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eurotopia book review
If the compilers don’t remember why ‘eurotopia’ is
written with a lower case ‘e’, surely we can’t be expected
to relate to it as anything other than sloppy grammar?!
I love judging a book by its cover.
Probably because it’s something I was Following the introductory pleasantries,
told not to do from a very young age. I Diana Leafe Christian is rolled out to
see it as a form of rebellion – like lecture us about the influence of
teaching my daughter to blow intentional communities on the wider
raspberries and having soup for society – she name-drops the usual
breakfast. The 2014 edition of the suspects: Findhorn, The Farm,
eurotopia Directory of Communities and Niederkaufungen and Crystal Waters.
Ecovillages in Europe landed in my As overviews go, she does a decent
postbox and my first enough job.
impressions were:
homemade, chatty and What I most like from
informal. The 1996 first the forty or so pages
edition was made with before we get to the
recycled paper and, actual directory, is the
although over the years interview with Dieter
the production of this Halbach, a community
resource is supported by consultant from Sieben
a large team of people, Linden. He presents us
including not an with tips for successful
insignificant number of community building, from
volunteers, it still has that recycled-y someone who has been there and done
and grey-y feel to it. It’s low-tech – not that. Great stuff!
quite made on a Gestetner – but it
could’ve been. So old-school is this The next article is about the interface
directory, that it is not even available between researchers and the
online. For many of us, if something has communities which they study. It is a
no online presence, then it doesn’t really nice piece, and reminds me a lot of the
exist, (turning on its head the notion dilemmas I encounter as a board
that the online is the virtual, and the member of ICSA (The International
thing that you can hold in your hand is Communal Studies Association). My
the actual.) The reason we are given for feeling from the last few conferences is
this is that if they gave away the that our organisation is increasingly
information for free, they’d not be able becoming a fertile meeting ground for
to fund the work for compiling the both academics and communards.
database, and anyway, they are quite
fond of the written word. Next up, the ramblings of the editor –
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