Ebook Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community, by Karen T. Litfin
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Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community, by Karen T. Litfin
Ebook Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community, by Karen T. Litfin
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In a world of dwindling natural resources and mounting environmental crisis, who is devising ways of living that will work for the long haul? And how can we, as individuals, make a difference? To answer these fundamental questions, Professor Karen Litfin embarked upon a journey to many of the world’s ecovillagesÑintentional communities at the cutting-edge of sustainable living. From rural to urban, high tech to low tech, spiritual to secular, she discovered an under-the-radar global movement making positive and radical changes from the ground up.
In this inspiring and insightful book, Karen Litfin shares her unique experience of these experiments in sustainable living through four broad windows - ecology, economics, community, and consciousness - or E2C2. Whether we live in an ecovillage or a city, she contends, we must incorporate these four key elements if we wish to harmonize our lives with our home planet.
Not only is another world possible, it is already being born in small pockets the world over. These micro-societies, however, are small and time is short. Fortunately - as Litfin persuasively argues - their successes can be applied to existing social structures, from the local to the global scale, providing sustainable ways of living for generations to come.
You can learn more about Karen's experiences on the Ecovillages website: http://ecovillagebook.org/
- Sales Rank: #298857 in Books
- Published on: 2013-12-16
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.10" h x .75" w x 6.00" l, .80 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 224 pages
Review
"In lively, honest and reflective prose, Litfin offers deep insight into how this research project has been part of her own mission of living more sustainably. While Litfin provides us with a range of practical information about the principles of ecovillage organising ? including countless nuggets of inspiration that will be useful to anyone, not just those intending to live in communities ? she also puts forward a theoretical framework for analysing these emerging ways of sustainable living."
Times Higher Education
"If you can't take a year off to visit ecovillages around the world, this marvel of a book is the next best thing. It?s actually even better for the carbon it saves, the questions it asks, and the wisdom it shares. Karen Litfin?s journey enlivens our understanding of the Great Turning. I am eager to share it with all my students and fellow teachers."
Joanna Macy, author of Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We?re in Without Going Crazy
"This book offers a unique opportunity to compare several different forms of sustainable communities around the world, giving us a glimpse of the best practices and challenges of the global ecovillage movement."
Environment Magazine
"In these times of political gridlock and myopia, Karen Litfin's tremendously engaging and informative exploration of eco-villages around the world points the way to a viable and attractive future very different from the bleak place to which we are now headed. You will enjoy this book!"
James Gustave Speth, author of America the Possible: Manifesto for New Economy
"Ecovillages offers that rarest of gifts: wisdom. It asks not simply how to address the build-up of carbon, dwindling of species, and toxification of our world, but how we can live together joyously on a single earth. Among the book's many beauties is that it is written from the wellspring of experience and expressed through Litfin?s hands, voice, and soul."
Paul Wapner, American University
"The world is in for a major transition, a huge downshift, ready or not. For those inclined to roll up their sleeves and get ready (as opposed to lament the trends and decry business as usual), ecovillages can offer insight and hope. As Litfin shows in this compelling book, they exemplify an 'affirmative politics,' a politics at once ecological, economic, community-oriented and spiritual. Ecovillages aren?t for everyone, but in these uncertain times, their lessons may be."
Thomas Princen, University of Michigan
"Karen Litfin is a perceptive, thoughtful, and gifted observer of the human predicament. In writing Ecovillages, Litfin combines her intellectual prowess with her sensitivity and compassion to tell a hugely important and inspiring story."
Chris Uhl, Professor of Biology at Penn State and author of Developing Ecological Consciousness
"Karen Litfin has not only written a book of great importance to all of us at this pivotal moment in history, she has also done it in a way that is lively, moving, informative and compelling. This first-rate book deserves to reach the widest possible audience; we must pay attention to it if we are going to thrive as a species on this fragile planet."
Nina Wise, author of A Big New Free Happy Unusual Life
"Ecovillages have for many years acted as micro-laboratories for building a low carbon, post-growth society. But what can we learn from them? How much of ecovillage life is scaleable and replicable? Karen Litfin set out to find out, and her learnings and insights are invaluable. We owe her road trip and her research a great deal, there is much wisdom and treasure here!"
