1.
Alternative culture
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Alternative culture is a type of culture that exists outside or on the fringes of mainstream or popular culture, usually under the domain of one or more subcultures. Compare with the politically charged term, counterculture. The concept of culture is rooted in the development of new views of adolescence during the 1950s in Western Europe. The reasons for rejection of traditional social codes and attitudes were usually personal. This disenchantment is in reference to a range of things. The result is an evolution of an externally displayed attitude. The factors that necessitate the creation of a subculture often forge the elements that make it unique, during the point that these subcultures enjoy their peak, they are simultaneously the subject of much negative attention from the media. However, it is this publicity which often drew young people into each subculture, usually. Due to subcultures of this nature being in a constant change and they often develop an old school crowd who tend to resist polluting elements and carry on as before until inevitably evolving themselves. South Africa has a tradition of alternative culture. From the Creole fusion experience of the 17th and 18th centuries, to recent experiments in alternative living
2.
Autonomous building
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Advocates of autonomous building describe advantages that include reduced environmental impacts, increased security, and lower costs of ownership. Some cited advantages satisfy tenets of green building, not independence per se, Off-grid buildings often rely very little on civil services and are therefore safer and more comfortable during civil disaster or military attacks. Most of the research and published articles concerning autonomous building focus on residential homes. These houses can be built now and it is possible to build a house with no bills for the same price as a conventional house, but it would be smaller. In the 1970s, a group of activists and engineers calling themselves the New Alchemists believed the warnings of imminent resource depletion and starvation, the New Alchemists were famous for the depth of research effort placed in their projects. Using conventional construction techniques, they designed a series of bioshelter projects and they published the plans for all of these, with detailed design calculations and blueprints. The Ark used wind based water pumping and electricity, and was self-contained in food production, as of January 2010, the successor organization to the New Alchemists has a web page up as the New Alchemy Institute. The PEI Ark has been abandoned and partially renovated several times, the 1990s saw the development of Earthships, similar in intent to the Ark project, but organized as a for-profit venture, with construction details published in a series of 3 books by Mike Reynolds. The building material is filled with earth. This makes a wall that has large amounts of thermal mass, berms are placed on exposed surfaces to further increase the houses temperature stability. The water system starts with water, processed for drinking, then washing, then plant watering, then toilet flushing. The cisterns are placed and used as thermal masses, Power, including electricity, heat and water heating, is from solar power. One major bank building in the Netherlands was constructed to be autonomous, as an architect or engineer becomes more concerned with the disadvantages of transportation networks, and dependence on distant resources, their designs tend to include more autonomous elements. The historic path to autonomy was a concern for secure sources of heat, power, water, a nearly parallel path toward autonomy has been to start with a concern for environmental impacts, which cause disadvantages. Autonomous buildings can increase security and reduce environmental impacts by using resources that would otherwise be wasted. Autonomy often dramatically reduces the costs and impacts of networks that serve the building, other impacted resources, such as oil reserves and the retention of the local watershed, can often be cheaply conserved by thoughtful designs. Autonomous buildings are usually energy-efficient in operation, and therefore cost-efficient, but they may substitute energy production or other techniques to avoid diminishing returns in extreme conservation. An autonomous structure is not always environmentally friendly, the goal of independence from support systems is associated with, but not identical to, other goals of environmentally responsible green building. First and fundamentally, independence is a matter of degree, living within an autonomous shelter may also require that party to make sacrifices with lifestyle choices, personal behavior, and social expectations to name a few
3.
Buy Nothing Day
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Buy Nothing Day is an international day of protest against consumerism. Buy Nothing Day was founded in Vancouver by artist Ted Dave and subsequently promoted by Adbusters magazine, the first Buy Nothing Day was organized in Canada in September 1992 as a day for society to examine the issue of over-consumption. In 1997, it was moved to the Friday after American Thanksgiving, also called Black Friday, in 2000, some advertisements by Adbusters promoting Buy Nothing Day were denied advertising time by almost all major television networks except for CNN. Soon, campaigns started appearing in the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Austria, Germany, New Zealand, Japan, participation now includes more than 65 nations. Namely, by destroying their credit card by cutting it with the scissors, free, non-commercial street parties Sit-in Zombie walk, Participant zombies wander around shopping malls or other consumer havens with a blank stare. When asked what they are doing participants describe Buy Nothing Day, whirl-mart, Participants silently steer their shopping carts around a shopping mall or store in a long, baffling conga line without putting anything in the carts or actually making any purchases. Buy Nothing Day hike, Rather than celebrating consumerism by shopping, participants celebrate The Earth, Buy Nothing Critical Mass, As the monthly Critical Mass bicycle ride often falls on this day or near, rides in some cities acknowledge and celebrate Buy Nothing Day. Buy Nothing Day paddle along the San Francisco waterfront and this event is promoted by the Bay Area Sea Kayakers to kayak along the notoriously consumptive San Francisco waterfront. The Buy Nothing Coat Exchange began in Rhode Island and became part of the Buy Nothing Day some twenty years ago, coupling the two events was the brainchild of Greg Gerritt, an expert in environmental studies and long term activist in consumerism and global warming. Similar Winter Coat Exchanges take place on Buy Nothing Day in Kentucky, Utah, coats are collected throughout the month of November from anyone who wants to donate and brought to various locations within each state. On the day after Thanksgiving, many opt out of the Black Friday madness to donate and/or volunteer, on that day, anyone who needs a winter coat is welcome to exchange one or just take one. The lines in Providence RI form early and are long which punctuates the need that is prevalent in many cities, the combination of the two events has become a welcomed tradition in RI. Adbusters in 2011 renamed the event Occupy Xmas, a reference to the Occupy Movement, Buy Nothing Day was first joined with Adbusters Buy Nothing Christmas campaign. The union of these calls for a Buy Nothing Day to kick off a season of supporting local economy. The Buy Nothing Day site through the Adbusters Media Foundation BND UK information and support for UK campaigners
4.
Commodity fetishism
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As such, commodity fetishism transforms the subjective, abstract aspects of economic value into objective, real things that people believe have intrinsic value. Therefore, the exchange of commodities obscures the true economic character of the human relations of production. It is nothing but the social relation between men themselves which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy we must take flight into the misty realm of religion. There the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, so it is in the world of commodities with the products of mens hands. I call this the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as commodities, marx borrowed the concept of fetishism from The Cult of Fetish Gods by Charles de Brosses, which proposed a materialist theory of the origin of religion. Marxs first mention of fetishism appeared in 1842, in his response to an article by Karl Heinrich Hermes. Hermes agreed with the German philosopher Hegel in regarding fetishism as the crudest form of religion, marx dismissed that argument, and Hermess definition of religion as that which elevates man above sensuous appetites. Therefore, the appetite of the fetish worshipper smashes the fetish when it ceases to be of service. Because their social co-existence, and its meaning, is expressed through market exchange, therefore, social relations are continually mediated and expressed with objects. In a capitalist society, the perception that the market is an independent, sentient entity, is how buyers, sellers. The work contract is the mask that obscures the economic exploitation of the difference between the paid for the labour of the worker, and the new value created by the labour of the worker. The buyers and the sellers determine and establish the economic and financial relationships, and afterwards compare the prices in, in History and Class Consciousness, György Lukács started from the theory of commodity fetishism for his development of reification as the principal obstacle to class consciousness. The economist Michael Perelman critically examined the systems from which arose intellectual property rights. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis critically reviewed the belief systems of the theory of human capital, knowledge, as the philosophic means to a better life, is contrasted with capitalist knowledge, produced to generate income and profit. Such commodification detaches knowledge and information from the person, because, as property, they are independent. The sociologists Frank Furedi and Ulrich Beck studied the development of commodified types of knowledge in the culture of risk prevention in the management of money. Hence, the fetishization of financial risk as a sum of money is a reification that distorts the perception of the true nature of financial risk
5.
