Human Scale Revisited

Human Scale Revisited PDF Author: Kirkpatrick Sale
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603587128
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Big government, big business, big everything: Kirkpatrick Sale took giantism to task in his 1980 classic, Human Scale, and today takes a new look at how the crises that imperil modern America are the inevitable result of bigness grown out of control--and what can be done about it. The result is a keenly updated, carefully argued case for bringing human endeavors back to scales we can comprehend and manage--whether in our built environments, our politics, our business endeavors, our energy plans, or our mobility. Sale walks readers back through history to a time when buildings were scaled to the human figure (as was the Parthenon), democracies were scaled to the societies they served, and enterprise was scaled to communities. Against that backdrop, he dissects the bigger-is-better paradigm that has defined modern times and brought civilization to a crisis point. Says Sale, retreating from our calamity will take rebalancing our relationship to the environment; adopting more human-scale technologies; right-sizing our buildings, communities, and cities; and bringing our critical services--from energy, food, and garbage collection to transportation, health, and education--back to human scale as well. Like Small is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher, Human Scale has long been a classic of modern decentralist thought and communitarian values--a key tool in the kit of those trying to localize, create meaningful governance in bioregions, or rethink our reverence of and dependence on growth, financially and otherwise. Rewritten to interpret the past few decades, Human Scale offers compelling new insights on how to turn away from the giantism that has caused escalating ecological distress and inequality, dysfunctional governments, and unending warfare and shines a light on many possible pathways that could allow us to scale down, survive, and thrive.

Human Scale Revisited

Human Scale Revisited PDF Author: Kirkpatrick Sale
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603587136
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Big government, big business, big everything: Kirkpatrick Sale took giantism to task in his 1980 classic, Human Scale, and today takes a new look at how the crises that imperil modern America are the inevitable result of bigness grown out of control—and what can be done about it. The result is a keenly updated, carefully argued case for bringing human endeavors back to scales we can comprehend and manage—whether in our built environments, our politics, our business endeavors, our energy plans, or our mobility. Sale walks readers back through history to a time when buildings were scaled to the human figure (as was the Parthenon), democracies were scaled to the societies they served, and enterprise was scaled to communities. Against that backdrop, he dissects the bigger-is-better paradigm that has defined modern times and brought civilization to a crisis point. Says Sale, retreating from our calamity will take rebalancing our relationship to the environment; adopting more human-scale technologies; right-sizing our buildings, communities, and cities; and bringing our critical services—from energy, food, and garbage collection to transportation, health, and education—back to human scale as well. Like Small is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher, Human Scale has long been a classic of modern decentralist thought and communitarian values—a key tool in the kit of those trying to localize, create meaningful governance in bioregions, or rethink our reverence of and dependence on growth, financially and otherwise. Rewritten to interpret the past few decades, Human Scale offers compelling new insights on how to turn away from the giantism that has caused escalating ecological distress and inequality, dysfunctional governments, and unending warfare and shines a light on many possible pathways that could allow us to scale down, survive, and thrive.

Human Scale

Human Scale PDF Author: Kirkpatrick Sale
Publisher: New Catalyst Books
ISBN: 9781897408063
Category : Decentralization in government
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In his landmark work, Sale details the crises facing modern society and offers real solutions, laying out ways to take control of every facet of peoples lives by building institutions, workplaces, and communities that are sustainable, ecologically balanced, and responsive to the needs of the individual.

White Space Revisited

White Space Revisited PDF Author: Geary A. Rummler
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470192348
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
When Improving Performance: Managing the White Space on the Organization Chart was published in 1990, it was lauded as the book that launched the Process Improvement revolution. This was the book that first detailed an approach that bridged the gaps between organization strategy, work processes and individual performance. Two decades later, White Space Revisited goes beyond a mere revision of that groundbreaking book and refocuses on the ultimate purpose of organizations, which is to create and sustain value.This book picks up where Improving Performance left off and shares what we have learned about process in the past 15 years since it was published and how the reader (primarily practitioners) can capitalize on these notions in their own pursuit of process excellence. White Space Revisited is a comprehensive resource that offers process and performance professionals a conceptual foundation, a thorough and proven methodology, a set of remarkable working tools for doing process work in a more significant way, and a series of candid observations about the practice of Business Process Management (BPM). The book’s time-tested methods, models, tools, and guidelines serve to align people, process, and technology White Space Revisited includes information on a wealth of vital topics and Describes the difference in impact of focusing on single processes vs. large scale improvements Provides an integrated step-by-step blueprint for designing, implementing, and sustaining process management Offers a detailed methodology for strategic and tactical process definition and improvement Spells out how to leverage the power of IT to optimize organizational performance Shows how to integrate the energy and value of Six Sigma, Process Improvement and Process Management into an effective Process Excellence Group

