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Friday, February 5, 2021

‘Building back better’ may seem like a noble idea. But caution is needed by Prof Ralph Hamann, University of Cape Town

Title:
‘Building back better’ may seem like a noble idea. But caution is needed
 
Author:
Ralph Hamann
Professor, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town, South Africa
 
Published:
The Conversation, 4 February 2021
 
From the article:
An increasingly diverse array of actors in different parts of the world have been using the phrase. US President Joe Biden made “Build Back Better” the leitmotif of his election campaign and his transition into the White House. A plethora of agencies and think-tanks are proposing ways of “building back better” during the pandemic. These range from the British Academy to the World Bank and even a coalition of corporate CEOs. Meanwhile, civil society activists around the world connect the phrase to Arundhati Roy’s description of the pandemic as “a portal, a gateway between one world and the next”.  
 
 But hidden in these various invocations are likely disparate visions of what “better” actually means and how to achieve it. Also, there may be a need to reconsider whether a crisis is indeed a good time to implement potentially far-reaching changes.
 
See also the scholarly article:
Title: The promise and peril of "Building Back Better"
Author: Ralph Hamann
Published: Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, Volume 62, Issue 6, pp. 41-50, 16 November 2020