Commune
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In addition to the communal economy, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and ecological living have become important core principles for many communes. There are many contemporary intentional communities all over the world, a list of which can be found at the Fellowship for Intentional Community, for the usually larger-scale, political entities in communist political theory, see socialist communes, which are similar but distinct social organizations. Some communes, such as the ashrams of the Vedanta Society or the Theosophical commune Lomaland, formed around spiritual leaders, for others, the glue is simply the desire for a more shared, sociable lifestyle. Moreover, some find it is more economical to live communally. The central characteristics of communes, or core principles that define communes, have expressed in various forms over the years. At the start of the 1970s, The New Communes author Ron E. Roberts classified communes as a subclass of a category of Utopias. Roberts three listed items were, first, egalitarianism – that communes specifically rejected hierarchy or graduations of social status as being necessary to social order. Second, human scale – that members of some communes saw the scale of society as it was organised as being too industrialized. And third, that communes were consciously anti-bureaucratic, twenty five years later, Dr. Sharing everyday life and facilities, a commune is an idealized form of family, being a new sort of primary group. Commune members have emotional bonds to the group rather than to any sub-group. With the simple definition of a commune as a community with 100% income sharing. Some of these are institutions such as abbeys and monasteries. Many communes are part of the New Age movement, in Germany, a large number of the intentional communities define themselves as communes and there is a network of political communes called Kommuja with about 30 member groups. Germany has a tradition of intentional communities going back to the groups inspired by the principles of Lebensreform in the 19th century. Later, about 100 intentional communities were started in the Weimar Republic after World War I, in the 1960s, there was a resurgence of communities calling themselves communes, starting with the Kommune 1 in Berlin, followed by Kommune 2 and Kommune 3 in Wolfsburg. Today, there are dozens of urban communes growing in the cities of Israel, the urban kibbutzim are smaller and more anarchist. Most of the communes in Israel emphasize social change, education. Some of the communes have members who are graduates of zionist-socialist youth movements, like HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed, HaMahanot HaOlim
6.
Conspicuous consumption
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Conspicuous consumption is the spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury goods and services to publicly display economic power—of the income or of the accumulated wealth of the buyer. To the conspicuous consumer, such a display of discretionary economic power is a means of either attaining or maintaining a given social status. That among such people, displays of wealth are used to combat the impression of poverty. Conspicuous compassion, the practice of publicly donating great sums of money to charity to enhance the prestige of the donor, is sometimes described as a type of conspicuous consumption. Supporting interpretations and explanations of contemporary conspicuous consumption are presented in Consumer Culture, lury, Consumer Culture and Modernity, by D. Slater, Symbolic Exchange and Death, by Jean Baudrillard, and Spent, Sex, Evolution, and the Secrets of Consumerism, by Geoffrey Miller. In the article Veblen, Bourdieu, and Conspicuous Consumption, A. Self-worth – In the book Income, Saving, shelter and transport – In the U. S. Prestige – In the article Status Consumption in Consumer Behaviour, Scale Development and Validation, moreover, in the article Status Brands, Examining the Effects of Non-product-related Brand Associations on Status and Conspicuous Consumption, A. OCass and H. Frost said that sociologists often incorrectly used the terms status consumption and conspicuous consumption as interchangeable, in a later study, OCass and Frost determined that, as sociologic constructs, the terms status consumption and conspicuous consumption denote different sociologic behaviours. One downside of this search for status is that purchases of positional goods may at a social level be self-defeating due to external effects. In the case of conspicuous consumption, taxes upon luxury goods diminish societal expenditures on high-status goods, when utility is derived directly from accumulation of assets, this lowers the dead weight loss associated with inheritance taxes and raises the optimal rate of inheritance taxation. In place of luxury taxes, the economist Robert H, another option is the redistribution of wealth, either by means of an incomes policy or by progressive taxation
7.
Consumerism
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Consumerism is a social and economic order and ideology that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. In economics, consumerism may refer to policies which emphasise consumption. In this sense, consumerism expresses the idea not of one man, one voice, but of one dollar, one voice, the term consumerism has several definitions. These definitions may not be related to other and confusingly. One sense of the term relates to efforts to support consumers interests, by the early 1970s it had become the accepted term for the field and began to be used in these ways, Consumerism is the concept that consumers should be informed decision makers in the marketplace. Practices such as product testing make consumers informed, Consumerism is the concept that the marketplace itself is responsible for ensuring social justice through fair economic practices. Consumer protection policies and laws compel manufacturers to make products safe, Consumerism refers to the field of studying, regulating, or interacting with the marketplace. The consumer movement is the movement which refers to all actions. While the above definitions were becoming established, other people using the term consumerism to mean high levels of consumption. This definition has gained popularity since the 1970s and began to be used in ways, Consumerism is the selfish and frivolous collecting of products. In protest against this, some people promote anti-consumerism and advocate simple living, Consumerism is a force from the marketplace which destroys individuality and harms society. It is related to globalization and in protest against this some people promote the anti-globalization movement, vance Packard worked to change the meaning of the term consumerism from a positive word about consumer practices to a negative word meaning excessive materialism and waste. The ads for his 1960 book The Waste Makers prominently featured the word consumerism in a negative way, the consumer society emerged in the late seventeenth century and intensified throughout the eighteenth century. This included sugar, tobacco, tea and coffee, these were grown on vast plantations in the Caribbean as demand steadily rose. In particular, sugar consumption in Britain during the course of the 18th century increased by a factor of 20, critics argue that colonialism was indeed a driver of consumerism, but they would place the emphasis on the supply rather than the demand as the motivating factor. An increasing mass of exotic imports as well as domestic manufactures had to be consumed by the number of people who had been consuming far less than was becoming necessary. That idea was produced later, more or less strategically in order to intensify consumption domestically, marketplaces expanded as shopping centres, such as the New Exchange, opened in 1609 by Robert Cecil in the Strand. Shops started to become important as places for Londoners to meet and socialise, restoration London also saw the growth of luxury buildings as advertisements for social position with speculative architects like Nicholas Barbon and Lionel Cranfield
8.
Criticism of advertising
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Advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade an audience to purchase products, ideals or services. While advertising can be seen as necessary for growth, it is not without social costs. Advertising increasingly invades public spaces, such as schools, which critics argue is a form of child exploitation. Advertising frequently uses psychological pressure on the consumer, which may be harmful. Criticism of advertising is closely linked with criticism of media and often interchangeable, Advertising occupies public space and more and more invades the private sphere of people. According to Georg Franck, It is becoming harder to escape from advertising, public space is increasingly turning into a gigantic billboard for products of all kind. The aesthetical and political consequences cannot yet be foreseen, hanno Rauterberg in the German newspaper Die Zeit calls advertising a new kind of dictatorship that cannot be escaped. There are ads on beach sand and restroom walls, with the introduction of the shorter 15-second-spot the total amount of ads increased even more. Ads are not only placed in breaks but also into sports telecasts during the game itself and they flood the Internet, a growing market. Advertising precedes the showing of films at cinemas including lavish ‘film shorts’ produced by such as Microsoft or DaimlerChrysler. The largest advertising agencies have begun working to co-produce programming in conjunction with the largest media firms, opponents equate the growing amount of advertising with a tidal wave and restrictions with damming the flood. Kalle Lasn, one of the most outspoken critics of advertising, considers advertising the most prevalent, every day an estimated 12 billion display ads,3 million radio commercials and more than 200,000 television commercials are dumped into North America’s collective unconscious. In the course of their life, the average American watches three years of advertising on television, video games incorporate products into their content. Special commercial patient channels in hospitals and public figures sporting temporary tattoos, a method unrecognisable as advertising is so-called ‘’guerrilla marketing’’ which is spreading ‘buzz’ about a new product in target audiences. Cash-strapped U. S. cities offer police cars for advertising, companies buy the names of sports stadiums for advertising. The Hamburg soccer Volkspark stadium first became the AOL Arena and then the HSH Nordbank Arena, the Stuttgart Neckarstadion became the Mercedes-Benz Arena, the Dortmund Westfalenstadion is the Signal Iduna Park. The former SkyDome in Toronto was renamed Rogers Centre, whole subway stations in Berlin are redesigned into product halls and exclusively leased to a company. Düsseldorf has multi-sensorial adventure transit stops equipped with loudspeakers and systems that spread the smell of a detergent, swatch used beamers to project messages on the Berlin TV-tower and Victory column, which was fined because it was done without a permit
9.
