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Author: Karen T. Litfin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745681239
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
In a world of dwindling natural resources and mounting environmental crisis, who is devising ways of living that will work for the long haul? And how can we, as individuals, make a difference? To answer these fundamental questions, Professor Karen Litfin embarked upon a journey to many of the world’s ecovillagesÑintentional communities at the cutting-edge of sustainable living. From rural to urban, high tech to low tech, spiritual to secular, she discovered an under-the-radar global movement making positive and radical changes from the ground up. In this inspiring and insightful book, Karen Litfin shares her unique experience of these experiments in sustainable living through four broad windows - ecology, economics, community, and consciousness - or E2C2. Whether we live in an ecovillage or a city, she contends, we must incorporate these four key elements if we wish to harmonize our lives with our home planet. Not only is another world possible, it is already being born in small pockets the world over. These micro-societies, however, are small and time is short. Fortunately - as Litfin persuasively argues - their successes can be applied to existing social structures, from the local to the global scale, providing sustainable ways of living for generations to come. You can learn more about Karen's experiences on the Ecovillages website: http://ecovillagebook.org/
Author: Karen T. Litfin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745681239
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214
Get Book Here
Book Description
In a world of dwindling natural resources and mounting environmental crisis, who is devising ways of living that will work for the long haul? And how can we, as individuals, make a difference? To answer these fundamental questions, Professor Karen Litfin embarked upon a journey to many of the world’s ecovillagesÑintentional communities at the cutting-edge of sustainable living. From rural to urban, high tech to low tech, spiritual to secular, she discovered an under-the-radar global movement making positive and radical changes from the ground up. In this inspiring and insightful book, Karen Litfin shares her unique experience of these experiments in sustainable living through four broad windows - ecology, economics, community, and consciousness - or E2C2. Whether we live in an ecovillage or a city, she contends, we must incorporate these four key elements if we wish to harmonize our lives with our home planet. Not only is another world possible, it is already being born in small pockets the world over. These micro-societies, however, are small and time is short. Fortunately - as Litfin persuasively argues - their successes can be applied to existing social structures, from the local to the global scale, providing sustainable ways of living for generations to come. You can learn more about Karen's experiences on the Ecovillages website: http://ecovillagebook.org/
Author: Liz Walker
Publisher: New Society Publishers
ISBN: 1550924648
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
A small city's big vision that can help transform your own community. We all want a sustainable future, but what does it look like, and how do we get there? In Ithaca, NY a new culture is blossoming-one that values cooperation, local production, environmental stewardship, social justice andcreativity. Ithaca is showing the way to meet the challenges of the day with a wide variety of practical, real-world solutions. Filled with inspiring examples, Choosing a Sustainable Future provides readers with a remarkable sense of possibility. Explore Ithaca's: bustling, vibrant farmers markets, overflowing with fresh, local produce award-winning community credit union that triples the savings of low-income people flagship college sustainability programs pioneering alternative transportation programs, such as Ithaca Carshare innovative efforts by coalitions of local business, university, government and activists to create transformation in areas as diverse as green building, city planning, health and wellness, and honoring cultural diversity. Taken together, these examples of citizen engagement are a taste of what life could be like in a sustainable city of the future. In a time of overwhelming economic, social and environmental crises, Choosing aSustainable Future provides a quiet, authoritative voice of hope.
Author: Diana Leafe Christian
Publisher: New Society Publishers
ISBN: 1550923838
Category : House & Home
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
How to research, visit, evaluate, and join the ecovillage or sustainable community of your dreams. Finding community is as critical as obtaining food and shelter, since the need to belong is what makes us human. The isolation and loneliness of modern life have led many people to search for deeper connection, which has resulted in a renewed interest in intentional communities. These intentional communities or ecovillages are an appealing choice for like-minded people who seek to create a family-oriented and ecologically sustainable lifestyle—a lifestyle they are unlikely to find anywhere else. However, the notion of an intentional community can still be a tremendous leap for some—deterred perhaps by a misguided vision of eking out a hardscrabble existence with little reward. In fact, successful ecovillages thrive because of the combined skills and resources of their members. Finding Community presents a thorough overview of ecovillages and intentional communities and offers solid advice on how to research thoroughly, visit thoughtfully, evaluate intelligently, and join gracefully. Useful considerations include: Important questions to ask (of members and of yourself) Signs of a healthy (and not-so-healthy) community Cost of joining (and staying) Common blunders to avoid Finding Community provides intriguing possibilities to readers who are seeking a more cooperative, sustainable, and meaningful life. Diana Leafe Christian is the author of Creating a Life Together and editor of Communities magazine. She lives at Earthhaven Ecovillage in North Carolina.
