Losing (Some of) the Local Commons
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
Like Wendell Berry, Bollier sees commons-thinking as a push-back against “inevitability,” and as an invitation to hold fast to our ability, as human beings, to imagine an alternative to simple acceptance when we see, as he said in Salina, something “rooted in an ecosystem is redefined as a market commodity.”
Ten Moderately Short, and Only Moderately Philosophical, Theses on Voting
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
I don't think there is a duty to vote, and I wouldn't support compulsory voting, even if that was a political possibility in this country. I do think voting is responsibility though.
Catastrophe, Technology, Limits, and Localism
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
Charles C. Mann's The Wizard and the Prophet, published earlier this year, is a fabulous book. Not a perfect book; sometimes, in order to bulk up this two-pronged thesis, he will throw in supplementary material that threatens to bog down his central investigation. But that investigation comes through loud and clear all the same, and it is one worth looking at closely.
What Do Farmers Want?
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
The clearest point which comes through Wuthnow's thoughtful engagement with the dozens of farmers he and his assistants interviewed, and with the reams of data about rural populations, farm economics, and more that they assessed, is simply this: most American farmers, most of the time, are not agrarians.
Naftzger Park, Planning, and the Problem of “Growth”
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
We live where we do, and we become what we are through that lived environment, organically. If there is a consequence to it, it might be best, at the very least, that it not be one already determined by a planning board, because however well-meaning, their logic is likely not to be wholly their own.
What Wendell Berry’s Brush Teaches Us About Capitalism, Community, and “Inevitability”
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
The Art of Loading Brush: New Agrarian Writings, the latest collection of writings by Wendell Berry, isn't a perfect book, nor the perfect expression of his powerful vision of what constitutes a good life or a good community.
Learning from The Left Behind
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
Robert Wuthnow's new book, The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America, is the best book I've read on the rural-urban divide in the United States in years. It may, in fact, be the best book I've ever read on the topic, and I've read a lot of them.
After Trump 1: Getting Urbanists and Localists Together
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
So, as one small effort to try to organize my thoughts about politics in the Trump era, let me see if I can make the case for why urbanism should, and usually does, comport with localism, and thus why urban-sympathetic conservatives and radical and democratic localists, as we all face 2017, have much in common.
