Teaching Quality of Life in Different Domains

Abstract

own terms. Julia Gibson’s critical response in the book’s afterward deploys anthroponomy on Ryder Farm in the US. Gibson, having inherited a share of the homestead land occupied since 1795, now runs the Ryder Farm along with her extended family. Gibson’s thought experiment shows that Bendik-Keymer’s notion of anthroponomy leaves the settler colonialists’ (i.e., her family’s) future too comfortable, since it does not seek to radically disrupt the status quo. Thus, to counter settler colonial mentality, Gibson finds anthroponomy useful but insufficient. Effectively, Gibson calls for more conceptual and practical tools along the lines of anthroponomy. This book’s contribution to development studies lies in recalling and undertaking the work of righting the wrongs of ‘our’ colonial modernist history. Considering anthroponomy, development theory and practice could learn to resist the impulse of helping ‘others’ become more modern, whether through structural adjustments or capacity building programmes. Albeit well-meaning, helping others improve their capabilities could also impede them from making sense of the world on their own. After all, “a history of violence [perpetuated by colonial modernity] is more than a history of disagreements” (p. 153). Thus, we must collectively make room for alternative norms of governing human development to come into being on their own, and learn to work through our disagreements with them and their capacity to face to challenges of the Anthropocene. This book shows one possibility of decolonising in the Anthropocene and invites us to create others.