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New book: Civilization, Oikos and Progress

Authors:

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Published:

From ISE alum. Atle Hesmyr in Norway.  Atle has previously translated Kropotkin’s The Great French Revolution and Bookchin’s Remaking Society into Norwegian, among other projects:

Civilization, Oikos and Progress is a collection of essays on the foundations of civilization and the various developments within western civilization since its inception in ancient Greece and all the way into modernity. It includes analyses of the agrarian basis of civilization, and draws parallels to former civilizations in the Indus valley, Mesopotamia and Egypt as well. The idea of progress and its prospects in our age is discussed in several of the essays, as well as the challenges posed by the environmental crisis and the uneven distribution between rich and poor in the world today — notably the discrepancies as regards the allocation of resources between the affluent western world and the exploited Global South. The book makes a strong case for direct democracy as a viable alternative to the present disempowerment of the public around the Globe. The highly important role of sustainable agriculture and agro-ecology as the fundamental basis of any civilization is discussed throughout the book, especially with respect to the prospects of retaining a viable civilization in our era and the corresponding prospects for further progress — in the western world as well as in the Global South and the East.