Culture jamming
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Culture jamming is a tactic used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. It attempts to expose the methods of domination of a society to foster progressive change. Culture jamming is a form of subvertising, many culture jams are intended to expose questionable political assumptions behind commercial culture. Tactics include re-figuring logos, fashion statements, and product images as a means to challenge the idea of whats cool, Culture jamming often entails using mass media to produce ironic or satirical commentary about itself, commonly using the original mediums communication method. Culture jamming is employed as a reaction against social conformity, prominent examples of culture jamming include the adulteration of billboard advertising by the Billboard Liberation Front, and contemporary artists such as Ron English. Culture jamming may involve street parties and protests, the term was coined in 1984 by Don Joyce of the sound collage band Negativland, with the release of their album JamCon 84. The phrase culture jamming comes from the idea of radio jamming, in one of the tracks of the album, they stated, According to Vince Carducci, although the term was coined by Negativland, culture jamming can be traced as far back as the 1950s. One particularly influential group that was active in Europe was the Situationist International and was led by Guy Debord, the SI asserted that in the past humans dealt with life and the consumer market directly. They argued that this way of life was slowly deteriorating as a direct result of the new modern way of life. Through playful activity, individuals could create situations, the opposite of spectacles, the SI first compared its own activities to radio jamming in 1968, when it proposed the use of guerrilla communication within mass media to sow confusion within the dominant culture. In 1985, the Guerrilla Girls formed to expose discrimination and corruption in the artworld, for example, T-Mobile utilized the Liverpool street underground station to host a flashmob to sell their mobile services. Culture jamming is a form of disruption that plays on the emotions of viewers and bystanders, Jammers want to disrupt the unconscious thought process that takes place when most consumers view a popular advertising and bring about a détournement. Activists that utilize this tactic are counting on their meme to pull on the strings of people. The reactions that most cultural jammers are hoping to evoke are behavioral change, there are four emotions that activists often want viewers to feel. These emotions – shock, shame, fear, and anger – are believed to be the catalysts for social change, the basic unit in which a message is transmitted in culture jamming is the meme. Memes are condensed images that stimulate visual, verbal, musical, or behavioral associations that people can easily imitate and transmit to others. The term meme was coined and first popularized by geneticist Richard Dawkins, but later used by critics such as Douglas Rushkoff. Memes are seen as genes that can jump from outlet to outlet, Culture jammers will often use common symbols such as the McDonalds golden arches or Nike swoosh to engage people and force them to think about their eating habits or fashion sense
10.
Degrowth
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Degrowth is a political, economic, and social movement based on ecological economics, anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideas. It is also considered an economic strategy responding to the limits-to-growth dilemma. Key to the concept of degrowth is that reducing consumption does not require individual martyring or a decrease in well-being, there is a fixed supply of non-renewable resources, such as petroleum, and these resources will inevitably be depleted. Renewable resources can also be depleted if extracted at unsustainable rates over extended periods, for example, this has occurred with caviar production in the Caspian Sea. There is much concern as to how growing demand for these resources will be met as supplies decrease, many organizations and governments look to energy technologies such as biofuels, solar cells, and wind turbines to meet the demand gap after peak oil. Others have argued that none of the alternatives could effectively replace versatility and portability of oil, authors of the book Techno-Fix criticize technological optimists for overlooking the limitations of technology in solving agricultural and social challenges arising from growth. Proponents of degrowth argue that demand is the only way of permanently closing the demand gap. For renewable resources, demand, and therefore production, must also be brought down to levels that prevent depletion and are environmentally healthy, moving toward a society that is not dependent on oil is seen as essential to avoiding societal collapse when non-renewable resources are depleted. The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earths ecosystems and it compares human demand with planet Earths ecological capacity to regenerate. It represents the amount of productive land and sea area needed to regenerate the resources a human population consumes and to absorb. According to a 2005 Global Footprint Network report, inhabitants of high-income countries live off of 6.4 global hectares, for example, while each inhabitant of Bangladesh lives off of what they produce from 0.56 gHa, a North American requires 12.5 gHa. Each inhabitant of North America uses 22.3 times as much land as a Bangladeshi, according to the same report, the average number of global hectares per person was 2.1, while current consumption levels have reached 2.7 hectares per person. In order for the population to attain the living standards typical of European countries. In order for economic equality to be achieved with the current available resources. The eventual reduction of all available resources would lead to a reduction in consumption. Controlled reduction of consumption would reduce the trauma of this change assuming no technological changes increase the carrying capacity. Degrowth thought is in opposition to all forms of productivism and it is, thus, opposed to the current form of sustainable development. While the concern for sustainability does not contradict degrowth, sustainable development is rooted in mainstream development ideas that aim to increase capitalist growth and consumption
11.
Do it yourself
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Do it yourself is the method of building, modifying, or repairing things without the direct aid of experts or professionals. DIY behavior can be triggered by various motivations previously categorized as marketplace motivations, the term do-it-yourself has been associated with consumers since at least 1912 primarily in the domain of home improvement and maintenance activities. Subsequently, the term DIY has taken on a meaning that covers a wide range of skill sets. DIY is associated with the alternative rock, punk rock, and indie rock music scenes, indymedia networks, pirate radio stations. In this context, DIY is related to the Arts and Crafts movement, italian archaeologists unearthed the ruins of a 6th-century BC Greek structure in southern Italy that came with detailed assembly instructions and is being called an ancient IKEA building. Professor Christopher Smith, director of the British School at Rome and it looks as if someone was instructing others how to mass-produce components and put them together in this way. Much like the instruction booklets, various sections of the building were inscribed with coded symbols showing how the pieces slotted together. The characteristics of these inscriptions indicate they date back to around the 6th century BC, the building was built by Greek artisans coming from the Spartan colony of Taranto in Apulia. The philosopher Alan Watts reflected a sentiment, In the 1970s, DIY spread through the North American population of college-. In part, this movement involved the renovation of affordable, rundown older homes, but it also related to various projects expressing the social and environmental vision of the 1960s and early 1970s. The first Catalog, and its successors, used a definition of the term tools. There were informational tools, such as books, professional journals, courses, classes, there were specialized, designed items, such as carpenters and masons tools, garden tools, welding equipment, chainsaws, fiberglass materials and so on, even early personal computers. The designer J. Baldwin acted as editor to include such items, the Catalogs publication both emerged from and spurred the great wave of experimentalism, convention-breaking, and do-it-yourself attitude of the late 1960s. Often copied, the Catalog appealed to a wide cross-section of people in North America and had a broad influence, for decades, magazines such as Popular Mechanics and Mechanix Illustrated offered a way for readers to keep current on useful practical skills and techniques. DIY home improvement books began to flourish in the 1970s, first created as collections of magazine articles, an early, extensive line of DIY how-to books was created by Sunset Books, based upon previously published articles from their magazine, Sunset, based in California. Time-Life, Better Homes and Gardens, and other publishers soon followed suit, in the mid-1990s, DIY home-improvement content began to find its way onto the World Wide Web. HouseNet was the earliest bulletin-board style site where users could share information, homeTips. com, established in early 1995, was among the first Web-based sites to deliver free extensive DIY home-improvement content created by expert authors. Since the late 1990s, DIY has exploded on the Web through thousands of sites, in the 1970s, when home video came along, DIY instructors quickly grasped its potential for demonstrating processes by audio-visual means
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DIY ethic
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DIY ethic refers to the ethic of self-sufficiency through completing tasks without the aid of a paid expert. Literally meaning do it yourself, the DIY ethic promotes the idea that anyone is capable of performing a variety of rather than relying on paid specialists. The DIY ethic requires that the adherent seeks out the required to complete a given task. The term can refer to a variety of disciplines, including home improvement, rather than belittling or showing disdain for those who engage in manual labor or skilled crafts, DIY champions the average individual seeking such knowledge and expertise. In the punk subculture, the DIY ethic is tied to punk ideology and it espouses the rejection of consumer culture, using existing systems or existing processes that would foster dependence on established societal structures. According to the aesthetic, one can express oneself and produce moving. Arguably the earliest example of this attitude was the music scene of the 1970s. Since many venues tend to shy away from experimental music, houses. Riot Grrrl, associated with feminism, also adopted the core values of the DIY punk ethic by leveraging creative ways of communication through zines. Adherents of the DIY punk ethic can also work collectively, for example, punk impresario David Fergusons CD Presents was a DIY concert production, recording studio, and record label network. The German punk band Mono für Alle, perfected the mass production of the self-made DIY album. Their album included a wooden cover and sold over 6000 units from their website. The DIY punk ethic also applies to simple living, such as. Sewing, repairing, or modifying clothing rather than buying new clothes, reclaiming recyclable products by dumpster diving. Some educators also engage in DIY teaching techniques, sometimes referred to as Edupunk, DIY music has its origins in the mid 1970s punk rock scene. It developed as a way to circumnavigate the mainstream music industry, in 2014, speaking about the 80s and 90s, Steve Albini told of the difficulties of getting record and played on the radio, saying So these independent bands had to be resourceful. They’d built their own infrastructure of independent clubs, promoters, fanzines, DIY music bands do everything themselves or with independent collaborators, from album production to marketing and communication. This choice primarily reflects a need to emphasize its independence in relation to big record labels, advances in technology and lowering costs have progressively made it easier for bands to be independent
13.
