Читать книгу Blessed Peacemakers - Robin Jarrell - Страница 22

18 January 1910—18 March 1993

Economist of Peace

Born in England, the son of a Liverpool plumber, Kenneth Boulding was the first in his family to go beyond elementary school. In his early years, the memory of the horrors of World War I made him a pacifist and led him to reject his family’s Methodism (British Methodists had endorsed the war) and to join the Society of Friends. Boulding’s commitment to nonviolence exerted a profound influence on his life’s work.

Boulding was a brilliant student, earning an Oxford scholarship and later a fellowship at the University of Chicago. After settling in the United States, he began his scholarly life as an economist. But his interests ranged far beyond the boundaries of his specific discipline to include philosophy, religion, poetry, and systems analysis. He was convinced that “in any applied field one had to use all the social sciences . . . as all the social sciences were essentially studying the same thing, which was the social system.”

In 1937, Boulding joined the faculty of Colgate University where he stayed for thirty years before moving to the University of Colorado. Collaborating with his wife, Elise Boulding, whom he married in 1941 and with whom he raised five children, Boulding’s theories on peace and conflict resolution, explored in over thirty books, mirrored his pacifism. His Quaker background especially drew him to explore self-interested modes of exchange, the relationship between warfare and fear, and the importance of social and cultural interdependence to individual flourishing. In his 1963 book Conflict and Defense, he argued that understanding the dynamics of conflict is essential in the struggle for peace. Contrary to the opinions of many of his fellow economists, Boulding denied that economic growth was effectively fueled by warfare. Instead, he argued, it rested on cooperation and collaboration.

Boulding was more than a scholar of peace; he was also a peace activist. In 1942 he authored a circular that denounced World War II. Twenty-three years later, he helped organize the first teach-in against the Vietnam War. Boulding was also one of the first economists to decry what he called the “cowboy” mentality of wasteful and nonsustainable consumption, and he coined the term “spaceship earth” (later made famous by Buckminster Fuller) to draw attention to the need for more ecologically minded lifestyles and public policies.

Boulding died in Colorado in his eighty-fourth year. In a tribute to him, futurist and economist Hazel Henderson called Boulding “a towering intellectual figure of the twentieth century who did more than most to open windows to the twenty-first century.”