We Can Change the World / Books to Read
Annie Birdsong
Summer Reading
Everyone an ecologist/philosopher
To me, one of the best organizations in the world is the
International Society for Ecology and Culture. The director is Helena
Norberg-Hodge, the Swedish anthropolist I mentioned in another posting.
Here is part of a list of books this organization recommends. You can
order these books at a bookstore or order them through interlibrary
loan.
If you want to use interlibrary loan, you may find them on the World Cat
data base, which many universitys have.
The complete list of books can be found
at: http://www.ecovillage.org/india/ladakh/bibliography/entirelist.html
(I did not copy the whole list of books because I did not want to violate
the copyright.)
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Attenborough, R. ed. 1982.
The Words of Gandhi.
New Market Press. N.Y.
One of many anthologies of Gandhi's writings.
Badiner. Alan H. 1990.
Dharma Gaia: a Harvest of Essays in Buddhism and Ecology.
Parallax Press, Berkeley.
Essays exploring how the holistic view of Buddhism is related to
ecological thinking.
Bahro, Rudolf. 1986.
Building the Green Movement.
New Society, Philadelphia.
Essays from a leading German Green thinker.
Berger, Peter. 1974.
Pyramids of Sacrifice.
Basic, New York.
Berger questions the sacrifice and destruction that has been brought about
by both capitalist and communist development, and examines the roots of
both systems in modernism.
Berry, Wendell. 1975.
A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, N.Y; 1977.
The Unsettling of America.
Sierra Club, San Francisco; 1987.
Home Economics: Fourteen Essays.
North Point Press, San Francisco; 1990.
What Are People For.
North Point Press, San Francisco.
Several of the many books by America's most eloquent and prolific defender
of traditional rural life and small-scale farming.
Brown, Lester R. 1981.
Building a Sustainable Society
W.W. Norton, New York.
The founder of the World Watch Institute lays out what he sees as
necessary reforms to bring human demands in line with environmental
constraints. See also the Worldwatch papers and annual State of the World.
Burns, E. Bradford. 1980.
The poverty of Progress: Latin America in the Nineteenth Century.
University of California Press, Berkeley.
Documents the destruction of traditional cultures in Latin America in the
face of the onslaught of ideas and gadgets from the North.
Callenbach, Ernest 1975.
Eocotopia
Banyan Tree Books, Berkeley; 1981.
Ecotopia Emerging
Banyan Tree Books, Berkeley.
Fictionalised speculation on ecologically-sound utopia.
Capra, Fritijof. 1982
The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture.
NY, Bantam Books.
This book links the major problems facing the world today to a dangerously
narrow world view that has dominated for the last centuries, and outlines
a new more holistic paradigm emerging in a variety of domains.
Corbett Michael. 1981
A Better Place to Live: New Designs for Tomorrow's Communities.
Rodale, Emmaus Pennsylvania
Design basis for an innovative solar housing project, called Village
Homes, built by Corbett in Davis California.
For more specifics on community layout and house designs see:
Bainbridge, David, Judy Corbett and John Hofacre. 1979.
Village Homes' Solar House Design.
Rodale, Emmaus, Pennsylvania.
Covarrubias, Miguel. 1937.
Island of Bali.
Knopf, N.Y.
A detailed account of the intricacies of Balinese life, at a time when
Western visitors were less abundant than today.
Daly, Herrnan E. & John B. Cobb Jr. 1989.
For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the
Environment, and a Sustainable Future.
Beacon: Boston.
An economist and a theologian team up to challenge current economic
thinking. They propose protecting people, communities, and the environment
by increasing local control, and restricting international trade.
Devall, Bill. 1988.
Simple in Means, Rich in Ends: Practising Deep Ecology.
Salt Lake City: Peregrine Books.
Thoughts on translating non-anthropocentric world views into practice.
Devall, Bill, & George Sessions. 1985.
Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered.
Peregrine Smith Books, Salt Lake City, Utah.
An exploration of an environmental philosophy that questions the notion
that ,humanity has a privileged place in the global order. It rejects an
environmentalism that stops at conservation and management of nature.
Ehrenfeld, David. 1978.
The Arrogance of Humanism.
Oxford University Press, Oxford, N.Y.
Ehrenfeld questions the hubris of humanism. He examines the modern
assumptions of ever increasing material wealth and ever greater control of
nature through technological progress.
Ekins, Paul. 1986.
The Living Economy: A New Economics in the Making.
Routledge and Kegan Paul, New York.
This collection of essays from TOES, The Other Economic Summit, critiques
the conventional economic paradigm, and presents alternative analyses and
visions.
Elgin, Duane. 1981.
Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That is Outwardly Simple
Inwardly
Rich.
William Morrow, New York. An exploration of the personal and planetary
effects of living a materially-simple lifestyle in industrial society.
Ellul, Jacques. 1964.
The Technological Society.
Random House, New York.
