As the 50th anniversary of 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.
April’s theme is Reallocating Land: From Market to Commons. This online event took place Thursday, April 20th at 2PM (EST).
…we should be searching for policies to reconstruct rural culture, to open the land for the gainful occupation to larger numbers of people, whether it be on a full-time or a part-time bases, and to orientate all our actions on the land towards the threefold ideal of health, beauty and permanence.
– E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful
In Small is Beautiful, E.F. Schumacher called for radically reorienting societies’ prevailing attitude toward land as a commodity. This includes the ways we treat and nurture soil as a natural resource, the ways govern land access and make decisions about land use— even they way we relate ethically or spiritually to the land itself. Today, our climate and biodiversity crises and pressing needs for housing and other infrastructure all call for a reckoning with the role of land — this precious gift of god or nature — in a just, regenerative society.
April’s panelists are those already pioneering a new land ethic, and transforming land tenure in the present. Each participant represents a particular approach to land commoning — offering alternatives to the supremacy of universal private property with models more accountable to community needs and ecological health.
Each panelist was invited to reflect on themes in Small Is Beautiful that connect with their own thinking and activism. This then opens up a broader conversation on the topic of reallocating land. An audience Q&A follows moderated by our host, Natasha Hulst.
View our list of April allied organizations here.
