Helena Norberg-Hodge
| Helena Norberg-Hodge | |
|---|---|
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| Born | February 1946 Sweden |
| Occupation | linguist, writer, activist |
Helena Norberg-Hodge is founder and director of Local Futures, previously known as the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC). Local Futures is a non-profit organization "dedicated to the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide."
Norberg-Hodge is the author of Ancient Futures (1991), a book about tradition and change in the Himalayan region of Ladakh. An outspoken critic of economic globalization, she co-founded – along with Jerry Mander, Doug Tompkins, Vandana Shiva, Martin Khor and others – the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) in 1994. She is a leading proponent of localization as an antidote to the problems arising from globalization, and founded the International Alliance for Localization (IAL) in 2014.
Norberg-Hodge produced and co-directed the award-winning documentary film The Economics of Happiness (2011), which lays out her arguments against economic globalization and for localization.
Norberg-Hodge was educated in Sweden, Germany, Austria, England and the United States. She specialized in linguistics, including studies at the doctoral level at the University of London and at MIT, with Noam Chomsky. Fluent in seven languages, she has lived in and studied numerous cultures at varying degrees of industrialization. The most influential of these in forming Norberg-Hodge's worldview is the Himalayan region of Ladakh.
Ladakh, also known as Little Tibet, is a remote region on the Tibetan plateau. Although it is politically part of India, it has more in common culturally with Tibet. Because it borders both China and Pakistan, countries with which India has had tense relations and frequent border disputes, the Indian government kept Ladakh largely isolated from the outside world. It was not until 1962 that the first road was built over the high mountain passes that separate the region from the rest of India, and even then the region was off-limits to all but the India military. In 1975, the India government decided to open Ladakh to tourism and 'development', and Norberg-Hodge was one of the first westerners to visit the region, accompanying a German film crew as a translator.
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