Ecovillage
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Ecovillages are traditional or intentional communities whose goal is to become more socially, culturally, economically and ecologically sustainable. Ecovillages are consciously designed through locally owned, participatory processes to regenerate, most range from a population of 50 to 150 individuals, although some are smaller, and traditional ecovillages are often much larger. Larger ecovillages often exist as networks of smaller subcommunities, ecovillagers are united by shared ecological, social-economic and cultural-spiritual values. Ecovillages offer small-scale communities with ecological impact or regenerative impacts as an alternative. However, such communities often cooperate with peer villages in networks of their own and this model of collective action is similar to that of Ten Thousand Villages, which supports the fair trade of goods worldwide. In 1991, Robert Gilman set out a definition of an ecovillage that became standard for many years and this is clearly a tall order. In fact, using a strict interpretation of this definition, especially with regards to “harmlessly integrated”, Ecovillages are therefore better thought of as communities striving towards these ideals rather than actualised utopias. In this view, ecovillages are seen as an ongoing process and they often start off with a focus on one of the four dimensions of sustainability, e. g. ecology, but evolve into holistic models for restoration. Ecovillages have developed in recent years as technology has improved so they have more sophisticated structures as noted by Baydoun, the ecovillage movement began to coalesce at the annual autumn conference of Findhorn, in Scotland, in 1995. The conference was called, Ecovillages and Sustainable Communities, and conference organizers turned away hundreds of applicants, according to Ross Jackson, somehow they had struck a chord that resonated far and wide. Thus became part of the language of the Cultural Creatives, after that conference, many intentional communities, including Findhorn, began calling themselves ecovillages, giving birth to a new movement. Gaia Trust, Denmark, agreed to fund the network for its first five years, today, there are self-identified ecovillages in over 70 countries on six continents. The principles on which ecovillages rely can be applied to urban and rural settings, as well as to developing, advocates seek a sustainable lifestyle for inhabitants with a minimum of trade outside the local area, or ecoregion. Many advocates also seek independence from existing infrastructures, although others, particularly in urban settings. Rural ecovillages are usually based on farming, permaculture and other approaches which promote ecosystem function. Ecovillages, whether urban or rural, tend to integrate community and ecological values within a principle-based approach to sustainability and their residents value and practice community living. Their residents are not overly dependent on government, corporate or other centralized sources for water, food, rather, they attempt to provide these resources themselves. Their residents have a sense of shared values, often characterized in spiritual terms
14.
Ethical consumerism
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Ethical consumerism is a type of consumer activism that is based on the concept of dollar voting. It is practiced through positive buying in that products are favoured, or moral boycott. The term ethical consumer, now used generically, was first popularised by the UK magazine Ethical Consumer, Ethical Consumer magazines key innovation was to produce ratings tables, inspired by the criteria-based approach of the then emerging ethical investment movement. Today, Bloomberg and Reuters provide environmental, social and governance ratings direct to the financial data screens of hundreds of thousands of stock market traders, the not-for-profit Ethical Consumer Research Association continues to publish Ethical Consumer and its associated website, which provides free access to ethical ratings tables. Some trust criteria, e. g. creditworthiness or implied warranty, are considered to be part of any purchasing or sourcing decision. Paul Hawken, a proponent of Natural Capitalism, refers to comprehensive outcomes of production services as opposed to the outcomes of using the product of such services. Some theorists believe that it is the clearest way that we express our actual moral choices, for example, McDonalds started to sell salads and has a corporate social responsibility blog. Ethical Consumerism can be seen as a movement in marketing, which may or may not reflect changes in the practices of businesses. Particular areas of interest for large businesses are environmental impact and the treatment of workers at the bottom of the organisational hierarchy and this change reflects an increasing awareness of ethical issues and corporate identity amongst mainstream consumers. This practice has extended in some developing nations, e. g. where every item carries the name, phone number. And, more importantly, to prove that the item was not made by prison labor, such labels have also been used for boycotts, as when the merchandise mark Made in Germany was introduced in 1887. These labels serve as tokens of some reliable validation process, some instructional capital and they also signal some social capital, or trust, in some community of auditors that must follow those instructions to validate those labels. In 2009, Atlantas Virginia-Highland neighborhood became the first Carbon-Neutral Zone in the United States, seventeen merchants in Virginia-Highland allowed their carbon footprint to be audited. Now, they are partnered with the Valley Wood Carbon Sequestration Project—thousands of acres of forest in rural Georgia—through the Chicago Climate Exchange, the businesses involved in the partnership display the Verus Carbon Neutral seal in each store front and posted a sign prominently declaring the areas Carbon Neutral status. Over time, some theorists suggest, the amount of capital or trust invested in nation-states will continue to decrease. This can only be offset by retrenched national sovereignty to reinforce shared national standards in tax, trade, and tariff laws and these arguments have been a major focus of the anti-globalization movement, which includes many broader arguments against the amoral nature of markets as such. GfK NOP, the research group, has made a five-country study of consumer beliefs about the ethics of large companies. com. The countries surveyed were Germany, the United States, Britain, France, more than half of respondents in Germany and the US believed there is a serious deterioration in standards of corporate practice
15.
Freeganism
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Freeganism is a practice and ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food. The word freegan is a derived from free and vegan. The pamphlet Why Freegan. —written by former Against Me, the first organized group of self-described freegans formed in 2003 as an offshoot of the Wetlands Preserve nightclub and associated Activism Center in New York City. We came to realize that the problem isn’t just a few bad corporations, from 2005, freegan. info organized regular events including sewing and bicycle workshops, wild food foraging expeditions, and trash tours—public dumpster dives open to the public and to media. S. The majority of groups are now inactive, however, and many people. Studies usually find that most people that participate in practices associated with freeganism, dumpster diving for food, Freegan practices in theory reject the commoditization of basic necessities, the imperative of economic growth, and an economy based on money exchange rather than free gifting or sharing. Freegan organizations also often use consensus-based decision-making, popularized by the anti-globalization movement, the word freegan originated as a play on the label veganism and research on freegan. info in New York found that most participants were vegetarian or vegan prior to becoming freegan. In many cases, though, freegans critique vegans by arguing that vegans ignore the environmental and labor impacts of the products they buy, in some instances, one-time vegans return to eating animal products if found from the dumpster, sometimes referred to as meaganism. Freegans rejection of veganism is often tied to their discovery of food waste, estimated as up to 40% of the supply in the United States. Some freegans associate themselves with back-to-the-landers or anarcho-primitivism, the latter of which asserts that human beings should not only capitalism. With some exceptions, though, freeganism is an urban or suburban phenomenon. However, dumpster diving is not limited to rummaging for food, freegans report recovering clothing, books, appliances, bicycles and these events attracted significant media coverage, particularly between 2005 and 2009, from outlets such as The New York Times, Oprah, and MSNBC. Instead of buying conventionally grown foods, wild foragers find and harvest food, some freegans participate in guerrilla or community gardens, with the stated aim of rebuilding community and reclaiming the capacity to grow ones own food. Sharing is also presented as a common practice, associated with the anarchist idea of a gift economy. For example, Food Not Bombs recovers food that would go to waste to serve warm meals on the street to anyone who wants them. Really, Really Free Markets are free social events in which freegans can share goods instead of discarding them, share skills, give presents, a free store is a temporary market where people exchange goods and services outside of a money-based economy. In New York City, freegan. info often distributes recovered food items for free in an ad-hoc manner after trash tours, freegans also advocate sharing travel resources. Internet-based ridesharing or hitchhiking reduces but does not eliminate use of cars and all the resources needed to maintain
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Gift economy
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A gift economy, gift culture, or gift exchange is a mode of exchange where valuables are not traded or sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. This contrasts with an economy or a market economy, where goods. Social norms and custom govern gift exchange, Gifts are not given in an explicit exchange of goods or services for money or some other commodity. The nature of gift economies forms the subject of a debate in anthropology. Anthropological research into gift economies began with Bronisław Malinowskis description of the Kula ring in the Trobriand Islands during World War I. The Kula trade appeared to be gift-like since Trobrianders would travel great distances over dangerous seas to give what were considered valuable objects without any guarantee of a return. According to anthropologists Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry, it is the relationship between market and non-market exchange that attracts the most attention. Gift economies are said, by some, to communities. Gift ideology in highly commercialized societies differs from the typical of non-market societies. Gift economies must also be differentiated from several closely related phenomena, such as common property regimes, however, he claims that anthropologists, through analysis of a variety of cultural and historical forms of exchange, have established that no universal practice exists. Gift exchange is frequently embedded in political, kin, or religious institutions, gift-giving is a form of transfer of property rights over particular objects. The nature of property rights varies from society to society, from culture to culture. The nature of gift-giving is thus altered by the type of property regime in place, property is not a thing, but a relationship amongst people about things. According to Chris Hann, property is a relationship that governs the conduct of people with respect to the use. Anthropologists analyze these relationships in terms of a variety of actors bundle of rights over objects, an example is the current debates around intellectual property rights. Hann and Strangelove both give the example of a book, over which the author retains a copyright. The gifts given in Kula exchange still remain, in some respects, in the example used above, copyright is one of those bundled rights that regulate the use and disposition of a book. Gift-giving in many societies is complicated because private property owned by an individual may be limited in scope
17.
