As the 50th anniversary of the book Small is Beautiful, 2023 is our opportunity to advance solutions to today’s social, economic, and environmental challenges that build on Schumacher’s original vision. To meet this calling, the Schumacher Center is convening a monthly series featuring New Economic thinkers, builders and activists from a range of fields. November’s theme is Expanding the Frontiers of Commoning.
The Conversation features three visionaries developing novel organizational forms and infrastructures to extend the enlivening, social dynamics of the commons:
– Kathryn Milun, University of Minnesota and the Solar Commons Project
– Dorn Cox, Co-Founder of Farm Hack, author of The Great Regeneration
– Sanda Niessen, Co-Founder of Fashion Act Now!
– David Bollier, Program Director, Reinventing the Commons at the Schumacher Center for New Economics (host)
Ever bigger machines, entailing ever bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting ever greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom. Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the nonviolent, the elegant and beautiful.
— E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful
From open source technologies for smallholder agriculture, to degrowth fashion initiatives disrupting conventional garment production, to local solar commons managed as trusts for community benefit, these participants’ projects show how innovative organizational structures and design can empower people while respecting planetary limits, avoiding the harmful dynamics of global capital and corporate systems.
The event will be held virtually on Thursday the 16th at 2PM (EST). Registration is free.
Each speaker ins invited to reflect on the influence, if any, of Small Is Beautiful on their socio-economic thinking and activism, opening up a broader conversion on the topic, followed by audience Q&A.
