Localism, Intentionality, and Utopia (Socialist or otherwise)
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
There is an accusation which has been flung over the decades (if not centuries) at practically every sort of intentional community-building effort, thus oddly discovering something which apparently entirely disparate elements of the right and left have in common.
The place and (place-ness) of Occupy, ten years on
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
[T}he legacy of Occupy Wall Street was "something that touches our deepest spiritual yearning," in a very un-Walzerian sense; "its practice says: 'We will no longer live in hatred and competition. We will live in love and community.'"
Taking (democratic) control of one’s own traffic
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
The fundamental focus in this book is traffic, meaning the movement of people and goods along streets and roads, which is literally the lifeblood, the circulatory system, of any urbanized space.
Regarding Mutualism, Cooperativism, and Other (Interstitially) Anti-Capitalist Alternatives
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
If future historians wish to find some silver lining in COVID-19, the rise in mutualism in response to the shut-downs and dislocations it made necessary may be a good candidate.
Teaching (or cultivating) sustainability or (or inhabitance) ten years on
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
Philosophers from Aristotle to Polanyi have consistently argued that nothing can so engage people as real tactile experience, and real practical work.
Grace Olmsteads Uprooted Idaho, and my own
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
Grace Olmstead's book may not be the final masterpiece of all possible localist argument, but it is a set of very smart reflections on localism and rural life...
Our Own Vines and Our Own Fig Trees: a Post-Independence Day, Post-Hamilton-Watching Sermon
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
It is both reasonable and even moral, I think, to long for, to look for the embodiment and instantiation of (and, yes, to memorialize through song and statuary, with the understanding that statues can come down and, just as Hamilton did, songs can be resung), one's people and place, one's vine and fig tree, one's home.
Wichita and the Road Ahead
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
But I can think of other ways, more genuinely and democratically empowering ways, that the city leaders could spend money that might make even more people happy, in the long run. Here's hoping they can start seeing them (and that we will know how to help them do so!).