Rob Hopkins, author of The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience
"An inspiring and instructive journey to the wide range of communities pioneering a sustainable global future."
Jakob von Uexk?ll, founder of the Right Livelihood Award and former member of the European Parliament
"Nature teaches us that nothing disappears when it dies, it merely becomes something new. Karen Litfin's lucid and heartfelt book reveals the new life emerging in the cracks of failing systems. Through her eyes, we meet people everywhere who are building high-joy, low-impact communities. Litfin is the perfect guide: intellectually rigorous, spiritually awake and deeply caring. If you want to create a richer, gentler life for yourself and your community, read this book!"
Vicki Robin, bestselling author of Your Money or Your Life and Blessing the Hands that Feed Us
Karen Litfin understands that today we need inspiration as much as information, to forge the vibrant communities that will carry us into an enduring future. The success stories she brings to life are just what we need to revivify our existing communities on a planet perched at the precipice.
Kurt Hoelting, author of The Circumference of Home: One Man's Yearlong Quest for a Radically Local Life
"One of the most powerful questions asked of us by our world crisis is, 'How can we live together in ways that allow us to "be the change" together?' Karen Litfin's book gives us answers. These ecovillage experiments ? idealistic, imperfect, courageous, creative and honestly described - will help us transform our consciousness and find our way forward."
Terry Patten, co-author (with Ken Wilber) of Integral Life Practice
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About the Author
Karen Litfin is associate professor of political science at the University of Washington.
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
The Right Things to think and ask about.....
By bunnyrabbit4
When I first got this book I had a hard time making myself start the read. It is mostly writing with a few black and white pictures and when it mentioned Damanhur and Findhorn I began to assume that it was really a collection of well advertised commercial communities and didn't have much to offer someone wanting to start one. I'm glad I was wrong!
She gives the location of the book's website where you can find lots of great pictures of each community and the information she discusses is not by any stretch of the imagination, a commercial. While she is an academic with credentials in the field of sustainability, the writing is aimed at the causal reader. It is very down to earth and deals with the real issues that affect starting an alternative community. She spent two week at each of these places and writes from the perspective of someone who learns not only about their culture, but about the very human problems that crop up when people attempt to live with more than 10 or 20 of your closest friends.
The problems are similar in some ways. People who choose to live an alternative lifestyle have to be strong enough in their beliefs to walk away from the flock. That very strength can make them uncompromising. One community, "Earthhaven" had 50 members when a major problem arose. The state of South Caroline closed its borders to over night guests because it was using water from a spring which it deemed to be unsanitary. Arguments arose from purists in the group who felt that drilling a water well was desecrating the Earth. Since they derived operating funds from their educational outreach this quickly led to financial issues. As you might imagine, people being passionate about beliefs can cause many issues. Can a Vegan eat next to someone who has free range chicken on their plate? Not always. As one director put it, they don't HAVE to accept compromise at this point. In a real emergency food and water situation people would probably be more accepting of each other. As things stand, people are still free to squabble, disagree and leave.
The communities themselves vary greatly as well. Italy's Damanhur, a spiritual community led by its charismatic leader Falco, appears to be heavily funded and features smartphones for everyone and a molecular biology lab to test GMO food. While it does research into sustainable foods, I was glad to see she didn't fall in love with Damanhur. I was initially wowed by its underground temples until an Italian friend shared some not so spiritual information about Falco's financial dealings.
Other communities, like Colufifa in Senegal, are on the other end of the spectrum, existing with very little in the way of funds. Colufifa represents an alliance of 350 West African villages dedicated to organic farming, adult literacy and microfinancing. Each of the fourteen villages she visits has its problems and perks, with most of the problems involving either groups of people within the village transitioning to different mindsets or collisions with existing laws and culture. It also seems that unless they want to make lots of money or take on a social problem...there isn't a lot of support for these groups in our corporate world. Except for the well-established and funded like Damanhur, Findhorn and Auroville in India, most are finding their way a day at a time. Her discussions of the economies of the smaller ecovillages are well worth your reading time if you have any interest in creating an alternative community.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Litfin's BIG blindspot.
