Dear ECOFEMers: Although the cost of Schumacher College's sessions can be prohibitive (e.g., for people like me who reside outside the UK), the sessions and workshops cover topics which fit w/ ECOFEM's interests. I forward the following advert re: Carolyn Merchant's upcoming session as an example. Please contact the organisers for any further information. Best wishes, Stefanie Rixecker ECOFEM Coordinator ------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 16:30:49 +0000 From: Schumacher College <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Course with Carolyn Merchant To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CAROLYN MERCHANT, JOHN SEED and ALASTAIR McINTOSH Soil, Soul and Society March 5-24, 2000 Course fee: 1350 pounds sterling, which includes tuition, residential accommodation, food and field trips. Bursaries and scholarships may be available upon application. COURSE CONTENT All three teachers will be at the College throughout the course, teaching some sessions on their own and sharing input on other occasions. The following paragraphs provide information on the general areas that each teacher will focus on. As the teachers' intention is to collaborate and share ideas, there will be some flexibility as to the way the material is presented on a day-to-day basis. Carolyn Merchant: (As well as incorporating Carolyn's own teaching, this outline includes the contributions of the other two teachers, to give an idea of the overall content of the course.) How can we live in partnership with Planet Earth? Soil, Soul, and Society takes us on a cosmic journey from the age of soil formation to a new millennium of sustainable partnerships with each other and our earthly dwelling places. We'll begin with the Epic of Evolution as the soil has shaped human soul and society. We'll look at how formative biblical accounts of the Fall from Eden to desert have led to Western Culture's story of recovery by reinventing the entire planet as a garden, probing the major problems with this mainstream narrative of soul. What does gender have to do with nature and the soil? How has nature died as the new Eden has been recreated in the form of the shopping mall, the internet, and wire surrogate mothers with perverse characteristics? We'll then look at alternative traditions in which societies have maintained peace between humanity and the Earth, tracing our living taproots as they go deep into the soil. These surface in the Celtic culture of Scotland's outer Hebrides, the peasant traditions of Britain, the hill country farming cultures of America, and indigenous cultures throughout the world. How has colonization reformed those "other worlds?" We'll revive and relive the ancient taproots through rituals and experiences as we work toward a New Cosmology--a Timeline of Light. One way to restore right relationship between "soil and soul" is through a personal ethic. But that is not enough. We'll work through and try to overcome problems of consumption and other displacement activities in cultures that do not encourage bonding with the earth. Ecology teaches us that it takes a whole community to live sustainably in partnership with the earth. How can we become partners with each other as men and women in today's society and how can we work together as partners with the living earth? We'll think and feel our way toward a geopolitics of the earth--a poetics that joins feminist philosophies, liberation theologies, and transformative education in a new cultural therapy. Alastair McIntosh: One way to restore right relationship between “soil” and “soul” is through a personal ethic. But that is not enough. We are social creatures, and ecology teaches us that it takes a whole community to live sustainably. In this course I want to reveal living taproots. These surface in the Celtic culture of my childhood in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, but I find that they speak also to vestiges of the “indigenous” in us all - America, Africa, India; England too. I’ll use the colonisation of the Celtic world as a case study for Carolyn Merchant’s “death of nature.” I also want to explore John Seed’s uses of creativity. His work resonates with bardic verve - the core of indigenous politics. It has been my experience in Scotland and the South Pacific that a poetics of the Earth - a “geopoetics” - along with feminist philosophies, liberation theologies and conscientisation-based education - offer powerful tools for transforming consciousness. We have proven this in modern Scotland. Land reform is now before a restored Parliament. I want to communicate such ways of seeing, being and doing. They represent nothing less than a cultural psychotherapy - the gradual healing of peoples. John Seed: In spite of the modern delusion of alienation from the living Earth, we humans are not aliens, we belong here. However, thousands of years of conditioning have instilled in us the illusion of separation. It is as if a leaf were to believe itself to be disconnected from the tree on which it grows and imagined that it could somehow profit from the destruction of the tree. Recently, the science of ecology has confirmed the realisations of interdependence well-known to all indigenous