Small Farm Republic

Small Farm Republic PDF Author: John Klar
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 164502220X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
“I have read at least 20 books a year for the past 25 years and Small Farm Republic is absolutely one of the very best that I have ever read. . . A must-read not only for those involved in all facets of agriculture but policy makers and consumers as well.”—Gabe Brown, regenerative rancher, author of Dirt to Soil From farmer, lawyer, and political activist John Klar comes a bold, solutions-based plan for Conservatives that gets beyond the fatuous pipe dreams and social-justice platitudes of the dominant, Liberal “Green” agenda—offering a healthy way forward for everyone. While many on the Left have taken up the mantle of creating a “green” future through climate alarmism, spurious new energy sources, and technocratic control, many on the Right continue to deny imminent environmental threats while pushing for unbridled deregulation of our most destructive industrial forces. Neither approach promises a bright future. In a time of soil degradation, runaway pollution, food insecurity, and declining human health, the stakes couldn’t be higher, and yet the dominant political voices too often overlook the last best hope for our planet—supporting small, regenerative farmers. In fact, politicians on all sides continue to sell out the interests of small farmers to the devastating power of Big Ag and failed “renewable energy” incentives. It’s time for a new vision. It’s time for bold new agriculture policies that restore both ecosystems and rural communities. In Small Farm Republic, John Klar, an agrarian conservative in the mold of Wendell Berry and Joel Salatin, offers an alternative that puts small farmers, regenerative agriculture, and personal liberty at the center of an environmental revival—a message that everyone on the political spectrum needs to hear.

SDS

SDS PDF Author: Kirkpatrick Sale
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 770

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Book Description


The New Class War

The New Class War PDF Author: Michael Lind
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593083709
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
In both Europe and North America, populist movements have shattered existing party systems and thrown governments into turmoil. The embattled establishment claims that these populist insurgencies seek to overthrow liberal democracy. The truth is no less alarming but is more complex: Western democracies are being torn apart by a new class war. In this controversial and groundbreaking new analysis, Michael Lind, one of America’s leading thinkers, debunks the idea that the insurgencies are primarily the result of bigotry, traces how the breakdown of mid-century class compromises between business and labor led to the conflict, and reveals the real battle lines. On one side is the managerial overclass—the university-credentialed elite that clusters in high-income hubs and dominates government, the economy and the culture. On the other side is the working class of the low-density heartlands—mostly, but not exclusively, native and white. The two classes clash over immigration, trade, the environment, and social values, and the managerial class has had the upper hand. As a result of the half-century decline of the institutions that once empowered the working class, power has shifted to the institutions the overclass controls: corporations, executive and judicial branches, universities, and the media. The class war can resolve in one of three ways: • The triumph of the overclass, resulting in a high-tech caste system. • The empowerment of populist, resulting in no constructive reforms • A class compromise that provides the working class with real power Lind argues that Western democracies must incorporate working-class majorities of all races, ethnicities, and creeds into decision making in politics, the economy, and culture. Only this class compromise can avert a never-ending cycle of clashes between oligarchs and populists and save democracy.

