The constant gardener
Thomas Homer Dixon
Jake Kennedy,
McMaster University
Thomas Homer Dixon is Director of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict
Studies at the University of Toronto, and is an Associate Professor in the Department of
Political Science at the University of Toronto. His work is richly interdisciplinary but is
primarily concerned with globalization, environment, and technology, particularly as these
forces can be seen as violently impacting diverse ecologies. Dixon's first book, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence (1999), charts the links between
environmental strains (such as massive population growth, dwindling natural resources, and
urban fragmentation) and violence and social unrest in monetarily poor countries.
Environment,
Scarcity, and Violence exposes the global economic and policy factors (unequal distribution
of wealth and ecological negligence of corporations) that inevitably lead to civil conflict.
As a former White House advisor to the Clinton administration, Dixon is uniquely experienced
in adapting theoretical political-scientific scholarship to urgent global situations. He has
stated that one of his main objectives is to produce critical books that engage not only
other academics but also policy-makers and general readers. His work, The
Ingenuity Gap (2001), explores the concept of "ingenuity" (the need for, and power
of, innovative cultural ideas) with specific attention, for example, to how such
resourcefulness may assist in addressing serious social issues including AIDS, climate change, over-consumption, and mass poverty. Despite Dixon's tendency for dire pronouncements
and observations, this latest book, like his world view, is ultimately optimistic about our
creative and ecological future. As might also be expected given the nature of his work, his
writings have sparked considerable debate and sometimes opposition.