‘A planetary community?: The Planet in the political thought of Barbara Ward, 1957-1976’.

Professor Or Rosenboim – University of Bologna

“As we enter the global phase of human evolution it becomes obvious that each man has two countries, his own and Planet Earth.” With these words, the British economist Barbara Ward and the French-American biologist Rene Dubos reflected on the challenges facing the delegtates of the United Nations conference on the Human Enviroment, which took place in Stockholm in 1972. Yet while the political meaning of ‘countries’ – more commonly described as states – is familiar to scholars of political thought, the implication of Planet Earth for political thinking is perhaps more ambiguous. What is the relevance of the planet to political order? How should a planetary community be conceptualised, and even realized? These questions occupied the minds of political thinkers in the late 1950s and 1960s, when images such as Earthrise (1968) ingnited the public imagination. In this context, the planet was often described through the metaphore of ‘Spaceship Earth’, to specific political implications. This talk engages with the ideas of Barbara Ward, alongside contemporary thinkers Buckminster Fuller and Kenneth Boulding, to understand the meaning of the ‘planetary’ in their political schemes, and to reflect on the potential uses of this term in political thought today.