Travels in Post-Consumer Society

Citation

(1999), "Travels in Post-Consumer Society", European Business Review, Vol. 99 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.1999.05499aad.005

Travels in Post-Consumer Society

Living Lightly

Travels in Post-Consumer Societyby Walter and Dorothy SchwarzForeword by John Vidal

A graphic account by two experienced travellers and writers of a three-year journey across four continents among people "living lightly" on the earth ­ more self-reliant, more neighbourly, more in tune with their environment, less stressed than the majority who strive for success in the consumer economy.

In Britain and Europe, Canada and the USA, Australia, India and Japan, the authors share the lives and homes of lifestyle pioneers among a growing counter-culture of people convinced that the globalisation of the economy is not a blessing but a disaster.

Practical solutions described in the book include co-housing, community-supported agriculture, permaculture, LETS, community living, and schools that teach cooperation instead of competition. The authors evaluate failure as well as success.

A chronical of hope, a record of practical survival and individual and community improvement, and proof not only that there are real options to people, but that a significant global counter-movement is developing to challenge the orthodoxy of globalisation. This is a genuinely inspiring global report. (From the Foreword by John Vidal, environmental editor of The Guardian).

Walter Schwarz is a writer and former Guardian journalist; Dorothy is a teacher of creative writing. Together they wrote Breaking Through: Theory and Practice of Holistic Living (1987).

£15 paperback; 400 pp. illustrated; ISBN 1 89776644 0; Published by Jon Carpenter.

To order by credit card, phone 01689 870437 or send your cheque to Jon Carpenter Publishing (EBR), 2 The Spendlove Centre, Charlbury OX7 3PQ. All orders post free.

The itinerary includes:

1. 1.

   More or less radical lifestyles. Voluntary simplicity in Seattle and the UK; co-housing; sustainable use of land at Tinkers Bubble (Somerset) and Pure Genius (London); self-sufficiency in North Wales, and saving the wombat in Australia.

2. 2.

   Better farms, better food. The vegan and vegetarian arguments; Plants for a Future and Keveral Organic Farm (Cornwall); poems by Benjamin Zaphaniah; organic farmer Helen Browning (of Eastbrook Farm, near Swindon) on eating meat. Community supported agriculture in New England. A permaculture village in Australia. Conversation with the co-inventor of permaculture. Trying permaculture in Colchester.

3. 3.

   Some answers to globalisation. Realities of the global economy in India. Urban self-sufficiency in Bombay, Utrecht, Birmingham (Organic Roundabout and the veggie box scheme), and the USA. An Australian co-operative town. Organic and other initiatives in Japan.

4. 4.

   Living in the community. Including a course at Findhorn and talking to Eileen Caddy and others at Scotland's veteran new age community. Auroville, South India, a community following Sri Auribindo's teaching.

5. 5.

   Connections. Schools and colleges: including Brockwood Park in Hampshire, The Small School in Hartland, and Schumacher College near Totnes. Showing how it works: the Centre for Alternative Technology in mid-Wales. Greens on the Internet. Lessons the authors learned.