April 1, 2002
“Widening the Context in the Biotechnology Wars” David Ehrenfeld, Professor of Biology at Rutgers University and author of the recently published Swimming Lessons: Keeping Afloat in the Age of Technology, will give a Spring 2002 Schumacher Lecture. His talk, entitled “Widening the Context in the Biotechnology Wars,” concerns the way scientific studies are often used … Continued
November 1, 2001
The Twenty-First Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures drew over 550 people to Amherst College to hearAlanna Hartzok, John Todd, and Amory Lovins. Each speaker focused on integrated approaches to addressing ecological and social problems. Audience reaction was enthusiastic. “The speakers renewed my faith in humanity,” commented one attendee. The lectures will be transcribed, edited, and … Continued
April 9, 2001
The Schumacher Center is pleased to announce two upcoming lecture programs: Andrew Kimbrell speaking on April 27th at 7:30 at the First Congregational Church in Great Barrington and Peter Forbes speaking on May 24th at 7:30 at the First Congregational Church in Great Barrington.. Andrew Kimbrell is a public interest lawyer effectively challenging government agencies and industry on … Continued
January 1, 2001
We are pleased to announce that Amory Lovins will be one of the speakers at the Twenty-First Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures scheduled for October 27th in Amherst, Massachusetts. Lovin’s work to develop a hydrogen fueled car was front page story in the January 9th Wall Street Journal. The prototype Hypercar® is an elegantly designed, sports utility vehicle … Continued
December 1, 2000
It was October of 1981 when Schumacher Center Director David Ehrenfeld recommended that we revive the fine art of “pamphleteering.” Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson had just delivered prophetic talks at the First Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures at Mount Holyoke College. In “A Call for a Revolution in Agriculture,” Wes argued for an agriculture … Continued
June 1, 2000
The Schumacher Center’s Board of Directors is pleased to announce that the Center’s first Capital Campaign has reached the $150,000 mark in lead contributions and pledges towards its goal of $250,000. The funds have been used to retire debt on the library building and start a modest endowment fund, an important step for the organization’s future. We … Continued
December 1, 1998
The world view that we carry as a culture—our sense of optimism and of responsibility to future generations, our relationship to our neighbors and neighborhood, our capacity for empathy, our ability to recognize and mourn collective cultural losses—shapes our economic decisions. Much of the work that we do in the Schumacher Center is meant to … Continued
August 6, 1998
Founded in 1980, the Schumacher Center was named for the British economist, Fritz Schumacher, author of Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. Schumacher’s 1973 book questioned the soundness of an increasingly centralized global economy which separates the consumer from the production process. Schumacher argued that in a system of healthy regional economies, production … Continued
July 14, 1998
In this last part of the twentieth century we find ourselves at an extraordinary historical time in which, as a result of a rapidly growing global economy, we can purchase nearly any good, from anywhere in the world, at any time or any place. However, the advantages of this carry a cost-we no longer know … Continued
September 1, 1997
The publication of Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered in 1973 marked a cultural shift in the understanding of the consequences of our everyday economic transactions. E. F. Schumacher introduced the concepts of human scale, local community, environmental responsibility, and permanence to our economic decision making. Following the death of Schumacher in 1977 a … Continued
April 1, 1997
People, Land, and Community Yale University Press has just released People, Land, and Community: Collected E. F. Schumacher Society Lectures. Edited by Hildegarde Hannum with introductory material by Nancy Jack Todd, the collection of twenty-one lectures was gathered from fifteen years of Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures. Contributors are: Kirkpatrick Sale, Winona LaDuke, Dana Lee Jackson, … Continued
July 4, 1996
Anguilla: Small, Beautiful, and Complex Leopold Kohr hoped that the Caribbean island of Anguilla would develop into a self-managed city-state, an elegantly small nation amidst clumsy giants. In the late 1960s he worked in an advisory capacity with the island’s revolutionary leaders. The most important of these leaders was Ronald Webster. As a boy in … Continued