Developing to Scale

Developing to Scale PDF Author: Heidi Morefield
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226828638
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
"Developing to Scale examines the techno-centric structure of global health practice through the history of the concept of appropriate technology. By looking at how certain technologies have been defined as more or less "appropriate" for the global south, based on assumptions about gender, race, culture, and environment, Heidi Morefield reveals the ways in which questions of technological scale have fundamentally shaped global health practice today. The idea that there was an "appropriate" level of technology, between the traditional and the modern, that would lead to sustainable social and economic development originated in the mid-1960s and gained considerable prominence in the 1970s. US foreign assistance oriented away from large-scale modernization projects, like water treatment facilities, toward small-scale, point-of-use technologies, like village water pumps, individual water filters, and oral rehydration salts. Practical shifts in assistance like this were a result of the enthusiastic adoption of the idea but also cuts in foreign aid budgets and other economic interests, principally those of newer donors from the high-tech sector; political interests; and the efforts of various activists, most notably post-colonial and anti-apartheid groups. Dreams of technological salvation have gained a new significance and foothold in the contemporary imagination, and Morefield's book provides the backstory, uncovering precisely how global health came to be understood largely as a problem to be solved with the right technology"--

Ideal Minds

Ideal Minds PDF Author: Michael Trask
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501752456
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Following the 1960s, that decade's focus on consciousness-raising transformed into an array of intellectual projects far afield of movement politics. The mind's powers came to preoccupy a range of thinkers and writers: ethicists pursuing contractual theories of justice, radical ecologists interested in the paleolithic brain, seventies cultists, and the devout of both evangelical and New Age persuasions. In Ideal Minds, Michael Trask presents a boldly revisionist argument about the revival of subjectivity in postmodern American culture, connecting familiar figures within the seventies intellectual landscape who share a commitment to what he calls "neo-idealism" as a weapon in the struggle against discredited materialist and behaviorist worldviews. In a heterodox intellectual and literary history of the 1970s, Ideal Minds mixes ideas from cognitive science, philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, deep ecology, political theory, science fiction, neoclassical economics, and the sociology of religion. Trask also delves into the decade's more esoteric branches of learning, including Scientology, anarchist theory, rapture prophesies, psychic channeling, and neo-Malthusianism. Through this investigation, Trask argues that a dramatic inflation in the value of consciousness and autonomy beginning in the 1970s accompanied a growing argument about the state's inability to safeguard such values. Ultimately, the thinkers Trask analyzes—John Rawls, Arne Naess, L. Ron Hubbard, Hal Lindsey, Philip Dick, Ursula Le Guin, Edward Abbey, William Burroughs, John Irving, and James Merrill—found alternatives to statism in conditions that would lend intellectual support to the consolidation of these concepts in the radical free market ideologies of the 1980s.

Walking on Lava

Walking on Lava PDF Author: The Dark Mountain Project,
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 160358742X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
The Dark Mountain Project began with a manifesto published in 2009 by two English writers—Dougald Hine and Paul Kingsnorth—who felt that literature was not responding honestly to the crises of our time. In a world in which the climate is being altered by human activities; in which global ecosystems are being destroyed by the advance of industrial civilisation; and in which the dominant economic and cultural assumptions of the West are visibly crumbling, Dark Mountain asked: where are the writers and the artists? Why are the mainstream cultural forms of our society still behaving as if this were the twentieth century—or even the nineteenth? Dark Mountain’s call for writers, thinkers and artists willing to face the depth of the mess we are in has made it a gathering point for a growing international network. Rooted in place, time and nature, their work finds a home in the pages of the Dark Mountain books, with two new volumes published every year. Walking on Lava brings together the best of the first ten volumes, along with the original manifesto. This collection of essays, fiction, poetry, interviews and artwork introduces The Dark Mountain Project’s groundbreaking work to a wider audience in search of ‘the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us.’

Our Fermented Lives

Our Fermented Lives PDF Author: Julia Skinner
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 1635863848
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
From craft beers and sourdough bread to kimchi, coffee, tea, and cheese, fermentation is a popular topic in both food and health circles. In Our Fermented Lives, food historian and fermenting expert Julia Skinner explores the fascinating roots of a wide range of fermented foods in cultures around the world, with a focus on the many intersections fermented foods have with human history and culture, from the evolution of the microbiome to food preservation techniques, distinctive flavor profiles around the globe, and the building of community. Fans of fermentation, chefs, and anyone fascinated with the origins of various foods will enjoy this engaging popular history, which is accompanied by 42 recipes adapted from historic sources, including sauerkraut, corn beer, uji (fermented grain porridge), pickles and relishes, vinegars, ketchup, soy sauce, Tepache (fermented pineapple drink), vinegars, beet kvass, and more.