cultures: we are inextricably embedded in the systems of the Earth. We have no independent existence. As important as they are, ecological ideas are not enough: we need ecological IDENTITY, ecological SELF. All indigenous cultures include practices, ceremonies and rituals for nourishing the interconnectedness between the human family and the rest of the Earth family. In this course we will explore the depths of our concern and love for our planet in this time of crisis. We will focus on understandings and experiential practices that nourish ecological identity and empower us as active agents in the healing of our world. Alastair McIntosh is a fellow of Edinburgh’s now-independent Centre for Human Ecology. He established Britain’s first human ecology MSc degree before the Centre’s controversial work - described in a New Scientist leader as upholding “a tradition of fearless enquiry” - was forced out of Edinburgh University in 1996. As co-founder of the Isle of Eigg Trust he played a key role in the restoration of community lands from the grip of feudalism, and in stimulating the political debate leading to Scots land reform. His work with liberation theology and popular education has benefited groups exploring cultural regeneration in areas of urban deprivation, it has influenced understanding of the values shaping Scotland’s new Parliament, and has contributed towards solidarity between native peoples on both sides of the Atlantic - specifically with the Lakota Sioux, whose Ghost Shirt is now being repatriated to them, and the Cape Breton Mi’Kmaq, whose warrior chief in 1994 testified at a public inquiry to stop the destruction of Mt Roineabhal on the Isle of Harris. Alastair’s forthcoming book, Soil and Soul, explores his experience of using the poetic spirit for political effect. It remakes connection with place, builds social cohesion and mends the soul. Carolyn Merchant is the Chancellor's professor of Environmental History, Philosophy, and Ethics in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (1980); Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England (1989); Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World (1992); and Earthcare: Women and the Environment (1996), as well as numerous articles on the history of science, environmental history, and women and the environment. She is the editor of Major Problems in American Environmental History (1993), Key Concepts in Critical Theory: Ecology (1994), and Green Versus Gold: Sources in California's Environmental History (1998). Carolyn has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford; a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies; a Guggenheim fellow; a Fulbright senior scholar in Sweden; and the 1991 ecofeminist scholar at Murdoch University in Western Australia. John Seed is founder and director of the Rainforest Information Centre in Australia. Since 1979 he has been involved in direct actions which have resulted in the protection of the Australian rainforests. He has travelled around the world lecturing and showing films to raise awareness of the plight of the rainforests. In 1984 he helped initiate the US Rainforest Action Network. He has created numerous projects protecting rainforests in South America, Asia and the Pacific through providing benign and sustainable development projects for their indigenous inhabitants tied to the protection of their forests. He has written and lectured extensively on deep ecology and has been conducting re-Earthing workshops in Australia, North America, Japan and Europe for 15 years. With Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming and Professor Arne Naess, he wrote Thinking Like a Mountain - Towards a Council of All Beings (New Society Publishers) which has now been translated into 10 languages. In 1995 he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) by the Australian Government for services to conservation and the environment. This course has been approved for accreditation by the University of Plymouth. -- SCHUMACHER COLLEGE is an international centre for ecological studies which welcomes course participants from all over the world, from a wide range of ages and backgrounds. The College runs short residential courses on ecological issues, led by teachers and writers with an international reputation for the significance and originality of their work. It also runs a one-year MSc in Holistic Science. For details of Schumacher College and its courses, contact: The Administrator, Schumacher College, The Old Postern, Dartington, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EA, UK Tel: +44 (0)1803 865934; Fax: +44 (0)1803 866899; Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Please do visit our comprehensive website for detailed information: http://www.gn.apc.org/schumachercollege/ SCHUMACHER COLLEGE IS A DEPARTMENT OF THE DARTINGTON HALL TRUST, A REGISTERED EDUCATIONAL CHARITY -- ------- End of forwarded message ------- ************************************ Dr. Stefanie S. Rixecker Division of Environmental Management & Design Lincoln University, Canterbury PO Box 84 Aotearoa New Zealand E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fax: 64-03-325-3841 ************************************
