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A Bit Too Simple

Narratives of Development, Sustainability and Climate Change

Expected online publication date:  13 October 2025

Mette Fog Olwig
Affiliation:
Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University

Summary

Narratives like those portraying development workers as heroes and local populations as victims needing to be saved from their own unsustainable practices have led to problematic policies and interventions. Based on fieldwork across four continents, this Element critically analyzes such metanarratives. First, it demonstrates the ways their simplifying, universalistic narrative plots fail to capture more complex lived realities. Second, it argues that such metanarratives on development are converging with influential metanarratives on climate change and sustainability, thereby strengthening hierarchical geopolitical mindsets. Third, it uncovers how the emergence of for-profit sustainability superhero metanarratives reinforces universalistic development logics by combining these logics with global business management logics. The Element concludes that a multiplicity of locally grounded stories and related forms of agency must be mobilized and recognized so that policy and practice are premised upon lived realities, not abstract and unrealistic global imaginaries. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

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Type
Element
Information
Online ISBN: 9781009344944
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NC
This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/cclicenses/

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A Bit Too Simple
  • Mette Fog Olwig, Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University
  • Online ISBN: 9781009344944
Available formats No formats are currently available for this content.
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A Bit Too Simple
  • Mette Fog Olwig, Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University
  • Online ISBN: 9781009344944
Available formats No formats are currently available for this content.
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Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

A Bit Too Simple
  • Mette Fog Olwig, Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University
  • Online ISBN: 9781009344944
Available formats No formats are currently available for this content.
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