Local food
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The term has also been extended to include not only the geographic location of supplier and consumer but can also be defined in terms of social and supply chain characteristics. For example, local food initiatives often promote sustainable and organic farming practices, local food represents an alternative to the global food model, a model which often sees food travelling long distances before it reaches the consumer. We can trace back the seeds of the food movement to the creation of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. The contemporary American movement associated with the term can be traced back to proposed resolutions to the Society for Nutrition Educations 1981 guidelines and these largely unsuccessful resolutions encouraged increased local production to slow farmland loss. The program described sustainable diets - a term new to the American public. At the time, the resolutions were met with criticism from pro-business institutions. No single definition of local or local food systems exists, the geographic distances between production and consumption varies within the movement. However, the public recognizes that local describes the marketing arrangement. There are a number of different definitions for local have been used or recorded by researchers assessing local food systems most informed by political or geographic boundaries, among the more widely circulated and popular defining parameters is the concept of food miles, which has been suggested for policy recommendations. In 2008 Congress passed H. R.2419, which amended the Consolidated Farm, in May 2010 the USDA acknowledged this definition in an informational leaflet. Similar to watersheds, food sheds follow the process of food comes from. It is the responsibility to conclude how local the food is. + The USDA included statistics about the growing local food market in the leaflet released in May 2010. The statistics are as follows, Direct-to-consumer marketing amounted to $1.2 billion in current dollar sales in 2007, according to the 2007 Census of Agriculture, compared with $551 million in 1997. Direct-to-consumer sales accounted for 0.4 percent of agricultural sales in 2007. If non-edible products are excluded from total agricultural sales, direct-to-consumer sales accounted for 0.8 percent of sales in 2007. The number of markets rose to 5,274 in 2009, up from 2,756 in 1998 and 1,755 in 1994. In early 2010, estimates exceeded 1,400, but the number could be much larger, in the 2016 Index, the three top-ranking states were Vermont, Maine and Oregon, while the three lowest-ranking states were Nevada, Texas and Florida. Networks of local farmers and producers are now collaborating in the UK, Canada and this technological change enables more consumers to participate in farmers markets
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Microgeneration
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It differs from micropower in that it is principally concerned with fixed power plants rather than for use with mobile devices. Microgeneration technologies include small-scale wind turbines, micro hydro, solar PV systems, microbial fuel cells, ground source heat pumps and these technologies are often combined to form a hybrid power solution that can offer superior performance and lower cost than a system based on one generator. In addition to the electricity plant, infrastructure for energy storage and power conversion. Although a hookup to the electricity grid is not essential. In the developing world however, the start-up cost for this equipment is too high, thus leaving no choice. The whole is sometimes referred to as power conditioning equipment groundings, transfer switches or isolator switches. The whole is sometimes referred to as safety equipment Usually, in microgeneration for homes in the developing world. Simplified house-wiring boxes and cables, known as wiring harnesses, can simply be bought, as such, even people without technical expertise are able to install them. In addition, they are comparatively cheap and offer safety advantages. Battery meters, and meters for power consumption and electricity provision to the power grid With wind turbines. A new wind energy technology is being developed that converts energy from wind energy vibrations to electricity and this energy, called Vibro-Wind technology, can use winds of less strength than normal wind turbines, and can be placed in almost any location. A prototype consisted of a panel mounted with oscillators made out of pieces of foam, the conversion from mechanical to electrical energy is done using a piezoelectric transducer, a device made of a ceramic or polymer that emits electrons when stressed. The building of prototype was led by Francis Moon, professor of mechanical. Moons work in Vibro-Wind Technology was funded by the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future at Cornell, for safety, grid-connected set-ups must automatically switch off or enter an anti-islanding mode when there is a failure of the mains power supply. For more about this, see the article on the condition of islanding, depending on the set-up chosen, prices may vary. According to Practical Action, microgeneration at home which uses the latest in cost saving-technology the household expenditure can be extremely low-cost, in fact, Practical Action mentions that many households in farming communities in the developing world spend less than $1 for electricity per month. However, if matters are handled less economically, costs will be dramatically higher, in the UK, the government offers both grants and feedback payments to help businesses, communities and private homes to install these technologies. Community organisations can also receive up to £200,000 in grant funding, grid parity occurs when an alternative energy source can generate electricity at a levelized cost that is less than or equal to the price of purchasing power from the electricity grid
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Overconsumption
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Overconsumption is a situation where resource use has outpaced the sustainable capacity of the ecosystem. A prolonged pattern of overconsumption leads to degradation and the eventual loss of resource bases. Generally the discussion of overconsumption parallels that of overpopulation, that is the more people, green parties and the ecology movement often argue that consumption per person, or ecological footprint, is typically lower in poor than in rich nations. A fundamental effect of overconsumption is a reduction in the carrying capacity. Excessive unsustainable consumption will exceed the long term carrying capacity of its environment and subsequent resource depletion, environmental degradation, the scale of modern lifes overconsumption has enabled an overclass to exist, displaying affluenza and obesity. However once again both of these claims are controversial with the latter being correlated to other factors more so than over-consumption, in the long term these effects can lead to increased conflict over dwindling resources and in the worst case a Malthusian catastrophe. Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, has said, It would take 1.5 Earths to sustain our present level of consumption, environmentally, the world is in an overshoot mode. The Worldwatch Institute said China and India, with their booming economies, the State of the World 2005 report said the two countries high economic growth exposed the reality of severe pollution. The idea of overconsumption is also tied to the idea of an ecological footprint. The term “ecological footprint” refers to the accounting framework for measuring human demand on the biosphere. ”Currently, China is roughly 11 times lower in per capita footprint. It is estimated that if China developed to the level of the United States that world consumption rates would roughly double, the most obvious solution to the issue of overconsumption is to simply slow the rate at which materials are becoming depleted. A fundamental shift in the economy may be necessary in order to account for the current change that is taking place or that will need to take place. Fifty Possible Ways to Challenge Over-Commercialism by Albert J
20.
Planned obsolescence
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The rationale behind the strategy is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases. In a competitive industry, this is a risky strategy because when consumers catch on to this, Planned obsolescence tends to work best when a producer has at least an oligopoly. Before introducing a planned obsolescence, the producer has to know that the consumer is at least somewhat likely to buy a replacement from them. In these cases of planned obsolescence, there is an asymmetry between the producer – who knows how long the product was designed to last – and the consumer. When a market more competitive, product lifespans tend to increase. For example, when Japanese vehicles with longer lifespans entered the American market in the 1960s and 1970s, in the United States, automotive design reached a turning point in 1924 when the American national automobile market began reaching saturation. To maintain unit sales, General Motors head Alfred P. Sloan Jr, critics called his strategy planned obsolescence. Sloan preferred the term dynamic obsolescence and this strategy had far-reaching effects on the auto business, the field of product design, and eventually the American economy. The smaller players could not maintain the pace and expense of yearly re-styling, henry Ford did not like the model-year change because he clung to an engineers notions of simplicity, economies of scale, and design integrity. GM surpassed Fords sales in 1931 and became the dominant company in the industry thereafter, the frequent design changes also made it necessary to use a body-on-frame rather than the lighter, but less flexible, monocoque design used by most European automakers. The origins of phrase, planned obsolescence, go back at least as far as 1932 with Bernard Londons pamphlet Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence, the essence of Londons plan would have the government impose a legal obsolescence on consumer articles, to stimulate and perpetuate consumption. However, the phrase was first popularized in 1954 by Brooks Stevens, Stevens was due to give a talk at an advertising conference in Minneapolis in 1954. Without giving it thought, he used the term as the title of his talk. From that point on, planned obsolescence became Stevens catchphrase, by his definition, planned obsolescence was Instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary. The phrase was taken up by others, but Stevens definition was challenged. By the late 1950s, planned obsolescence had become a commonly used term for products designed to break easily or to go out of style. In fact, the concept was so recognized that in 1959 Volkswagen mocked it in an advertising campaign. While acknowledging the use of planned obsolescence among automobile manufacturers
21.
