Two days of conversations about ‘the commons’ on an island in the heart of Stockholm set me thinking about what it means to reclaim ‘subsistence’ in the 21st century.
Category: Writings
In the fourth issue of Dark Mountain, I published this conversation with the Mexican activist and intellectual Gustavo Esteva.
Categories
The Regeneration of Meaning
The consequences of an economic crisis can both lead to and be made worse by the crisis of meaning experienced by those whose lives it has derailed. Is it also possible for actions on the terrain of meaning to help stem and even reverse the consequences?
Categories
Organisations That Matter
On the experience of creating organisations that are embedded within a community.
On the emergence of a new kind of spatial agent, responding pragmatically to the constrictions and precarities of post-crisis living.
Categories
Words Which Matter to People
It is the second day of my journey around Europe, a journey in search of resilience, and I am in a park near the centre of Helsinki, asking the locals whether they can help me understand the meaning of sisu, a word that is said to be central to Finnish culture and impossible to translate.
Categories
Three Travellers
“I don’t think I was given the best careers advice in school,” he says. “There was no future in making things, they told us. If you were bright, you should go to college and study something like law.”
Categories
The Breadline
The breadline runs through the middle of the Kallio district of Helsinki. On Wednesdays and Fridays, when the Hursti Charitable Association’s regular food distributions take place, queues build up along the pavement of Helsinginkatu all morning. Once a month, there is a special distribution for students.
Categories
The Dark Shapes Ahead
The dark shapes ahead are islands. Beyond them the sea shines and the sky seems a soft reflection of its light, and beyond both of these, the faded darkness of the next line of islands. This goes on for hours.
Published in Despatches From the Invisible Revolution (PediaPress). 1. Rioters smash the windows of banks, the drum beats towards war with Iran, protests fuelled by social media take over the streets…