>Buying locally is considered one of the advantages of bioregionalism,
>enabling regions to exist and prosper as units. Do I see a can of worms
>opening here?
an interesting article from Mother Jones by Walter Truett Anderson,
"There's no going back to nature" at
http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/SO96/anderson.html. An
excerpt:
"Bioregionalism, too, is a useful idea in some contexts -- such as
governance of air basins. But it becomes pure nonsense when people
begin to advocate it -- as Kirkpatrick Sale does in his book Dwellers
in the Land -- as a solution to be imposed on the whole world, by
relocating people from the cities to rural areas where they would
then take up ecologically correct lifestyles. There are indeed people
who remain in one place, don't get hooked into the global economy,
and rarely travel -- all parts of the bioregional answer -- and
that's a perfectly fine way to live. The trouble is in turning it
into a universal mandate and a political agenda -- a crusade to get
everybody living that way. Not everybody does, not everybody wants
to, and not everybody can.
"Even the people who talk bioregionalism don't live that way -- and
don't seem to notice the gap between what they say and how they live.
Some years back, Sierra magazine ran an interview with poet Gary
Snyder, in which he advised all of us: 'Quit moving. Stay where you
are...become a paysan,
paisano, peón.' He then proceeded directly, with no evident sense of
irony, to telling of his recent trips to China and Alaska. A bit
further on he added: 'I've been traveling eight or 10 weeks a year,
doing lectures and readings at universities and community centers
around the United States. I'm
able to keep a sense of what's going on in the country that way.'
"I don't think this makes Snyder a hypocrite. I think he's a
perfectly honest guy who would rather recycle green platitudes for
admiring listeners than think hard about what it really means to live
in a global civilization. "
etc.
jt
ps. hey, at least I didn't cite Ron Bailey's piece in Reason about
neo-luddites at http://www.reason.com/0107/fe.rb.rage.html . . . .
:-)
>-Tc
>Anthony R. S. Chiaviello, Ph.D.
>Assistant Professor, Professional Writing
>Department of English
>University of Houston-Downtown
>One Main Street
>Houston, TX 77002-0001
>713.221.8520 / 713.868.3979
>"Question Reality"
>
>> ----------
>> From: Jim Tantillo[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 4:15 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Local Environment
>>
>> >Can't really see "locationist" as in the same league as racist. Maybe I'm
>> >locationally biased, but I hold nothing against other locations (wouldn't
>> >want my kids to marry anyone from another location however).
>>
>> Hmmm. Maybe there is a serious issue here. If one considers
>> bioregionalism, for example, and in its more extreme guises, say,
>> then perhaps a strong attachment to place/location could actually be
>> a form of "placism," leading to all sorts of illiberal
>> discrimination. E.G. buying locally, that kind of thing.
>>
>> :-)
>>
> > jt
>>
>
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