(translated from French, originally published 1954). A somewhat difficult
to read classic on the continued incursion of technical rationality into
all phases of life in industrial civilisation.
Epsteiner, Fred ed. 1988.
The Path of Compassion: Writings on Socially Enganged Buddhism.
Parallax Press, Berkeley, California.
Leading Buddhist writers share their views on working for the alleviation
of suffering in the world.
Franke, Richard, & Barbara Chasin 1989.
Kerala: Radical Reform as Development in an Indian State.
Institute for Food and Development Policy, San Francisco.
By conventional measures economic growth in Kerala has been very low, but
quality of life, as measured by health, longevity, nutrition, and literacy
are all high thanks to a policy of targeting basic needs and
redistribution .
Fromm, Erich [1976], 1981
To Have or To Be.
Bantam, N.Y., London.
Two modes of existence struggle fiercely for the spirit of mankind: the
having mode, dedicated to aggression, and material possession, and the
being mode, suffused with love, caring, and a feeling of sufficiency. One
of many insightful books by a prolific author.
Fukuoka, Masanobu. 1978.
The One Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming
Rodale, Emmaus , Pennsylvania.
Description of a farming system developed over thirty years that minimises
human intervention in the natural order. A classic that has inspired many
permaculturists and others.
George, Susan. 1977.
How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger.
Allanheld Osmun, Montclair, New Jersey; 1988.
A Fate Worse Than Debt.
Grove Press, N.Y.
These books expose the gross ]inequalities of the current international
economic system and the development policies that support it.
Goldsmith, Edward. 1988.
The Great U-Turn: Deindustrializing Society.
Green Books, Bideford, U. K.
A call for radical restructuring of modern society from the editor of The
Ecologist.
Goodman, Paul, and Percival Goodman. [1947] 1960.
Communitas: Means of Livlihood and Ways of life.
Random House, New York.
Early questioning about the directions of industrial culture, still
relevant.
Highwater, Jarnake 1981 The Primal Mind: Vision and Reality in Indian
America.
Meridian, N.Y.
This book contrasts the ideals and intellectual aims of Western culture
with the life-styles, attitudes, and world views of North American tribal
peoples.
Jackson, Wes 1980.
New Roots for Agriculture
Friends of the Earth, San Francisco
Wendell Berry, 1984.
Meeting the Expectations of the Land: Essays in Sustainable Agriculture.
North Point Press, San Francisco; 1987.
Altars of Unhewn Stone: Science and the Earth
North Point Press, San Francisco.
Fundamental questioning of the patterns of thinking that underlie modern
industrial agriculture from an agricultural researcher who is
investigating the possibilities of radical changes in the way we practice
agriculture.
King, Franklin H. [1911] 1973.
Farmers of Forty Centuries or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and
Japan. Rodale, Emmaus, Pennsylvania.
Description of traditional farming practices that maintained fertility for
centuries.
Kohr, Leopold l973
Development Without Aid: the Translucent Society.
Schlocken, N.Y;
[1962] 1976. The Overdeveloped Nations: the Diseconomies of Scale
Swansea. London?
Early and cogent challenges to the growth and development mystiques.
Kropotkin, Peter. [1899] 1975
Fields Factories and Workshops of Tomorrow.
Harper and Row, New York.
A leading anarchist whose influence is still felt.
Margolin, Malcolm. 1978.
The Ohlone Wav: Indian Life in the San Francisco Monterey Bay Area.
Heydey Books, Berkley, California.
A description of what life was like before the European invasion of
California.
McRobie, George. 1981.
Small is Possible.
Harper and Row. N.Y.
An attempt to ground Schumacher's vision, from one of his closest
collaborators.
Being Peace;
1988 The Heart of Understanding;
1987. Interbeing Commentaries on the Tiep Hien Precepts.
Parallax Press. Berkeley.
Buddhist teachings from a Vitnamese monk who has been practising for
decades the teachings of a a socially engaged Buddhism.
Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered.
Harper and Row, New York, Blond and Briggs Ltd., London.
This seminal work by the father of the Appropriate Technology movement,
challenges the assumptions of growth, development, and the economic
paradigm. Schumacher's vision puts the needs of people before economic
efficiency.
Todd, N.J. and J. Todd. 1984.
Bioshelters. Ocean Arks. City Farming; The Ecological Basis of Design
Sierra Club, San Francisco.
A book on designing technology that harmonises with nature rather than
dominates it, from the founders of the New Alchemy Institute.
Trainer, F. E. 1985
Abandon Affluence.
Zed, London.
Industrial countries must de-develop, and the standard of affluence of the
North must be abandoned as a development goal throughout the world .
Bullwinkle J. Moose
It is always a great shame when something like copyright, which was intended
to increase and promote knowledge (science), instead becomes an impedance
communication, the a necessary tool for the development of knowledge.
Something which should be on your list would be the writings of Richard M.
Stallman and FSF (http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/philosophy.html), A great deal
about the problems of current copyright and patents laws can be found there.