyer and a public figure. A member of the Republican Party, she previously served as the 5th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Gerald Ford from 1975 to 1977 and as the 10th United States Trade Representative under President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993. Hills was the first woman to hold each of those posts, the third woman ever to serve in a presidential cabinet, and the first appointed to both cabinet and cabinet-rank positions.

The concept of reflexive modernization or reflexive modernity was launched by a joint effort of three of the leading European sociologists: Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck and Scott Lash. The introduction of this concept served a double purpose: to reassess sociology as a science of the present, and to provide a counterbalance to the postmodernist paradigm offering a re-constructive view alongside deconstruction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claus Offe</span> German political sociologist (born 1940)

Claus Offe is a political sociologist of Marxist orientation. He received his PhD from the University of Frankfurt and his Habilitation at the University of Konstanz. In Germany, he has held chairs for Political Science and Political Sociology at the Universities of Bielefeld (1975–1989) and Bremen (1989–1995), as well as at the Humboldt-University of Berlin (1995–2005). He has worked as fellow and visiting professor at the Institutes for Advanced Study in Stanford, Princeton, and the Australian National University as well as Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley and The New School University, New York. Once a student of Jürgen Habermas, the left-leaning German academic is counted among the second generation Frankfurt School. He currently teaches political sociology at a private university in Berlin, the Hertie School of Governance.

Viviane Forrester was an essayist, novelist, journalist and literary critic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elmar Altvater</span>

Elmar Altvater was Professor of Political Science at the Otto-Suhr-Institut of the Free University of Berlin, before retiring on 30 September 2004. He continued to work at the institute, and published articles and books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans Köchler</span> Austrian philosopher

Hans Köchler is a retired professor of philosophy at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and president of the International Progress Organization, a non-governmental organization in consultative status with the United Nations. In his general philosophical outlook he is influenced by Husserl and Heidegger, his legal thinking has been shaped by the approach of Kelsen. Köchler has made contributions to phenomenology and philosophical anthropology and has developed a hermeneutics of trans-cultural understanding that has influenced the discourse on the relations between Islam and the West.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carole Pateman</span> British political theorist (born 1940)

Carole Pateman is a feminist and political theorist. She is known as a critic of liberal democracy and has been a member of the British Academy since 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Howard Davies (economist)</span> British economist and author

Sir Howard John Davies is a British historian and author, who is the chairman of NatWest Group and the former director of the London School of Economics.

April Carter was a British peace activist. She was a political lecturer at the universities of Lancaster, Somerville College, Oxford and Queensland, and was a Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute from 1985 to 1987. She is currently an Honorary Research Fellow of the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies, Coventry University, and a 'senior editor' on the international editorial board for the International Encyclopedia of Peace to be published by Oxford University Press.

The capitalist state is the state, its functions and the form of organization it takes within capitalist socioeconomic systems. This concept is often used interchangeably with the concept of the modern state. Despite their common functions, there are many recognized differences in sociological characteristics among capitalist states.

<i>How the Other Half Dies</i> 1976 book by Susan George

How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger is a book by Franco-American activist Susan George, a member of the Transnational Institute. It was originally published in 1976, not long after the World Food Conference, and has been reprinted several times since.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colin Crouch</span> British sociologist and political scientist (born 1944)

Colin John Crouch, is an English sociologist and political scientist. He coined the post-democracy concept in 2000 in his book Coping with Post-Democracy. Colin Crouch is currently Emeritus Professor at the University of Warwick and an External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alter-globalization</span> Social movement

Alter-globalization is a social movement whose proponents support global cooperation and interaction, but oppose what they describe as the negative effects of economic globalization, considering it to often work to the detriment of, or to not adequately promote, human values such as environmental and climate protection, economic justice, labor protection, protection of indigenous cultures, peace and civil liberties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anti-globalization movement</span> Worldwide political movement against multinational corporations

The anti-globalization movement, or counter-globalization movement, is a social movement critical of economic globalization. The movement is also commonly referred to as the global justice movement, alter-globalization movement, anti-globalist movement, anti-corporate globalization movement, or movement against neoliberal globalization. There are many definitions of anti-globalization.

Rajni Kothari was an Indian political scientist, political theorist, academic and writer. He was the founder of Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in 1963, a social sciences and humanities research institute, based in Delhi and Lokayan, started in 1980 as a forum for interaction between activists and intellectuals. He was also associated with Indian Council of Social Science Research, International Foundation for Development Alternatives, and People's Union for Civil Liberties.

References