neo-provincialism

tracing tendencies that attempt to ameliorate the supposed problems of urban life by implementing something of a pre-industrial provincialism within the urban pysche and/or urban fabric

[neoprovincialism]

To prevent an ecological crisis, we must become alarmed. That's when we'll act. The new Easter Island story suggests that humans may never hit the alarm.

On Easter Island, people learned to live with less and forgot what it was like to have more. Maybe that will happen to us. There's a lesson here. It's not a happy one.

As MacKinnon puts it: 'If you're waiting for an ecological crisis to persuade human beings to change their troubled relationship with nature — you could be waiting a long, long time.'

- Robert Krulwich, "What Happened On Easter Island — A New (Even Scarier) Scenario" NRP.org, December 10, 2013

[neoprovincialism]

"If we could just synchronize our sleep more closely with natural light patterns, it would become far easier to wake up. It wouldn’t be unprecedented." - Maria Konnikova, "Snoozers are, in fact, loosers," The New Yorker, December 10, 2013

[neoprovincialism]

"Before that, when we were more in the hunter gatherer style of society, people that I trust in their studies, anthropologically, tell me we didn't have violence in the rate that we've had since."

"So nonviolent communication now tries to get us back to what I think is a more natural way of communicating. I think where we've gotten is an evolutionary snag where we've gotten stuck on the basis of some unfortunate learning over 8,000 years. Nonviolent communication helps us come back to life. Back to a more natural way of living. Where our evaluations are on the basis of how needs are served. Are we meeting our needs and the needs of others? Rather than who is what or who's right, who's wrong, who's good, and who's bad. No. Are our needs getting met and if not what can we do so that everyone's needs get met? That's the language of nonviolent communication."

- Marshall Rosenberg, Founder and Director of Educational Services for the Center for Nonviolent Communication

[neoprovincialism]

Urbanites Flee China'€™s Smog for Blue Skies

China is undergoing a surprising reverse migration: As millions leave to find work in the cities, some well-educated urban dwellers are relocating to small towns. "Some become farmers here, and some spend their days home schooling their children. Their presence has transformed Dali and surrounding villages into a cross between Provence and Haight-Ashbury."

[neoprovincialism]

"I think we will see people moving back to the smaller towns, to the smaller cities, that are scaled appropriately to the energy diet of the future. To places that have a meaningful relationship with productive agricultural hinterland."

-- James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency

[neoprovincialism]

"I thought about when I was a kid. Nobody worked eight hours a day. Everybody worked two months a year: planting rice one month and harvesting the rice another month. The rest is free time. Ten months of free time. That's why people have so many festivals in Thailand. Every month they had a festival." - Jon Jandai, Founder of Pun Pun –– Center for Self-Reliance

[neoprovincialism]

From the Polis blog: In contrast to the rest of Spain, the town of Marinaleda has virtually full employment, wage equality, and communally owned land. The majority of the town’s housing is available for 15 euros per month and Marinaleda’s residents have access to a variety of social services, including free home care for the elderly, cheap nurseries and sporting facilities––all financed through co-operatively run farms and factories.

For Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, the Mayor of Marinaleda, it is as simple as this: “An agrarian revolution is necessary."

But critics say that the mayor has succeeded in "dividing up misery rather than creating wealth by promoting low-productivity farm jobs."

"Anthropologist Salvador Becera from the Center for Andalusian Studies in Seville notes that, while Sánchez Gordillo has 'brought social equity to an uneducated, economically oppressed community,' his agriculture-based vision is anachronistic. 'Right now, they can puff out their chests because the economy is in crisis,' Mr. Becera said. 'But what if they had the chance to get rich? Then who would stay in this little paradise that Sánchez Gordillo has created?'"

Polis blog reader Fra Pas writes: "I'm considering to move to Marinaleda. Can anybody give me some information how it is with EU citizens moving there (who can't speak Spanish :D )? And are there any similar communities in Europe?"

[neoprovincialism]

He studied painting and drawing at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in the early 1980s.... Soon, though, he realized that farming was his true calling. “I think people are hungering for a kind of unplugged reality,” he said. “That leads to a deeper self-understanding.”

He added: “It has a spiritual component — to what this is all about, what gives meaning to human life.” Anne Raver, "Farm Equipment That Runs on Oats" New York Times. May 15, 2013.

[neoprovincialism]

Rupert, 2013. Shot in the mud pool at Sadhana Forest India.  "Maybe it's nostalgic, but I think the yearning that so many urbanites recently have for this maybe idealistic notion of life in the country, or rural life, is a more sensual life––and I don't mean sexual, I mean sensual in terms of a full-body experience. We're sitting in front of a screen all day and the interactions we're having are these one-dimensional, screen-based relationships that have no feedback. Obviously, it's creating this wild anxiety in our culture where people are on more antidepressants and focusing drugs than ever… But I think that when you get out to the country you have this feeling that time is different and you think, 'I want my life to last longer; I want to feel the sun on my skin; and when was the last time I watched the sun go up and down in one day?'" "Five or six years ago, I wasn't ready for that removal from the energy that a city has or the access to a certain type of culture and intellectual stimulus. But I think it's just about recalibrating and asking yourself, 'What is intellectual stimulus? Is it lectures inside of a cold building, or is it the fact that you know where Venus is every night?'" 

- In conversation with Amy Franceschini of Futurefarmers

[neoprovincialism]

Image found on a grocery truck in Brooklyn, 2013. 

[neoprovincialism]

Excerpt from Ursula K. Le Guin, "A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be" in Dancing at the Edge of the World (London: Gollancz, 1989). Full text available here.

[neoprovincialism]

[neoprovincialism]

HSBC airport advertisement. Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. 2012.

[49farms]

“Jay Rosenberg speaks about Hayes Valley Farm demonstrating urban agriculture as a strategy for interim land use in San Francisco.”

An excerpt from the upcoming feature-length documentary:

Promises of Urban Agriculture

Directed by Joseph Redwood-Martinez

[berlinfarmlab-blog]

“One day, everything will be free” is a documentary about the community of the Sadhana Forest in Haiti. The director, Joseph Redwood-Martinez, writes:  ”Sadhana Forest not only makes a proposition for addressing environmental degradation and the inadequacies of foreign aid, it importantly offers very real working-example of a these propositions enacted from within a diverse and constantly evolving community.”

[neoprovincialism]

“Rather than tear down the cultural memes we’ve adored and to some degree glorified from an increasing distance for the better part of our history, why not update them? Why not rewrite our stories?” - Anastasia on the Brooklyn Grange blog

[neoprovincialism]

"While Independence [USA] is very much a dream at this point, the proposed city-theme park hybrid would bring several of Glenn [Beck's] seemingly disconnected projects into one place... The ambitious project, projected to cost over two billion dollars, has been heavily influenced by Walt Disney." - glennbeck.com "These folks that cloak themselves in patriotism, pretending that they alone can reveal the true intent of our constitution, are not our founding fathers reincarnate. They're just another fucking neighborhood association whose nostalgic utopia will fall apart the minute somebody decides to paint their house mauve." - John Stewart