The Word for World is Not Forest

Abstract

In 1972 Ursula Le Guin published her award winning novella, The Word for World is Forest. This describes the world of the Athsheans, a small, green, furry, and peaceful people. Their planet consists of basically two things: water, and forest. Here they live, hunt, love and dream. They slip gently from dreamtime to realtime; their reality is not always as ours. Then the Terrans arrive. They don't particularly care about the natives, but they want the forest. With huge machines, they level the forest for mile wide strips, using the natives as slave labour. But then one of the Athsheans learn something from the conquerors: how to hate — and how to use this hate to fight for freedom. This is a story of how the search for profit, coupled with narrow — mindedness, blend into a mix with horrible consequences. Like all science fiction Le Guin provides not so much a vision of the future but rather a lens with which to view and make sense of the present. And the human exploitation of the world of the Athsheans is very similar to the current corporate exploitation of large parts of the world and its human inhabitants — anything is permissible (including enslavement) if there is a profit to be made. For Le Guin corporate exploitation is not sustainable but in Newtonian fashion will result violent retribution from the oppressed. Many would support this prognosis of the consequences of corporate misbehaviour and would, like Le Guin, be firmly on the side of the oppressed. It is the purpose of this paper however to use the metaphor provided by the work of Le Guin, together with a consideration of current corporate activity, to show that a sustainable future is neither exploitative (and so the corporate leaders have got it wrong) nor confrontational (and so the anti‐globalisation movement is equally wrong). A sustainable future actually requires what could have been described as a third way if the Blairite masters of spin had not arrived previously and made such a term ridiculed into oblivion.

Citation

Crowther, D. and Mraović, B. (2006), "The Word for World is Not Forest", Social Responsibility Journal, Vol. 2 No. 2, pp. 173-185. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb059263