Village Soap Box Blog: Latest posts – Your contributions welcome.
Turning Peace-movements into War Movements? – A Caution
Peace movement groups often take up one side of a conflict against another. Lately, in New Zealand at least, there has been much strong peace-movement feeling against Israeli actions and policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Feel free - to be trivial and timid
It doesn’t seem right to me to live in a world where it is said that there is ‘free speech’ but we can only feel really free to talk about safe things, like feeling and expressing gratitude and positive thoughts, and whether and how to part our hair or cover bald spots.
Giving Birth to a New Economy by a Managed Contraction
Guest Bloggers Deirdre Kent, Laurence Boomert and Helen Dew say “The twin debts of a flawed money system combined with our binge on fossil fuels are both coming due at the same time The party is over. We must abandon this money system with its growth imperative and develop a new society made up of communities and economies functioning within ecological bounds.”
It’s not just the economy stupid … Life after Copenhagen
In 1992 Bill Clinton famously said “it’s the economy stupid.” With the Copenhagen climate change conference, it might be asked if this has been replaced with “no, it’s the environment stupid.” I think the focus has to shift beyond either, or even both. I would like to propose as the most useful framing: “it’s the implementation stupid”. In the terms of social scientist, Helga Nowoty, this means asking how to frame both economy and environment together in contexts of application - in Village-Connections terms, this means relevant and effective social innovation by people, around their aspirations and needs.
Seasons Greetings - My Last Blog for 2009, Looking to 2010
Many in this part of the world are preparing for Christmas celebrations and summer holidays and 2010… I’ve been challenged to come up with more practical ‘how tos’ and make it easier for you - as the real knowledge actors - to engage in explorations…
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Project funding
This project is funded from a Building Research Capability in the Social Sciences Network (BRCSS) Postdoctoral Award and it is based at the Social Science Research Centre, University of Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand.
