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. “Schumacher Conversations: Envisioning the Next 50 Years” brings together change-makers whose work today is actively shaping a ‘small is beautiful’ future, organized around 12 key themes and fields of activism.
March’s theme is Localizing Production: Communities Supporting Industry. This online event took place Thursday, March 16th at 2PM (EST).
Each speaker began by reflecting 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. (January’s panel can be viewed here).
Today, there is a growing recognition that the prevailing economic system is holding back collective agendas for a habitable planet and a fairer distribution of wealth. As the world catches up to the urgency of climate change and growing inequality, the question of scale once more returns to the fore. As Schumacher extolled in Small is Beautiful, a shift from the prevailing trend of unaccountable globalization toward place-based, ecologically responsible, and human-scale economic activity remains essential to a just and regenerative future.
[P]roduction from local resources for local needs is the most rational way of economic life, while dependence on imports from afar and the consequent need to produce for export… is highly uneconomic and justifiable only in exceptional cases and on a small scale.
– E.F. Schumacher in Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
March’s panelists are those rebuilding equitable production ecosystems rooted in their own places. Each participant represents a particular approach to inclusive wealth building arrived at through community participation and cooperation.
Each panelist was invited to reflect on themes in Small Is Beautiful that connect with their own thinking and activism. This includes economies of place, effective scale of action, production for local markets, cooperative structures, and the role of land in economic justice. These reflections are intended to open up a broader conversation on the topic of localizing production. An audience Q&A will follow moderated by our host, Alice Maggio.
View our list of allied organizations for the theme of “Localizing Production: Communities Supporting Industry” here.
The Schumacher Center advances an approach for relocalizing production via Community Supported Industry, encouraging consumer-producer association. The thinking is built on the principles and expansion of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement.