Author: Juliana Birnbaum
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1583946845
Category : House & Home
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
Urban gardeners. Native seed-saving collectives. Ecovillage developments. What is the connection between these seemingly disparate groups? The ecological design system of permaculture is the common thread that weaves them into a powerful, potentially revolutionary—or reevolutionary—movement. Permaculture is a philosophy based on common ethics of sustainable cultures throughout history that have designed settlements according to nature's patterns and lived within its bounds. As a movement that has been building momentum for the past 40 years, it now is taking form as a growing network of sites developed with the intention of regenerating local ecologies and economies. Permaculture strategies can be used by individuals, groups, or nations to address basic human needs such as food, water, energy, and housing. As a species, humans are being called forth to evolve, using our collective intelligence to meet the challenges of the future. Yet if we are to survive our collective planetary crisis, we need to revisit history, integrating successful systems from sustainable cultures. To boldly confront our position on the brink of the earth's carrying capacity and make changes that incorporate the wisdom of the past is truly revolutionary. Sustainable Revolution features the work of a worldwide network of visionaries, including journalists, activists, indigenous leaders and permaculturists such as David Holmgren, Vandana Shiva, Charles Eisenstein, Starhawk, Erik Assadourian, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Albert Bates, and Geoff Lawton. This beautifully photographed collection of profiles, interviews, and essays features 60 innovative community-based projects in diverse climates across the planet. Edited by anthropologist Juliana Birnbaum Fox and award-winning activist filmmaker Louis Fox, it can be read as an informal ethnography of an international culture that is modeling solutions on the cutting edge of social and environmental change. The research presented in the book frames the permaculture movement as a significant ally to marginalized groups, such as the urban poor and native communities resisting the pressures of globalization. Sustainable Revolution uplifts and inspires with its amazing array of dynamic activists and thriving, vibrant communities.
Author: Tendai Chitewere
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317682483
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
Sustainable communities raise questions about the compatibility of capitalism and environmentalism and how we can green our way of life in a capitalist economy that values short-term production and consumption over long-term conservation and simple living. If capitalism and its drive towards consumption has produced social and environmental degradation, is it the best medium to identify solutions? Sustainable Communities and Green Lifestyles examines one ecovillage as it attempts to create a sense of community while reducing its impact on the natural environment. Through extensive participant observation, the book demonstrates how ecovillages are immersed within a larger discourse of class, race, and lifestyle choices, highlighting the inseparability of environmental sustainability and social justice. Sustainable communities are confronted by the contradictions of green consumption and must address social inequality or risk focusing inward on personal green consumerism, creating mere green havens for the few who can afford to live in them. This book, cautious of redirecting environmentalist efforts away from structural solutions and onto personal environmentalism, offers a critical perspective on the challenges of an emerging green lifestyle. This book offers a critical perspective on the direction of US environmentalism and contributes to debates in environmental studies, anthropology, and urban planning.
Author: T. M. Thomas Isaac
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801484155
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
Beedi workers and the Kerala model -- The making of the Beedi working class -- Solidarity versus retrenchment : the birth of KDB -- From mobilization to efficiency : the role of the central society -- The dynamics of shop floor democracy : empowerment versus supervision in the Beedi primary cooperatives -- Efficiency and profit in the primary societies : KDB's market dilemma -- KDB and the International Movement for Workers' Cooperatives -- Afterword : Tobacco production and diversification at KDB.