Simple living
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Simple living or voluntary simplicity encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify ones lifestyle. These may include reducing ones possessions, generally referred to as minimalism, or increasing self-sufficiency, Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they have rather than want. Although asceticism generally promotes living simply and refraining from luxury and indulgence, Simple living is distinct from those living in forced poverty, as it is a voluntary lifestyle choice. Simple living can also be a reaction to materialism and conspicuous consumption, some cite socio-political goals aligned with the anti-consumerist or anti-war movements, including conservation, degrowth, social justice, and tax resistance. A number of religious and spiritual traditions encourage simple living, early examples include the Sramana traditions of Iron Age India, Gautama Buddha, and biblical Nazirites. The biblical figure Jesus is said to have lived a simple life and he is said to have encouraged his disciples to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts—but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. Diogenes of Sinope, a figure in the ancient Greek philosophy of Cynicism, claimed that a simple life was necessary for virtue. Plain people are Christian groups who have for centuries practiced lifestyles in which forms of wealth or technology are excluded for religious or philosophical reasons. Groups include the Shakers, Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, Amana Colonies, Bruderhof, Old German Baptist Brethren, Harmony Society, there is a Quaker belief called Testimony of Simplicity that a person ought to live her or his life simply. Jean-Jacques Rousseau strongly praised the life in many of his writings, especially in his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences. Epicureanism, based on the teachings of the Athens-based philosopher Epicurus, epicureanism upheld the untroubled life as the paradigm of happiness, made possible by carefully considered choices. Specifically, Epicurus pointed out that troubles entailed by maintaining an extravagant lifestyle tend to outweigh the pleasure of partaking in it. Henry David Thoreau, an American naturalist and author, is considered to have made the classic secular statement advocating a life of simple and sustainable living in his book Walden. Thoreau conducted a two-year experiment living a plain and simple life on the shores of Walden Pond, in Victorian Britain, Henry Stephens Salt, an admirer of Thoreau, popularised the idea of Simplification, the saner method of living. Other British advocates of the life included Edward Carpenter, William Morris. C. R. Ashbee and his followers also practiced some of these ideas, British novelist John Cowper Powys advocated the simple life in his 1933 book A Philosophy of Solitude. John Middleton Murry and Max Plowman practised a simple lifestyle at their Adelphi Centre in Essex in the 1930s, irish poet Patrick Kavanagh championed a right simplicity philosophy based on ruralism in some of his work. George Lorenzo Noyes, a naturalist, mineralogist, development critic, writer and he lived a wilderness lifestyle, advocating through his creative work a simple life and reverence for nature
22.
Slow Food
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Slow Food is a grassroots organization founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy in 1986. Promoted as an alternative to fast food, it strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine and encourages farming of plants, seeds and it was the first established part of the broader slow movement. Its goals of sustainable foods and promotion of small businesses are paralleled by a political agenda directed against globalization of agricultural products. Slow Food began in Italy with the founding of its organisation, Arcigola. In 1989, the manifesto of the international Slow Food movement was signed in Paris. At its heart is the aim to promote local foods and traditional gastronomy, conversely this means an opposition to fast food, industrial food production and globalisation. The Slow Food organisation has expanded to include over 100,000 members with branches in over 150 countries, over 1,300 local convivia chapters exist. 360 convivia in Italy—to which the name condotta / condotte applies—are composed of 35,000 members, offices have been opened in Switzerland, Germany, New York City, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Chile. Global headquarters are located in Bra, near Turin, Italy, numerous publications are put out by the organisation, in several languages around the world. In 2004, Slow Food opened a University of Gastronomic Sciences at Pollenzo, in Piedmont, the Colorno branch has since been closed and transferred to Polenzo as well. Carlo Petrini and Massimo Montanari are the figures in the creation of the university, whose goal is to promote awareness of good food. In 2008, Slow Food USA hosted its largest gathering to date dubbed Slow Food Nation in San Francisco, as of 2013, Slow Food USA has a membership of roughly 12,000, down from over 30,000 in 2008. In 2011 the organisation was forced to make a series of staff layoffs and this was partly attributed to the economic recession, but also to disagreements within the movement and a loss of several key personalities. Slow Food USA currently has 200 chapters, down from 225 chapters in 2011, the movement also encourages the creation of urban gardens. Slow Food-University of Wisconsin has five projects that are dedicated to the efforts, including a Family Dinner Night, weekly cafe. From then there have been 46 Slow Food chapters established on campuses of higher education, notable members include Alice Waters, Eric Schlosser, and Michael Pollan. The Executive Director is Richard McCarthy,100 school gardens in different cities across the US would be funded in an effort to teach kids where food comes from and how food is grown. Slow Food UK works to raise awareness about sustainability and social justice issues surrounding food
23.
Subvertising
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Subvertising is a portmanteau of subvert and advertising. It refers to the practice of making spoofs or parodies of corporate, subvertisements may take the form of a new image or an alteration to an existing image or icon, often in a satirical manner. A subvertisement can also be referred to as a meme hack and it cuts through the hype and glitz of our mediated reality and, momentarily, reveals a deeper truth within
24.
Sustainable consumption
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Sustainable consumption shares a number of common features with and is closely linked to the terms sustainable production and sustainable development. Sustainable consumption as part of development is a prerequisite in the worldwide struggle against sustainability challenges such as climate change. The first prerequisite is not sufficient on its own and can be named weak sustainable consumption, here, technological improvements and eco-efficiency support a necessary reduction in resource consumption. Once this aim has been met, the prerequisite, the change in patterns. Strong sustainable consumption approaches also pay attention to the dimension of well-being. In order to achieve what can be termed strong sustainable consumption, in the political arena, weak sustainable consumption has been discussed whereas strong sustainable consumption is missing from all debates. Taking into consideration those two approaches to sustainable consumption, it is evident that individual consumers play a key role, a huge problem is the existence of a so-called attitude-behaviour or values-action gap, i. e. g. Young et al. identified a lack of time for research, high prices, a lack of information,1992 - At the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development the concept of sustainable consumption is established in chapter 4 of the Agenda 21. 1994 - Sustainable Consumption Symposium in Oslo 1995 – SC was requested to be incorporated by UN Economic and Social Council into the UN Guidelines on Consumer Protection. 1997 – A major report on SC was produced by the OECD1998 – United Nations Environment Program starts a SC program,2002 – Creation of a ten-year program on sustainable consumption and production in the Plan of Implementation at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. 2003 - The “Marrakech Process” was developed by co-ordination of a series a of meetings and other processes by UNEP. The Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production is one of the leading independent authorities, in 2007, Tesco, the largest supermarket in the United Kingdom, established the Sustainable Consumption Institute with a £25 million grant to The University of Manchester. A benchmark of teaching activities on the topic of sustainable consumption has been carried out by the scientific network Sustainable Consumption Research, the main results for the identified courses are as follows. Most of the courses are fairly recent and they are generally not mandatory and are designed for 2–3 hours per week over one semester, granting 2-5 credits. The courses are balanced in number between undergraduate and graduate courses, with a small fraction focussing on teacher training and policy/NGO training, most courses are small in class size with some ranging between 60-100 students. Collaborative consumption INHERIT Project, a Horizon 2020 Project to identify ways of living, moving and consuming that protect the environment and promote health and health equity
25.
Walden
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Walden is a book by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, the work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance. Thoreau used this time to write his first book, A Week on the Concord, the experience later inspired Walden, in which Thoreau compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human development. By immersing himself in nature, Thoreau hoped to gain a more understanding of society through personal introspection. Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreaus other goals, and the project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. Part memoir and part spiritual quest, Walden opens with the announcement that Thoreau spent two years at Walden Pond living a life without support of any kind. Readers are reminded that at the time of publication, Thoreau is back to living among the civilized again and he does this, he says, to illustrate the spiritual benefits of a simplified lifestyle. He easily supplies the four necessities of life with the help of family and friends, particularly his mother, his best friend, and Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson. The latter provided Thoreau with a work exchange – he could build a house and plant a garden if he cleared some land on the woodlot. Thoreau meticulously records his expenditures and earnings, demonstrating his understanding of economy, as he builds his house and buys, for a home and freedom, he spent a mere $28. 12½, in 1845. At the end of this chapter, Thoreau inserts a poem, The Pretensions of Poverty, the poem criticizes those who think that their poverty gives them unearned moral and intellectual superiority. He recounts the reasons for his move to Walden Pond along with detailed steps back to the construction of his new home and his possibilities included a nearby Hollowell farm. Thoreau takes to the dreaming of an existence free of obligations. He announces that he resides far from social relationships that mail represents and he also loved to read books by world travelers. He yearns for a time when each New England village supports wise men to educate and thereby ennoble the population. Sounds, Thoreau encourages the reader to be “forever on the alert” and “looking always at what is to be seen. ”Although truth can be found in literature, in addition to self-development, an advantage of developing one’s perceptiveness is its tendency to alleviate boredom. “All sound heard at the greatest possible distance, ” he contends “produces one and he explains how loneliness can occur even amid companions if ones heart is not open to them
26.
