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EF Schumacher BULLETIN OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY /Varma10.1177/0270467603251313MONTH YEAR ARTICLE / E. F. SCHUMACHER E. F. Schumacher: Changing the Paradigm of Bigger Is Better Roli Varma University of New Mexico In the mid-1970s, the phrase “small is beautiful” ther and further removed from many of the major deci- became a counterculture slogan against the indus- sions taken by the society in which he or she lives. Less trial threat to the environment and the scarcity of re- developed countries face additional problems of drain sources. Arguing against excessive materialism and on foreign reserves, technological dependence, high meaningless growth, the late Dr. Ernest Friedrich unemployment rate, and severe poverty. Schumacher—the author of Small Is Beautiful: Eco- With a diagnosis of the crisis threatening Western nomics as if People Mattered, promoted the use of and less developed countries, Schumacher (1973) small-scale technology to benefit both humankind and challenged the modern belief that “bigger is better” the environment. As an economist trained in a market- and replaced it with “small is beautiful” (p. 150). He oriented discipline, his thinking evolved from believ- forcefully argued that bigness is impersonal, is insen- ing that large-scale technology could be salvation for sitive, and has lust to power; smallness, on the other industrial civilization to believing that large-scale hand, is free, efficient, creative, enjoyable, and endur- technology is the root of degrading human beings and ing. The most important area in which he sought to the environment. implement smallness was technology, mostly because the modern world has been shaped by it. Schumacher Keywords: appropriate technology, technological suggested that the less developed countries should not development, social aspect of technology, small is imitate Western technological development based on beautiful the trickle-down approach; instead, the less developed countries should embrace an alternative path of devel- The case against the use of large-scale technology opment that is less expensive and thus within reach of was made by Schumacher between the early 1950s and ordinary people but more productive than indigenous the late 1970s. It is still legitimate today. Walt technology. Rostow’s (1960) high–mass consumption age has led What makes Schumacher’s work remarkable is the to many serious problems in industrial countries. Al philosophical themes woven around the low-cost, Gore (1992) expressed that global warming, strato- small-scale technology as an alternative to high-cost, spheric ozone depletion, loss of living species, and large-scale technology. This article is divided into deforestation have been disrupting the earth’s ecologi- three sections. The first section outlines the essential cal system. Burning gasoline fills cities with fumes ideas of Schumacher on orthodox economics, indus- and creates air pollution. Chemical and nuclear energy trial production, materialism, social aspects of tech- and the high rate of depletion of fossil fuels for indus- nology, Buddhist economics, Western technology in tries leave future generations in disarray. For mechani- the less developed countries, and intermediate tech- zation of agriculture to work, 40 calories have to be nology. This is followed by a critical examination of spent to produce a calorie worth of food. Since 1950, Schumacher’s main thesis, whether small is indeed the number of insects resistant to insecticides has been beautiful. The final section concludes with a brief life growing. The individual finds himself or herself fur- history of Schumacher. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Vol. 23, No. X, Month 2003, 1- DOI: 10.1177/0270467603251313 Copyright 2003 Sage Publications 2 BULLETIN OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY / MONTH YEAR Schumacher’s be placed outside of orthodox economics. For exam- Philosophical Outlook ple, the practice of environmental conservation has The Myth of Objectivity no acknowledged place in a society under the in Orthodox Economics dictatorship of economics. When it is occasion- ally introduced into the discussion, it tends to be Since the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of treated not merely as a strange but as an undesir- Nations in 1776, mainstream economists have pushed able alien, probably dishonest and almost cer- for economics to be a value-free objective science sim- tainly immoral. (p. 17) ilar to the physical sciences. According to them, eco- nomics makes positive statements about facts, which The Problem of are verifiable in principle. Based on definitions and Industrial Production assumptions, hypotheses are formulated as statements about the world in which we live. These statements are The economy of Western countries is industrial- then subject to rigorous analysis on the basis of logic, ized, based on a complex infrastructure and high pro- mathematical principles, and statistical techniques. If ductivity. Industrial enterprises manufacture a large proven, they predict how people, things, and systems volume of products at a low cost. Furthermore, they behave under given conditions. These scientific proce- provide decent employment so people can buy prod- dures are seen as neutral and thus eliminate the norma- ucts; real personal income has risen to a point that tran- tive aspects of economics. Accordingly, in 1969, the scends basic necessities such as food, clothing, and Nobel Prize for “economic science” was established. shelter. The output per worker is high because the pro- As Professor Erik Lundberg observed, “Economic sci- duction depends on the potentialities created by mod- ence has developed increasingly in the direction of a ern science and technology. Agriculture is mechanized mathematical specification and statistical quantifica- and approximately 20% of the population depends on tion of economic contexts” and has left behind “the it. To maintain production, necessary infrastructures vague, more literary type of economics” (as cited in such as roads, transportation, and electricity have been Roszak, 1973, p. 1). developed. Such industrial economies have been Schumacher argued against the myth of objectivity hailed as panacea to all sorts of economic and social in orthodox economics. According to him, unlike the problems. It is believed that Western societies’ well- physical sciences, economics is concerned with being is contingent on the continuous industrial human choices and actions, which by their very nature expansion. Unless there is an increase in industrial introduce value elements. Numbers that are relied on production, they will suffer stagnant or lower living by economists to be objective are often misleading in standards. reference to human beings. Numbers by themselves Western countries have based their industrial pro- have no meaning unless significance is established. duction on various sources of energy such as oil, natu- For example, “the substance of man cannot be mea- ral gas, nuclear, and coal. Schumacher (1973), there- sured by Gross National Product. Perhaps it cannot be fore, examined facts and figures about the growth of measured at all, except for certain symptoms of energy production, consumption, demand, and supply. loss. Statistics never prove anything” (Schumacher, He found industrial production to be predominantly 1973, p. 19). His “theory has always been that figures based on nonrenewable sources of energy, which are don’t mean anything if you can’t make them sing” finite and thus cannot be replaced after they were con- (Schumacher, 1979, p. 125). Once meaning is attached sumed. In other words, the world will eventually run to numbers, they are no longer neutral. out of energy resources with the current consumption Another example of facts being tainted with values rate. In the era of industrial expansion, Schumacher ar- in orthodox economics is in the area of money. gued against industrial production that assumed limit- Schumacher (1967/1982) found this field relies less fossil fuels. He stated that heavily on the single coefficient of money because it is concerned mostly with the ability to earn an adequate one of the most fateful errors of our age is the short-term profit. As a result, economic activities that belief that the problem of production has been are likely to lower short-term monetary profits tend to solved. This illusion ...ismainly due to our Varma / E. F. SCHUMACHER 3 inability to recognize that the modern industrial ronmental crisis stemmed from misplaced values. system, with all its intellectual sophistication, Unlike religious teachings, materialism shows no self- consumes the very basis on which it has been control or respect with the natural world. Schumacher erected. ...Itlivesonirreplaceable capital which (1977) made a distinction between “convergent” and it . treats as income. (p. 19) “divergent” problems (p. 121). Convergent problems relate to the nonliving aspect of the world; in contrast, He warned that industrial countries contain the seeds divergent problems relate to the human issues. With of their own destruction. convergent problems, scientific investigations tend to According to Schumacher, profligate use of natural find solutions; the answers tend to converge. However, resources has also brought on the crisis of the environ- with divergent problems, scientific investigations lead ment. For instance, replacing fossil fuels with the use to opposite solutions; the answers tend to diverge. of nuclear energy means solving “the fuel problem by Schumacher believed that materialism
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