“Failure of the Green Economy”
The German group, Bundeskoordination Internationalismus (buko.info), has just published a new critical paper titled After the Failure of the Green Economy. This comes at an important time, as delegates from around the world are readying to meet in Rio de Janeiro for the 20th anniversary of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development. Unfortunately, […]
New book on participatory evolution
Counterpunch this week features an interview with molecular biologist James Shapiro, whose new book, Evolution: A View from the 21st Century, seeks to offer a comprehensive view of current work in evolutionary biology and concludes that concepts of innovation, self-organization, and self-directed evolution have now overtaken traditional Darwinian views of evolution driven by random mutations. […]
August 2012 Social Ecology Colloquium
Invitation and Call for Papers: Social Ecology in the Occupy Movement 6th Annual Summer Colloquium Institute for Social Ecology Marshfield, Vermont, August 17-19, 2012 Application/Registration Deadline: June 1, 2012 (details below) Contact: colloquium@social-ecology.org The Institute for Social Ecology invites you to attend our 6th annual summer colloquium. ISE colloquia offer the opportunity to gather with an international […]
General strike in Spain
Adbusters reports: Spain was hit with a massive General Strike today (March 29th) that shut down shopping centers, roads and transportation hubs. Barricades of burning tires were erected in Barcelona, hundreds of airline flights were canceled across the nation, and an estimated 91% of all employees at large businesses stayed home or took the streets, […]
From Turkey: A social ecology challenge to environmentalism
From social ecologist Cagrideniz Eryilmaz in Turkey: Social Ecology Challenges Environmentalism: HES Opposition Cases in Turkey I have completed a sociology dissertation aiming to analyze environmental grassroots movements in Turkey within a frame of social ecology. Hundreds of local movements rose against the construction of thousands of HES[1] (hydroelectric power plants) in the last few […]
Rise & fall of the Argentine assembly movement
Norwegian social ecologist Sveinung Legard has posted to the New Compass website an enlightening review of a recent University of Oregon senior thesis, which explores the history of the popular assemblies that emerged throughout Argentina during the height of their 2001 financial crisis. Most notably, the thesis explores the reasons for the demise of the […]
Egypt’s Democracy: A Question of Legitimacy
One of our favorite recent websites, The New Significance, has posted a compelling and informative video account of the history and conditions leading up to the Egyptian revolution last winter. The story is told through interviews with activists who connect the ongoing crisis of governance in Egypt to the broader crisis of political and economic […]
Staughton Lynd to Occupy: Counterinstitutions over protest
Lifelong activist and labor lawyer Staughton Lynd has posted a “A Letter To Other Occupiers,” wherein he highlights the movement’s accomplishments to date and its current period of internal reflection. Based on his reading of the history of past movements, from the 1930s to the sixties, he suggests a note of caution vis-à-vis the planned […]
New book coming soon: “Rebel Cities”
ISE alum Rob Augman writes: David Harvey has been positively referencing Murray’s work on his recent writings and public talks. I just noticed this announcement of a new book of his, which similarly addresses the city as a site of struggle and reconstitution, speaking about the meaning of citizenship in relation to the city and to […]
New from Annie Leonard and Naomi Klein
From Story of Stuff creator Annie Leonard, we now have an accessible and visually engaging outlook on the financial crisis, deficit mania in Washington, and how to shift public funds toward a greener future. She makes a few compromises in the pursuit of mainstream appeal that may not sit so well with social ecologists — […]