The Theory of the Leisure Class
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These displays, including conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure, serve to glorify exploit over industry. Like Marx, Veblen criticized the dominant economic theories of his day as static and hedonistic, whereas classical economists measured utility in static terms of maximum material gain, Veblen perceived people as seeking status in addition to, or even above, material gain. For Veblen, the key point is that status has a utility of its own, through time, Veblen argues that technological development compels adaptations in the pursuit of status as well as material gain. In the modern age, as in times, the more powerful and exploitative leisure class accrues status. So successful is the class in their glorification of exploit that their behaviors are not reviled by the industrial class but are instead roughly emulated. Workers may even forfeit material comfort in order to some small level of status. Critics of his reportage about the sociology and economics of the society that is the U. S. In the event, contemporary society did not psychologically supersede the tribal-stage division of labour, during the Mediæval period only land-owning noblemen had the right to hunt and to bear arms as soldiers, status and income were parallel. In having a wife without an independent economic life a man can display her unemployed status as a form of his conspicuous leisure, social formalities, In contemporary society, social manners are remnants of the barbarians formal, social practice of “paying respect” to ones socially powerful betters. In itself, etiquette has little value, but is of cultural value in identifying, establishing, and enforcing distinctions of place within a social class, thus the practice of “Hail to the chief. ”Establishes a place for everyone. Therefore, such physical and intellectual pursuits display the freedom of the man and woman from having to work in an economically productive occupation. The leisure class is composed of people exempted from work and from practicing economically productive occupations. As such, the consumption of the leisure class has little to do with either comfort or subsistence, and much to do with social esteem from the community. Yet, such is not the case, because the lower classes consume expensive alcoholic beverages and narcotic drugs. In doing so, the working classes seek to emulate the standards of life and play of the leisure class, moreover, upon achieving self-preservation, “the needs of conspicuous waste” determine the economic and industrial improvements of society. Consequently, to the classes, possessing such an object becomes an exercise in the pecuniary emulation of the leisure class. Clothing also indicates that the wearer’s livelihood does not depend upon economically productive labour, such as farming and manufacturing, moreover, the symbolic function of clothes indicates that the wearer belongs to the leisure class, and can afford to buy new clothes when the fashion changes. Chapter IX, The Conservation of Archaic Traits The existence of the leisure class influences the behaviour of the man and woman
27.
Brave New World
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Brave New World is a novel written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley, and published in 1932. Huxley answered this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World Revisited, in 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Brave New Worlds title derives from Mirandas speech in William Shakespeares The Tempest, Act V, how many goodly creatures are there here. O brave new world, That has such people int. Huxley wrote Brave New World while living in Sanary-sur-Mer, by this time, Huxley had already established himself as a writer and social satirist. Brave New World was Huxleys fifth novel and first dystopian work, Huxley said that Brave New World was inspired by the utopian novels of H. G. Wells, including A Modern Utopia and Men Like Gods. Wells hopeful vision of the futures possibilities gave Huxley the idea to begin writing a parody of the novel, which became Brave New World. He wrote in a letter to Mrs. Arthur Goldsmith, an American acquaintance, that he had been having a little fun pulling the leg of H. G. Wells, but then he got caught up in the excitement of own ideas. Unlike the most popular optimist utopian novels of the time, Huxley sought to provide a vision of the future. Huxley referred to Brave New World as a utopia, somewhat influenced by Wells own The Sleeper Awakes. George Orwell believed that Brave New World must have been derived from the novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. However, in a 1962 letter, Huxley says that he wrote Brave New World long before he had heard of We, according to We translator Natasha Randall, Orwell believed that Huxley was lying. The scientific futurism in Brave New World is believed to be cribbed from Daedalus by J. B. S. Haldane, the Brave New World character Mustapha Mond, Resident World Controller of Western Europe, is named after Sir Alfred Mond. Huxley visited Monds technologically advanced plant near Billingham, north east England, shortly before writing the novel, Huxley used the setting and characters in his science fiction novel to express widely held opinions, particularly the fear of losing individual identity in the fast-paced world of the future. An early trip to the United States gave Brave New World much of its character, the novel opens in London in AF632. The society is illuminated by the activities of the central characters, Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx. Lenina, a worker, is socially accepted and contented, but Bernard. He is shorter in stature than the average of his Alpha caste—a quality shared by the lower castes and his intelligence and his work with hypnopaedia allow him to understand, and disapprove of, the methods by which society is sustained. Courting disaster, he is vocal and arrogant about his differences, Bernard is mocked by other Alphas because of his stature, as well as for his individualistic tendencies, and is threatened with exile to Iceland because of his nonconformity
28.
The Affluent Society
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The Affluent Society is a 1958 book by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. The book sparked much discussion at the time. It is also credited with popularizing the term conventional wisdom, many of the ideas presented were later expanded and refined in Galbraiths 1967 book, The New Industrial State. Former U. S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich called it his favorite on the subject of economics, the Modern Library placed the book at no.46 on its list of the top 100 English-language non-fiction books of the 20th century. S. This is so because the central tradition economists wrote during a time of poverty where production of basic goods was necessary. U. S. society, at the time of Galbraiths writing, was one of widespread affluence, using production, or gross domestic product, as a measure of U. S. societys well-being omits important measures of social and personal well-being. GDP also neglects differences in output, for example, An increased supply of educational services has a standing in the total not different in kind from an increased output of television receivers. Production has risen to its paramount but unwarranted status because it is held in grace by both Democrats and Republicans. It is common ground for the Chairman of Americans for Democratic Action, the President of the United States Chamber of Commerce and that is, the demands are not internally created by a consumer. These such demands - food, clothes, and shelter - have been met for the vast majority of Americans, the new demands are created by advertisers and the machinery for consumer-demand creation that benefit from increased consumer spending. This exuberance in private production and consumption pushes out public spending and he called this the dependence effect, a process by which wants are increasingly created by the process by which they are satisfied. Galbraith believes America must transition from a private economy to a public investment economy. He advocates three large proposals, the elimination of poverty, government investment in schools, and the growth of the New Class. Galbraith outlines the two types of poverty to better understand the causes and potential remedies, case poverty is related to a specific individual and insular poverty is an island where nearly everyone is poor. To fund social programs, Galbraith believes in the use of consumption taxes. The New Class consists of schoolteachers, professors, surgeons, and electrical engineers. ”History of economic thought Marshall Sahlins articulated in 1966 the theory that hunter-gatherers were the original affluent society
29.
One-Dimensional Man
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This results in a one-dimensional universe of thought and behaviour, in which aptitude and ability for critical thought and oppositional behaviour wither away. Against this prevailing climate, Marcuse promotes the great refusal as the only opposition to all-encompassing methods of control. Much of the book is a defense of negative thinking as a force against the prevailing positivism. He considers the trends towards bureaucracy in supposedly Marxist countries to be as oppositional to freedom as those in the capitalist West, One-Dimensional Man was the book that made Marcuse famous. Marcuse strongly criticizes consumerism, arguing that it is a form of social control and it is even more irrational in the sense that the creation of new products, calling for the disposal of old products, fuels the economy and encourages the need to work more to buy more. An individual loses his humanity and becomes a tool in the industrial machine, there are other alternatives to counter the consumer lifestyle. Anti-consumerism is a lifestyle that demotes any unnecessary consumption, as well as work, waste. But even this alternative is complicated by the extreme interpenetration of advertising and commodification because everything is a commodity, One-Dimensional Man was the book that made Marcuse famous. In a letter to the New York Review of Books, Georg H. Fromm, technological rationality, which impoverishes all aspects of contemporary life, has developed the material bases of human freedom, but continues to serve the interests of suppression. The analysis proceeds on the basis of “negative” or dialectical thinking and it demands “freedom from the oppressive and ideological power of given facts. Despite its importance, it was—due to its subversive nature—severely criticized by both orthodox Marxists and academic theorists of political and theoretical commitments. Philosopher Stephen Hicks argues that the books popularity marked a turn towards irrationality. Repressive desublimation Totalitarian democracy Minority rights J. L. Talmon Drux Flux, critical theory Criticism of capitalism Inverted totalitarianism Superficiality Bibliographic listing including reviews and courses using the book Full text on-line at marcuse. org
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The Society of the Spectacle
