As they have delivered work from labor and industrial logics, artisans have likewise redeemed materials from their status and calculus as “inputs”.
Around the world is a crisis of modernization in which younger generations do not want to inherit the farming and other artisanal work of their families. At the same time, a subculture is burgeoning of young people and ex-office workers who want to work with land, agriculture, food, and traditional production methods.
There is no justification for the throughput of materials involved in junking cars less than 20 years old and encouraging people to buy new electric/hybrid. Even if the old car are purportedly “recycled”, metal recycling produces really terrible jobs. As does mining (often illegal) for e.g. cobalt and lithium needed for electric car batteries.
We cannot wait for or depend on government and experts to save us. The economy is made of our labor, intelligence, and skills. It belongs to us and we can and must take care of it.
Supermarkets are machines to betray farmers, consumers, and ecology. Farmers need reliable sales at the highest possible prices. Supermarkets buy whatever they can find at
To be an ecological society we have to stop the whole habit of living despite nature. We must take our pleasure and inspiration in seasonality and ecological particularity.
In 2018 you can build your own website in 5 minutes, with no technical skills. You can edit video in your phone. You can do
I’m hanging out with my friend Aimée Schreck at the ETH World Food Systems Summer School, discussing symbols and certification schemes for packaged food. Her
So the topic of this session is innovation and social change in the food system. I’m going to start with some examples of innovation. There
A few days ago I was sitting at Maso A Kobliha in Prague (at the recommendation of the excellent Taste of Prague Blog), savoring a plate
Interview with Stefan Schridde, founder of the Murks Center against planned obsolescence. Murks means “botch”, or “bad work”. “Products designed with planned obsolescence don’t meet the needs of the society.” He sees cheap consumer goods as “lonely” and the alternative is a “durable” future.
Dinner at Zagreus. Best €36 I’ve ever spent. Every bite was so delightful. Zagreus is an art gallery owned by a chef. Every exhibit inspires
1. Why Street Protest
• a fundamental right and contribution to democracy is to express our dissent
• collective manifestation of dissent creates news, encourages others, threatens elites
• the way to win (reforms) is to raise the costs of the current way of doing things until it becomes in the interests of the elites to do it our way
• threat/promise to take over
“You have presented things I have never seen in the same chain of meanings.”
Lecture to the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 5 February 2015.
Historical evidence insists that oppression on its own does not produce social movement reaction. In places with little culture of resistance, there will be little social movement reaction to social problems, or occasional outbursts may not be sustained. San Francisco has had, regularly and recently over the last decades, a series of effective and sustained street manifestations, so there are people, organizations, networks, systems, etc. to make the next ones bigger and more robust.
If Disneyland had a farm (and they probably do} it would be The Grounds. It’s farm aesthetic as money machine. And swarming with spenders sucked
So what is the cosmology of food sovereignty? Food is a community, not a commodity… But how do we turn this idea into culture? Alberto Melucci explains how it is that we create culture… through creating new spaces, identities, meanings, identities, commitments….
Lecture to “Plants and the Environment” course, University of Sydney, 7 October 2014.
Bibliography with notes about readings mentioned in the lecture. Alternatives need to focus not just on innovating, but on decommodifying and building community.
“Composting and growing carrots is a nice start, but we need to get rid of the growth economy, make the global economic system work to meet needs, and replace capitalism with a different economic system that works for people. Most Green people are stuck at the level of compost heaps, which don’t have a chance of saving us. We don’t want to be a society full of compost heaps heading for disaster. Growing carrots locally is just the first step to changing the economy.”
Andrew’s comparison of the global consolidation of media with the global consolidation of food, gave me an idea! I’ve been applying the model of the
As a budding Australian, I learned this week that right-wierdo Tony Abbott’s budget cuts are spurious. The agenda of the cuts is to eliminate the
The prison industrial complex is based on the insight that bodies can be made profitable without their consent. You just need the right regulatory framework.
Both vertical and horizontal integration being tedious, the new business model is getting out of the business of making things and into the business of
This is my second project for the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, with whom I’m just thrilled to be working. The piece is co-authored with Nick
LAB lab A Lab for Interventions, Innovations, Iterations to facilitate: Local Food, Objects, and Quality of Life – Artisan Economics and Meaningful Work – Biospheric
The first map is a graphic representation of my analysis of the US movement, and the other denotes the comparable elements existing in AU (to
Australia’s state government of Victoria has pledged $25 million in subsidy to Coca-Cola/Amatil to keep the SPC/Ardona produce cannery open in Shepparton. The federal government
Gold bugs, income-tax-is-illegalists, illuminati cogniscentis, federal reserve suspicionists … get a bad rap from the left, who rebuke these analyses as “conspiracy theory”. We are
I was invited to speak at Design your Day Job, organized by &Company, part of Vivid Ideas 2013. 25 May 2013 Sydney Australia I’m new to
Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. 2009: Penguin Books. If the regard that many people now have
Musicians, hackers, and writers are in mess right now, because they love making stuff and they want to share it, but the internet makes everything
I’ve been talking with the awesome Charles Heying, author of Brew to Bikes (2010) about naming this movement. Is it: slow: “seeking to do everything at
In early 2010 we’d been living in Argentina for a few months and I developed a cough. I wasn’t sick, I felt fine (anyway when
Already exhausted from along and awkward night, as my guests exclaimed about my fruit tart, I cast about for conversation. Turning to my friend’s Russian
Amory Starr Luis A. Fernandez Christian Scholl 2011: New York University Press Don’t mind the press’ stupid title, the proper one is: Out of Order:
At the pretty University I sometimes walk through, I pass one of the campus’ three gyms, noticing its advertising for membership. I’ve heard students describing
I grew up on the phone. My mom, a sole proprietor, expected me to help with whatever was on. The San Francisco phone book was
I haven’t been on a university campus in a long time. But I just moved near one, and my daily rounds often take it across
Participatory democracy has been studied as an auxiliary to state processes and as an institutional and cultural part of social movements. This paper examines the
I started teaching a course on this topic in 1995. At that time, the concept was so extremely uninteresting (both to the political economists and
No one existed for them who could not be governed by their intentions, Patricia Wiliams, The Alchemy of Race & Rights M.I.T. has recently discovered
I’ve been writing about the ravages of globalization and peoples’ ferocious rejection of its conditions for a long time. I researched and wrote about the
J. K. Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Politics. 2006: U Minnesota. This book finds a new way of thinking about and working on economic development based on
Being on the Other End(s) of Things… By Amory Starr Progressive Planning: The Magazine of Planners Network Spring 2007 Faith is mad at me today.
This is written in the context of my summary of social movements literature questions: how shall we understand politicized consumption theoretically. for example, Melucci requires
13 myths about globalization this is a very simple lecture. it is not about my research. it is a simple summary of the perspective of
J. K. Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Politics. 2006: U Minnesota. This book finds a new way of thinking about and working on economic development based on
biotech lecture © amory starr 2005 three kinds of biotechnology biotech crops biotech pharmaceuticals bio-prospecting/biopiracy/biopatenting four kinds of biotech crops increased nutrition/shelf life/freeze tolerant/consistent size/ease
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