Book Reviews

Degrowth and its Discontents: Part Two

Last year, a compilation of degrowth perspectives appeared in the form of a modest encyclopedia of sorts, titled Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. The short essays in this book define a number of degrowth-related terms, some easily recognized as universal concepts familiar to activists across the world, like the commons, environmental justice, and peak-oil, and others that may puzzle: conviviality, anti-utilitarianism, and post-normal science.

A movement to free time

Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream by Benjamin Hunnicutt

We are living in a time of dis-ease when the millions who are consistently working long hours pass by the millions of unemployed as ships in the night. The former, physically exhausted from overwork, share with the “chronically unemployed,” themselves psychically drained from months of fruitless search for work, the continuum of employment as the extremities – from none to too much.

Workers Against Work

It seems plausible to imagine that workers, no matter how abused they are in their workplaces, would rally around the work ethic during moments of national catastrophe. During WWII US productivity advanced as industrial workers “enlisted“ in the war effort. We have all seen those old newsreels with hundreds of workers streaming out of factories looking noble and, of course, at a brisk clip – wouldn’t you if you just spent 10 hours manufacturing war materiel?

The Courage of Philip Levine

In some countries a newly honored poet laureate would make the news. The United States is not one of those countries. Maybe this is the fault of US poets themselves. Are they simply content to cultivate their coteries, as if establishing their mutual admiration societies comprises the extent of their ambition?