Author: David Wann
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 145876334X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 486
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Book Description
''Human beings are not meant to live alone, or in isolated nuclear family arrangements. We do best in community. But in a few short generations, we've lost many of the social skills necessary for successful community living. The folks ... in Reinventing Community are the vanguard for the future - they're learning today ... what it takes to go beyond the solitary and aliented survival tactics of modern urban life to the full flowering of the human spirit of tomorrow.'' --- Eric Utne, founder of Utne magazine and editor of Cosmo Doogood's Urban Almanac.....Cohousing began in Scandinavia in the 1960s as a response to a feeling of isolation within typical suburban communities, where you don't know your neighbor, nor can you rely on their assistance - not even for a cup of sugar. Cohousing spread to the United States in the 1980s, and there are now several hundred such communities throughout the country in more than thirty states. Reinventing Community is the first cohousing anthology that tells real-world stories from the perspectives of the unique people who live in these communities, whether they be in urban, suburban, or rural settings. Unlike the few ''how-to'' guides in the marketplace today, this book details the lives of these close-knit groups of caring and active neighbors who enjoy their own privacy, yet also share a wonderful sense of camaraderie and connection. Exploring everything from planning a cohousing community to moving in to the joys and challenges of daily life, Reinventing Community shares with its readers a sense of what it takes to build a true community in our often detached and disengaged modern world.
Author: A. Whitney Sanford
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813168651
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
In light of concerns about food and human health, fraying social ties, economic uncertainty, and rampant consumerism, some people are foregoing a hurried, distracted existence and embracing a mindful way of living. Intentional residential communities across the United States are seeking the freedom to craft their own societies and live out Mohandas K. Gandhi's vision of democracy based on the values of nonviolence, self-sufficiency, equality, and voluntary simplicity. Over the course of four years, A. Whitney Sanford visited ecovillages, cohousing communities, and Catholic worker houses and farms where individuals are striving to "be the change they wish to see in the world." In this book, she reveals the solutions that these communities have devised for sustainable living while highlighting the specific choices and adaptations that they have made to accommodate local context and geography. She examines their methods of reviving and adapting traditional agrarian skills, testing alternate building materials for their homes, and developing local governments that balance group needs and individual autonomy. Living Sustainably is a teachable testament to the idea that new cultures based on justice and sustainability are attainable in many ways and in countless homes and communities. Sanford's engaging and insightful work demonstrates that citizens can make a conscious effort to subsist in a more balanced, harmonious world.
Author: Doctor Jenny Pickerill
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1780325339
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 199
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Book Description
It is widely understood that good, affordable eco-housing needs to be at the heart of any attempt to mitigate or adapt to climate change. This is the first book to comprehensively explore eco-housing from a geographical, social and political perspective. It starts from the premise that we already know how to build good eco-houses and we already have the technology to retrofit existing housing. Despite this, relatively few eco-houses are being built. Featuring over thirty case studies of eco-housing in Britain, Spain, Thailand, Argentina and the United States, Eco-Homes examines the ways in which radical changes to our houses – such as making them more temporary, using natural materials, or relying on manual heating and ventilation systems – require changes in how we live. As such, it argues, it is not lack of technology or political will that is holding us back from responding to climate change, but deep-rooted cultural and social understandings of our way of life and what we expect our houses to do for us.
Author: Raymond De Young
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026251687X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 373
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Book Description
Readings that point the way to a peaceful, democratic, and ecologically resilient transition to an era of localization, limits, and societal opportunities. Energy supplies are tightening. Persistent pollutants are accumulating. Food security is declining. There is no going back to the days of reckless consumption, but there is a possibility—already being realized in communities across North America and around the world—of localizing, of living well as we learn to live well within immutable constraints. This book maps the transition to a more localized world. Society is shifting from the centrifugal forces of globalization (cheap and abundant raw materials and energy, intensive commercialization, concentrated economic and political power) to the centripetal forces of localization: distributed authority and leadership, sustainable use of nearby natural resources, community self-reliance and cohesion (with crucial regional, national, and international dimensions). This collection, offering classic texts by such writers as Wendell Berry, M. King Hubbert, and Ernst F. Schumacher, as well as new work by authors including Karen Litfin and David Hess, shows how localization—a process of affirmative social change—can enable psychologically meaningful and fulfilling lives while promoting ecological and social sustainability. Topics range from energy dynamics to philosophies of limits, from the governance of place-based communities to the discovery of positive personal engagement. Together they point the way to a transition that can be peaceful, democratic, just, and environmentally resilient.