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The Society of the Spectacle is a 1967 work of philosophy and Marxist critical theory by Guy Debord, in which he develops and presents the concept of the Spectacle. The book is considered an important text for the Situationist movement, Debord published a follow-up book Comments on the Society of the Spectacle in 1988. The work is a series of 221 short theses and they contain approximately a paragraph each. Debord traces the development of a society in which authentic social life has been replaced with its representation. Debord argues that the history of life can be understood as the decline of being into having. This condition, according to Debord, is the moment at which the commodity completes its colonization of social life. The spectacle is not a collection of images, Debord writes, rather, in the situationist view, situations are actively created moments, characterized by a sense of self-consciousness of existence within a particular environment or ambience. Debord encouraged the use of détournement, which involves using spectacular images, the Society of the Spectacle is a critique of contemporary consumer culture and commodity fetishism, dealing with issues such as class alienation, cultural homogenization, and mass media. When Debord says that “All that was directly lived has become mere representation. Images, Debord says, have supplanted genuine human interaction, thus, Debord’s fourth thesis is, The spectacle is not a collection of images, rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images. In a consumer society, social life is not about living, but about having, consequently, social life moves further, leaving a state of having and proceeding into a state of appearing, namely the appearance of the image. In a world which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false, Debord also draws an equivalence between the role of mass media marketing in the present and the role of religions in the past. The monotheistic religions were a compromise between myth and history and these religions arose on the soil of history, and established themselves there. But there they still preserve themselves in opposition to history. Debord defines them as Semi-historical religion, in Chapter 8, Negation and Consumption Within Culture, Debord includes a critical analysis of the works of three American sociologists. Debord discusses at length Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Image, arguing that Boorstin missed the concept of Spectacle, Whyte, author of the 1956 bestseller The Organization Man. Among the 1950s sociologists who are compared to Riesman and Whyte, is C. Wright Mills, author of White Collar. Riesmans Lonely Crowd term is used in thesis 28
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The Society of the Spectacle (film)
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La Société du Spectacle is a black and white 1973 film by the Situationist Guy Debord based on his 1967 book of the same name. It was Debords first feature-length film and it uses found footage and detournement in a radical Marxist critique of mass marketing and its role in the alienation of modern society. Without citations, these quotes are hard to decipher, especially with the conflicting subtitles, in addition, the words of some of the authors are detourned through deliberate misquoting. In 1984, Debord withdrew his films from circulation because of the negative press, since Debords suicide in 1994, Debords wife Alice Becker-Ho has been promoting Debords film. A DVD box set titled Guy Debord, Oeuvres cinématographiques complètes was released in 2005, the piece used in the film is Les Delices de la Solitude, Op.20 No.6 - Sonata in D Major, I
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Steal This Book
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Steal This Book is a book written by Abbie Hoffman. Written in 1970 and published in 1971, the book exemplified the counterculture of the sixties, the book sold more than a quarter of a million copies between April and November 1971. The book, in the style of the counterculture, mainly focused on ways to fight the government, the book is written in the form of a guide to the youth. Hoffman, a political and social activist himself, used many of his own activities as the inspiration for some of his advice in Steal This Book. Tom Forcade was not credited in the book, but Hoffman later admitted that he had part in some of the editing before being replaced by Bert Cohen. Steal This Book was written in the climate of the counter-culture, in opposition to tradition and government was rampant. When the book was published, it took hold among the new left, especially among students on campuses, such as Brandeis University. Steal This Book is divided into three sections, Survive, describes techniques of obtaining free things through legal and extra-legal means to survive on the run. Suggestions include the use of coins, taking advantage of government and church hand-outs. This section also includes advice on topics as growing cannabis, living in a commune. The third section is Liberate. and focuses on solutions in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles. The book also includes an appendix that lists approved organizations and other books worth stealing. In the book, Hoffman referred to America as the Pig Empire and stated that it was not immoral to steal from it, In fact, Hoffman wrote, the term was picked up by the Yippies, and was widely used by what became known as the Woodstock Nation. Steal This Book was rejected by at least thirty publishers before it was able to get into print, Hoffman was eventually forced to make a publishing company of his own, Pirate Editions, in order to sell the book, with Grove Press as the distributor. The book initially received no reviews and was not advertised in any of the major newspapers, once it got into print, Steal This Book had widespread readership and became a bestseller mainly through word of mouth. On the success of the book, Hoffman was quoted as saying, Its embarrassing when you try to overthrow the government and you wind up on the Best Sellers List. He would eventually write several books, including Steal This Urine Test, Fighting Drug Hysteria in America, Revolution For the Hell of It. Woodstock Nation The Anarchist Cookbook Steal This Film Steal This Album, Steal This Episode Authorized online location
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Small Is Beautiful
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Small Is Beautiful, A Study of Economics As If People Mattered is a collection of essays by British economist E. F. Schumacher. The phrase Small Is Beautiful came from a phrase by his teacher Leopold Kohr and it is often used to champion small, appropriate technologies that are believed to empower people more, in contrast with phrases such as bigger is better. First published in 1973, Small Is Beautiful brought Schumachers critiques of Western economics to an audience during the 1973 energy crisis. The Times Literary Supplement ranked Small Is Beautiful among the 100 most influential books published since World War II, a further edition with commentaries was published in 1999. The book is divided into four parts, The Modern World, Resources, The Third World, in the first chapter, The Problem of Production, Schumacher argues that the modern economy is unsustainable. Natural resources, are treated as income, when in fact they should be treated as capital, since they are not renewable. He further argues that natures resistance to pollution is limited as well, Schumachers philosophy is one of enoughness, appreciating both human needs and limitations, and appropriate use of technology. It grew out of his study of village-based economics, which he later termed Buddhist economics, in the epilogue he emphasizes the need for the philosophy of materialism to take second place to ideals such as justice, harmony, beauty, and health. A Guide for the Perplexed Appropriate technology Distributism Simple living Full Text of Small is Beautiful at ditext. com The Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems home page
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To Have or to Be?
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To Have or to Be. is a 1976 book by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, in which he differentiates between having and being. Fromm mentions how modern society has become materialistic and prefers having to being and he mentions the great promise of unlimited happiness, freedom, material abundance, and domination of nature. These hopes reached their highs when the industrial age began, one could feel that there would be unlimited production and hence unlimited consumption. Human beings aspired to be Gods of earth, but this really the case. The great promise failed due to the aims of life, i. e. maximum pleasure and fulfillment of every desire. In the industrial age, the development of economic system was no longer determined by the question of what is good for man. So, the system of society served people in such a way in which only their personal interests were intended to impart. The people having unlimited needs and desires like the Roman emperors, society nowadays has completely deviated from its actual path. The materialistic nature of people of having has been more developed than being, modern industrialization has made great promises, but all these promises are developed to fulfill their interests and increase their possessions. In every mode of life, people should ponder more on being nature and this is the truth which people deny and thus people of the modern world have completely lost their inner selves. Post-materialism infed. org Fromm 1976 interview on book To Have or to Be
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Future Primitive and Other Essays
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Future Primitive and Other Essays is a collection of essays by anarcho-primitivist philosopher John Zerzan published by Autonomedia in 1994. It was republished in 1996 by Semiotext, and has since translated into French, Turkish, Spanish. As is the case with Zerzans previous collection of essays, Elements of Refusal, Future Primitive is regarded by Anarcho-Primitivists, Future Primitive is an unequivocal assertion of the superiority of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Zerzan rejects the thesis that time and technology are neutral scientific realities, life prior to domestication and agriculture, Zerzan argues, was predominantly one of leisure, intimacy with nature, sensual wisdom, sexual equality and health. In the wild, the shackles of civilization werent necessary, as people were instinctively munificent and kind, green anarchism Marshall Sahlins Future Primitive and Other Essays at the Natterjack Press
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Fight Club (novel)
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Fight Club is a 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. It follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia, inspired by his doctors exasperated remark that insomnia is not suffering, the protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups. Then he meets a man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy. In 1999, director David Fincher adapted the novel into a film of the name, starring Brad Pitt. The film acquired a following despite lower than expected box-office results. The films prominence heightened the profile of the novel and that of Palahniuk, the sequel Fight Club 2 was released in comic book form in May 2015. Fight Club centers on an anonymous narrator, who works as a product recall specialist for a car company. Because of the stress of his job and the jet lag brought upon by frequent business trips, when he seeks treatment, his doctor advises him to visit a support group for testicular cancer victims to see what real suffering is like. He finds that sharing the problems of not having testicular cancer himself—alleviates his insomnia. The narrators unique treatment works until he meets Marla Singer, another tourist who visits the group under false pretenses. The possibly disturbed Marla reminds the narrator that he is a faker who does not belong there and he begins to hate Marla for keeping him from crying, and, therefore, from sleeping. After a confrontation, the two agree to attend separate support group meetings to avoid each other, the truce is uneasy, and the narrators insomnia returns. While on a beach, the narrator meets Tyler Durden. After an explosion destroys the narrators condominium, he asks to stay at Tylers house, Tyler agrees, but asks for something in return, I want you to hit me as hard as you can. Both men find that they enjoy the ensuing fistfight, Marla, noticing that the narrator has not recently attended his support groups, calls him to claim that she has overdosed on Xanax in a half-hearted suicide attempt. Tyler returns from work, picks up the phone to Marlas drug-induced rambling, Tyler and Marla embark on an uneasy affair that confounds the narrator and confuses Marla. Throughout this affair, Marla is unaware both of fight clubs existence and the interaction between Tyler and the narrator, because Tyler and Marla are never seen at the same time, the narrator wonders whether Tyler and Marla are the same person. As fight club attains a nationwide presence, Tyler uses it to spread his anti-consumerist ideas and he eventually gathers the most devoted fight club members and forms Project Mayhem, a cult-like organization that trains itself as an army to bring down modern civilization
