“Enforced dependency” is the term sociologists use for the creation of a class or group of people who are forced to rely on another more powerful class or group for the essentials of life. Tina Evans thinks that the global economic system has deliberately created this sort of dependency as one of its a key organising aspects. “Enforced dependency decreases individual, community, national, and global resilience” she says. “It is especially troubling now that several socio-ecological crises which the global system has created are converging because the our dependency means that we may not be free to come up with an adequate response.” In a paper based on her phd thesis written specially for Feasta, Dr. Evans argues that understanding how enforced dependency operates can give us an effective springboard for actions which would both reduce dependency and increase the resilience of our societies and of the natural systems which enable them to survive.
Read the web version
Read the pdf version (508 K)