By Ntropee
I appreciated this effort to examine the eco-village phenomenon. To her credit, Litfin took eco-villages seriously and tried to draw lessons from them to help answer the larger question: how do we scale these micro-efforts up to make them useful for everyone else? But the answers she provided were disappointing and extremely naive, especially for a political scientist. The bedrock issues of political science revolve around POWER; yet you'd never know that from her book. Yet power is exactly what is needed. To prevent escalating planetary ecocide, the drive for profit must be removed from its place of prominence over the global economy. To accomplish this, people will need the political power to change the economic rules of the game. Why? Because they will face very formidable foes dead-set against changing these rules.
But does Litfin say anything about power, profit, or how to build such a political movement? NO. Like most academics, she scrupulously avoids the "c" word (capitalism) and reduces the economy to a giant growth machine wreaking havoc with the planet. But capitalism's prime directive is profit, not growth. If growth "runs out of gas" and turns to contraction and collapse, capitalism won't evaporate. Corporate elites will extract profits from hoarding, corruption, crisis, and conflict. In a growth-less economy, the profit motive can have a devastating catabolic impact on society. (The word "catabolism" comes from the Greek and is used in biology to refer to the condition whereby a living thing feeds on itself.) Catabolic capitalism will lurch from crisis to crisis, devouring the society it previously created. Unless we free ourselves from its grip, catabolic collapse will become our future--not sustainable Green societies.
Yet, like most academics, Litfin simply believes that educating people is all that's required. Her blind spot around the issue of power hides the full potential of the eco-villages (and Transition Towns) she discusses. These efforts to build sustainable communities free from addiction to consumerism and fossil fuels can become valuable "home fronts" in the emerging war of resistance to save ourselves and our planet from a profit-driven, petro-powered, global economy. We need these home fronts to generate useful alternatives to degenerating industrial capitalism. But we also need them to help germinate and fertilize powerful grassroots movements with the courage and popular support to resist militarism, social injustice, and ecocide and to eventually break the death grip of corporate power over the planet and our lives. Without political power to change the rules of the game, we will always be swimming upstream. But with it, we will be able to make the decisions necessary to govern all the life support systems that sustain our communities and our countries. What Karen Litfin misses is the undeniable fact the people must fight for the POWER to create new economic systems that prioritize people and the planet--not profit.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Sustainability Isn't Just About Saving the Earth...
By T. L. Cooper
I was really excited about reading and reviewing Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community by Karen T. Liftin before I even opened the book, but I don't believe I allowed my excitement for the topic to interfere with my objectivity. Ecovillages addresses several topics I find relevant to the day and to our future. Liftin took an entire year to spend time at ecovillages around the world. She explores what each of these ecovillages are doing to create a better Earth and a more sustainable lifestyle. There is a thread of living simply throughout the book that supports much of my own point of view. She addresses what she refers to as E2C2, shorthand for ecology, economy, community, and consciousness as the components that make up any society. She discusses in detail how each of the ecovillages she visited address each of the components of E2C2. While we may have these images of ecovillages of hippie communes, Litfin points out various ways in which this stereotype is far from the truth. I like that she ends the book by discussing how the ideas these various ecovillages employ can be scaled up to be introduced into communities already in existence. She addresses the reality that we can't all move into ecovillages and that it might not even be prudent to do so. Liftin makes her points well in an easy to read fashion that makes her message and the message of the ecovillages she visited very clear. Ecovillages is a discussion starter. Many times I stopped reading just to discuss points with my husband and to think through not only what she wrote in the book but the implications on my own life and the lives of those I know. Liftin writes with passion and clarity in every portion of the book. Her ideas and discoveries are presented well even when her topic leaves the reader with questions. Liftin provides a thought provoking analysis of her experience within the ecovillages. Ecovillages isn't just about sustaining the Earth but about sustaining a sense of togetherness and community through less consumption and more interaction.
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