Frank Birkin and Thomas
Polesie (2012) Intrinsic sustainable
development: Epistemes, science, business and sustainability (Singapore:
World Scientific) pp351
In essence,
the text recounts a personal journey of exploration. (Quite how the two authors
are manifested in a text which is represented as a personal and singular
journey is obscure but I suspect that they are probably represented in the text
by the two main characters – the “boy” and ”Grey Beard”). This is a journey
from childhood to late adulthood, from curiosity and wonder through confusion
and frustration, back to curiosity and wonder. It is a journey to Foucault and
then beyond. The text examines the nature of being human, the nature of being,
the nature of nature, the nature of knowledge, the nature of reality, the
nature of business, the nature of belief and so on. This is a serious investigation that navigates the
“whirlpools” (p146) of “debilitating self-reflective despair” (p 85). I suspect
that this is what it really means to be a scholar – and it is not easy.
It would be
appropriate to here recount the contents of the book so that a putative reader
might have some idea what to expect: I am not at all sure that this would help
us much: “Passive Nature”, Square-Peg Business”, “Primal Wisdom” are all
chapter titles but don’t signal a great deal. I probably cannot do better than
quote the Preface:
This book started as a
treatise about new and more sustainable forms of business. It first attempted
this from inside the business world…[then] we stepped outside the business
world, outside the social world, and into a world of realities now described by
science. We finished with a book that looks at business, at our institutions
and at ourselves from a world that is emerging around us as we write” (pix)
Here, in the
Preface, is one of the key motifs for the whole book – that of science.
Birkin’s prior work has, it seems to me, sought to privilege “science” and here
we have a really serious attempt to make sense of this (what I suspect is
actually) instinct or axiom. So if you want to investigate science in some
clear-minded way that considers the ecological crisis and its treatment within
business and accounting; and you do this having addressed the nonsense of a
business and an accounting which ignores all the most convincing components of
that science and you would like to understand how this truly psychotic
situation can be allowed to happen – you are going to have to dig deep and
little (if anything) will be allowed to stand without close scrutiny. That is
the task the text sets itself.
The nature of
scientific knowledge is carefully explored and page 137 sees as good a
definition of the nature of scientific knowledge (and its conditionality) as I
have come across but I cannot shake off the sense that the text is both too
easily attached to science (without really deconstructing the clearly
recognised issue that it is scientists who make the science and that if
“science” means “good science” we are still in thrall to a tautology) and, I
fear, too quickly abandons Latour. Be that as it may, I think the authors
retain an attachment to critical realism and in this, if nothing else, I find
comfort.
The text
builds slowly up to Chapter 6 where I think the essence of the thesis is
assembled (and subsequently refined and deconstructed in later chapters). It
represents a complex and (to my mind) difficult edifice of ideas. But,
importantly, I don’t believe that such a critique matters – the authors take us
into complex and frequently trodden alleys and byways and it is, without
question, the journey that challenges and stimulated, whether or not one is
energised by the destination.
Throughout,
the book adopts a folksy, personal style which, with its constant personal
references and the personification of the author’s voice as that of “the young
boy”, “the older boy” etc … is mildly irritating but actually a very important
device through which the charm and rhetorical power of the narrative emerge. And
the intermittent spelling errors, grammatical slips and typos (oddly enough) actually
seem to add to the humanity of the book.
I wish I
could explain the book better to encourage you to read it. I’ve never read
anything quite like this before. However, if you have any pretentions to
becoming any kind of decent scholar in social and environmental accounting, I
suggest to get hold of a copy of this and spend at least a little time in the
company of an honest, brave and intellectually ambitious piece of work.
Rob Gray
June 2013
