In memoriam: Richard Douthwaite

Richard Douthwaite, co-founder of Feasta and much-loved colleague and friend, died on November 14th 2011 after a long illness. We will miss his unique and far-ranging intellect, the clarity of his thought and writing, his warmth and his laughter. Tributes to him have come in from around the world and you can read them here.

In line with his wishes, we are continuing with our scheduled events and publishing of articles.

Growing Together: An all-Ireland conference on Community Supported Agriculture

Date: 17th, 18th & 19th of February, Cloughjordan, Tipperary.

The aim of this weekend conference is to introduce the CSA concept to communities and growers on the island of Ireland. The event will bring together food producers and emerging Irish CSA’s while creating networking and learning opportunities with experienced initiatives from across Europe.

Towards resilience: how are mental health professionals to respond to the climate crisis and the threat of ecosystemic collapse?

A symposium at the 2nd annual Irish Council for Psychotherapy conference. Presented by Feasta member John Sharry, with Phil Kearney and Aebhin Cawley.

Conference date: January 26-27 2012
Venue: Dublin Castle

Irish government consultation on the establishment of a public water utility

The Department of Environment, Community and Local Government is now seeking views in relation to the development of an implementation plan for the public water utility. This includes issues arising from an organisational, human resources and environmental perspective in the transition to the public utility, and
the proposed approach in relation to the future funding of water services including through water charges. Views to be submitted by February 24 2012.

More information

Transition Branching Out? Land reform: losing and recovering the Commons

In an article in the Transition Networks blog, Justin Kenrick writes evocatively about commons erosion in Africa, the slow but steady progress being made in rebuilding the commons in Scotland, and the need for a new vision of the economy that is community-based . Justin is one of the authors of our forthcoming book Sharing for Survival: Restoring the Climate, the Commons and Society, due to be published in early 2012.

Richard Douthwaite obituary in Guardian

An obituary for Richard has just appeared in the Guardian here.

Fear and Loathing in the Financial Markets – What Happens to the Economy When the Oil Bubble Bursts?

By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland. Cross posted in Naked Capitalism In 2008 profits in the US economy crashed out. But they soon bounced back. This bounce was largely due to the profits being reaped in the financial sector – which sickened many given that 2008 was in large measure [...]

Ann Pettifors’ Predictions for 2012

Ann Pettifor is depressing reading in her blog ‘Debtonation’.  She was right before and sadly, likely to be so again. …We, and many others, expect the banks of all the major OECD economies to collapse over the next few months. This will drag the UK, Eurozone and US down. In other words, and to be [...]

An unhappy anniversary for the euro

Quoting  from John Grail in the Guardian Bill Mitchell in Billyblog elaborates why exactly the Euro is not and never was a success in any of the ways that matter.  [...]

Comment on Busy doing nothing – seven reasons for humanity’s inertia in the face of critical threats and how we might remove them by Floro

Again, like Nat Hagens, Brian Davey’s discussion, “Reason for Inertia 6: Our brains are maladapted to modern life”, based on the 1997 book Evolutionary Psychology by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, uncritically adopts outdated principles of evolutionary psychology. I would like to call this the “modernist fallacy”—the fallacy of attributing our present inadequacies and excesses to our alleged inheritance of the brain of our stone age ancestors. It definitely does not do justice to our, in many ways, more intelligent ancestors (who did not have the “crutch” of computer technology)…

Comment on The psychological roots of resource overconsumption by Floro

I’m afraid that Nate Hagens, whose expertise is in Finance and natural resources, has ventured into territory for which he lacks the background knowledge. I may have misread him, but I get the impression that in his discussion of STATUS and NOVELTy, Hagens is unwittingly or unconsciously reading modern capitalist values into the alleged facts of human evolution and resorting to social Darwinism which has been discredited.
Hagens’ discussion of status seems to be underpinned (again unconsciously) by a capitalist class ideology. In many neolithic peoples, status was based more on cooperation than on competition. The group member who gets status usually is the person who not only has the best knowledge and skills in performing tasks for survivial, but also, and more importantly, has the knack for organizing or orchestrating cooperative behaviour among the members. A classic example is the Navigator who leads a crew in a voyaging canoe in pre-Historic Oceania. Such trans-Oceanic voyages–with no navigational instruments and based soley on “reading” the stars at night and the swell patterns during the day–depended on a high level of coordination and cooperation among the crew, and this made possible the peopling of the scattered atolls in the Pacific Ocean. This is how it worked: The Navigator is in command during the voyage and usually becomes the chief when the voyaging canoe ends in landfall (thereupon the passengers in the canoe–men, women and children–start colonising the land.
But here’s the rub–the privilege of reproduction is not limited to the navigator or chief. In fact, everyone–including the lower status members–gets to mate. In such a culture, women are not considered prizes for the most able or strongest men. Indeed, women can have more than one mate (this ensures that no one gets left behind–remember the motto in wonerful animation, set in Hawaii, “Lilo and Stitch”?)
Unfortunately, Hagen’s notion of mating harks back to the Social Darwinist notion (now proven to be false) that humhans behaved much like Baboons or chimpanzees or the great apes–in which the strongest male had monopoly of all the women. This was NOT–probably NEVER–the case among the sea-faring Austronesian peoples of neolithic times (about 5,000 years ago) or, for that matter, among the hunter-gathering ‘Kung peoples of the Kalahari, as well as the hunting-gathering mountain Mangyans or Agtas (mislabeled as “Negritoes” in the past) of the Philippines. Among these peoples, status was based on knowledge, skill and cooperation–and not on the acquisition of wealth or the consumption of resources. This is a crucial point.
This later trait of needing to use resources and accumulate wealth is, I’m afraid, more a product of the culture of capitalism (which emerged over 500 years ago, accoring to the World Systems theorists).
My point is that the hunting-gathering as well as voyaging cultures are probably better models for envisioning our post-capitalist, post-industrial, post-carbon future.
As a corrective to a discredited reductionist social darwinism, may I suggest that we brush up on recent developments in cultural anthropology, and also read Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, or Erik Erikson’s stages of psycho-social development–which views human growth and development in terms of the epigenetic interaction between genes and the environment, within a soci-cultural context–in which cooperation (not acquisition and consumpiton of resources) is the crucial factor. These are much better models than the model of status and novelty, which flows from an unconsciously presumed capitalist mind-set. INCIDENTALLY, WHY IS THE WORD CAPITALISM TABOO IN THE ESSAYS OF FLEEING VESUVIUS?. Do I detect an unconscious bias here? Or a fear of antagonizing the Right?

Comment on Definancialisation, deglobalisation and relocalisation by Graham Barnes

Tend to agree with that. It probably springs from Dmitry’s strong focus on self-sufficient ‘lifeboat’ responses to the crises. This can be a problem with many of the doom and gloom analyses – they seem implicitly or explicitly to rubbish many of the grass roots initiatives that try to work (for the time being at least) with the world as it is. This ‘carelessness’ can offend people doing great work in those communities.

The real impact of local currency initiatives to date is, though, an issue worth discussion. While they have often done well in terms of local identity and local networking, the impact on local economic health and liquidity has been limited; and the scalability of these initiatives to regional or national level has been elusive. All issues being confrionted by the Liquidity Network projects.