Culture Change… A New Wrinkle in Our Time: Transforming the Oil Economy 11 May 2020 I've written before about how precarious the fossil fuel industry has actually been for many years now. A friend sent this brilliant summary of the recent oil price crash, and…
education… Connecting Sustainability Competences and Pedagogies FOR THE WIN! 19 Sep 201819 Sep 2018 The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) just announced that our paper 'Connecting Competences and Pedagogical Approaches for Sustainable Development in Higher Education' is a winner…
climate… Star Trek or Little House on the Prairie, the Red/Blue Divide, and Imagining Complexly 10 Nov 201611 Nov 2016 The US election results of 8 Nov 2016 were a bit shocking to me. David Wong at Cracked.com provided a strikingly insightful explanation of why I and my ivory tower, liberal…
money culture The Myth of Bartering and the Realities of Sharing and Gift Economies 14 Jun 201615 Jun 2016 In their ethnographic research, anthropologists do not find barter economies among people who have never used money. Much more prevalent are gift economies: a complex and time-extended form of reciprocal altruism. Often there…
Culture Change… The woman who solved economic tragedy 2 Feb 20166 Mar 2019 Elinor Ostrom's on-the-ground research showed how actual people within real, living cultures overcome Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" (more accurately, “The Tragedy of Unmanaged, Laissez-Faire, Common-Pool Resources with Easy Access…
Culture Change… Happy Holidays? 25 Nov 201525 Nov 2015 CGP Grey gives a brief recap of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, just in time for Thanksgiving. Speaking of Thanksgiving, do take some time to get in touch with gratitude…
Culture Change… Post-capitalism? Property and money 3 Sep 20141 Sep 2014 Charles Eisenstein has a thoughtful little post about the terms and meanings of capital, property and ownership - how we construct these in the current money culture, and how that…
climate… In these times of change… 26 Jun 2014 A fascinating new piece, Want to Change the World? Read This First by Richard Heinberg was published on Resilience.org. He moves through important ideas from anthropologist Marvin Harris's cultural materialism…
Culture Change… Quality quantification? Comparing Asian Countries 28 May 20146 Jun 2014 In her recent, brilliant (as usual) video, "The Story of Solutions," Annie Leonard admonishes that we should stop relentlessly working toward MORE and start emphasizing BETTER. Trouble is, how do…
disasters… Stand with First Nations – Oppose Tar Sands Mining and KXL 14 Jun 2013 There are a few resonating news items regarding tar sands extraction, the Keystone XL Pipeline, and their impact on the indigenous people of this continent: 1. Alberta toxic waste spill could be…
Ponderings of a Perplexed Primate 