Transition Culture

Not long ago in the “developing world”, people would spend much time relating to each member of their community, telling beautiful stories, singing songs, dancing together and communicating at length with all the other beings and features in their environment. Now, to quote (a shortened version of) the paragraph above, “SMS-enabled communication is made real in every geography, bridging the digital divide in the citizen sector through a rapidly-scaling user-led movement, with a core platform inspiring sector-specific spin-offs developed by user citizen organizations”. Should we only rejoice?

Way to go, Annie. So here’s a story for us all:

So, I’ve been talking to this youngish fellow (40 years old) at the Cville Farmers Market, PA, USA, for about 8 weeks, sharing with him our New Era ideas about how we’re going to have to re-localize the food system and how we should revalue food growers and how food will be worth more than gold one day. And that the weather will disrupt everything and on… and he looks at me a bit …OK, and says he likes the bit about being more valued.

Well about a month ago he lost about ten acres of apples to a hail storm. He had some examples under the counter to show me the dents it put in the apples and that he couldn’t sell them as Eaters. Of course I immediately said can you sell them for juice? Sure he says, for $5 a bushel instead of $14.

Well two weeks ago he found an Amish guy who paid him $8 a bushel for an acre because he was going to use them for jams and apple butter and stuff. So that was a small blessing. He couldn’t insure them because this is his second big annual crop and you need to establish a couple of years crop to get the insurance.

Anyway this week he waves me over all enthusiastic saying ” It’s coming true buddy, I’ve been thinking of you all week. The things you been saying, come true for me this week.”

Turns out fruit buyers from Chicago came into the area and he sold his damaged 10 acres for over $20 a bushel because the early blooming on the apple trees in New York, Maine and CT got frozen and frosted and severely reduced the fruit crop, so these juice manufacturers are desperate.
He’s delighted of course, but not at the expense of the northern growers.

I’d mentioned to him that I had some DVDs to watch about some of this stuff and he said if you want to bring me one of them next week, I’d like to see em!

Hi Annie

Thanks for the comment. I think that your concerns about Ken’s work are unfounded. Mobile phone technology has spread at great speed across Africa, and in many cases is a force for good. Ken’s work allows, for example, farmers to organise better what they take to market, using simple SMS in new ways. Allowing people to share ideas, organise themselves better, organise the use of scarce resources more effectively, bring healthcare advice and support to remote communities, can only be a good thing surely? The best person though to talk about it is Ken, who has been widely recognised for his work and its social benefits, perhaps this is a conversation you might have with him at the workshop?
Thanks

Thanks Rob! I realise advantages of mobile phones and am in no way ‘blaming’ Ken but also with sadness observing the inexorable dismantlement of ancient cultures and relentless advance of technology, speed, monetarisation and other forms of modern ‘progress’. I was noting that the vocabulary used to report increased connection smacked of disconnection, to my eyes…
Had to walk out recently of a TTT/Oxfam showing of ‘Black Gold’ film, where Ethiopian farmers are shown ‘benefiting’ from turning their mixed subsistance homestead into mono-crops for export and becoming salaried – having lived many years in wonderful Ethiopia and seeing the damage done by such ‘sustainable development’.
So glad you published Charles Eisenstein’s interview and hope you can read his books (both, if/when you can) as he articulates such concerns so well and positively!

Hi Annie

Thanks for your comments. As an anthropologist (by degree) I spend a lot of my time thinking about the very same questions. My work has always sought to promote grassroots, indigenous innovation (even with “outside” technologies such as mobile phones). I’d obviously be happy to talk more if you’re at the workshop.

Two articles you might find interesting on this overall topic:

http://www.kiwanja.net/media/docs/World-Watch-Appropriate-Tech-April-2010.pdf

http://www.kiwanja.net/blog/2012/09/indigenous-and-ingenious-the-roots-of-mobile-banking/

Thanks also, Rob, for your comments here and apologies for only just picking up on the conversation.

Ken

Hi Ken
Many thanks for this! I can see your sensitivity to these issues and thoughtfulness in your work. Unfortunately I am unable to attend the Conference!
I see no easy wisdom emerging about the fast development and spread of communication technology. Let’s hope we can together learn to keep the benefits and reduce the drawbacks!
Reading one article you suggest I note the irony that many in the West, including myself, are working at disengaging from the current monetary economy – based on a vision of scarcity – and engaging more in a gift economy – with its vison of abundance -, whereas you deplore that “the majority of African rural communities remain excluded from the mainstream modern banking system”. To me, some of these might be our role models!
I worked many years for development agencies in Africa and Asia until I felt that the flow of information needed to be reversed, that I had more to learn from many of the communities that we were hoping to ‘develop’.
But these are complex issues and I’ll again refer to Charles Eisenstein, who I feel articulates them very well in his books, or for a short version in an interview such as the one here (the first 3 minutes can be skipped): http://connectingbetween.com/interview-archive-charles-eisenstein-and-robin-gunkel/.
Enjoy the Conference and hoping we might get to chat on another occasion!