Exclusive: The Grand Botanical Chess Game
From Puerto Rican social ecologist Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero: All over the world, debates on the future of food and agriculture are dominated by one supreme subject: the seed. Its importance cannot possibly be overstated. Seed is, after all, the beginning of the human food chain. In the words of University of Wisconsin professor Jack R. Kloppenburg: […]
Video: John Holloway at the Left Forum (NYC)
In an engaging and genuinely subversive presentation to the closing plenary at this year’s Left Forum in New York City, social critic John Holloway challenged many of the assumptions underlying traditional left strategies in the current economic context. Holloway suggested that today’s popular movements are the real “crisis of capitalism.” We can either aim to […]
On horizonal decision making and bureaucracy
From the UK webzine Stir (stirtoaction.com), a perceptive analysis by anthropologist and activist Marianne Maeckelbergh, highlighting the potentialities and pitfalls of horizontal decision-making processes and their central role in current popular movements. Maeckelbergh begins by highlighting the historical roots of conscious horizontalism, its liberatory potential, and also the need to implement such processes very deliberately: […]
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 […]
New SEEDS newsletter
ISE Board member and SEEDS co-founder Bob Spivey writes: We would like to announce the premiere issue of the new quarterly SEEDS newsletter, Broadcast. Our first issue includes an article on the future and promise of the Occupy movement by noted author Brian Tokar, an interview with frontline activist Swaneagle Harijan about her experience within […]
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 […]
