This book engages with the politics of social and environmental justice, and seeks new ways to think about the future of urbanization in the twenty-first century. It establishes foundational concepts for understanding how space, time, place and nature the material frames of daily life are constituted and represented through social practices, not as separate elements but in relation to each other. It describes how geographical differences are produced, and shows how they then become fundamental to the exploration of political, economic and ecological alternatives to contemporary life.

Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference

Social Justice and the City

Review: The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience By Rob Hopkins Reviewed by Alex Alkhoury University of Western Ontario, Canada Hopkins, Rob. The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008. 240 pp. ISBN: 9781900322188. US$24.95, paper. Chlorine-free recycled paper. The intertwined emergencies of peak oil and climate change demand dramatic, urgent action across a range of scales, the magnitude of which can threaten to overwhelm people, particularly those who are just learning about these issues. When problems seem overwhelming it can easily lead to individual inaction and collective inertia, and this is precisely what Rob Hopkins seeks to overcome in The Transition Handbook. His essential goal is to outline a realistic and hopeful vision of post-carbon communities and the practical steps needed to get there. The starting point for Transition is the essential problem now widely understood as ‘peak oil’: as the production of conventional oil declines, its growing scarcity will drive increasingly higher fuel prices with profound implications for industrial economies. Hopkins argues that while climate change exists in the public consciousness as an intangible or, at most, distant fear, the decline of cheap fossil energy is a much more proximate and understandable problem for many – as barrels of oil are easier to visualize than tonnes of [greenhouse] gas (p.40) – and can thus simultaneously spark necessary action on both issues. Hopkins begins by succinctly describing the nature of the problems (what he calls ‘The Head’), then appeals for a rational, composed response (in a section called the 'The Heart'), before digging into the crux of the book, ‘The Hands,’ a discussion of specific, transitional steps and strategies to move beyond economies centred on fossil energy. His 'Twelve Steps of Transition' are underpinned by a clear statement of six core principles, including positive 'visioning', 'inclusion' of all members of the community, 'awareness-raising', 'resilience', using 'psychological insights' to counter the threat of inaction, and focusing on the community level to attain 'credible and appropriate solutions'. For Hopkins, a community's resilience hinges on its ability to produce core goods and services, while only importing what cannot be sourced locally. Building momentum for re-localization depends upon first building a strong foundation of community-level understanding of the issues and rebuilding connections among people. Hopkins provides great, practical detail here, outlining strategies on running successful public meetings, and providing tips on organizing things like empowering re- skilling group events, and how best to obtain publicity for both these and also the launch of a given Transition Initiative. In this, Transition also doubles as a best practices guide for the logistical elements of community organization and activism. This practical and optimistic ‘how to’ dimension is undoubtedly the book’s great objective and strength, and for this it should appeal to those eager to inspire action in their own communities. However, it is not Hopkins' intention to provide a precise, universal plan, but rather a general set of guidelines backed by motivating examples of contemporary re-localization efforts. At times, this does leave difficult questions of scale underdeveloped, with much of the discussion directed at the level of relatively small communities. With a background in permaculture and as the founder of the UK Transition movement, Hopkins is well-positioned to offer both a broader vision and a practical plan for re-localization and self-reliance. His achievement in this book is to give concrete grounds for optimism in a captivating and highly accessible way. In this, it is a particularly useful antidote to those who are concerned but overwhelmed, as well as being a useful starting point into peak oil and transition issues for progressive scholars, students, activists and the general public alike. Alex Alkhoury. , MA Student, Department of Geography, University of Western Ontario, Social Science Centre, London, Ontario N6A 5C2, Canada. Electronic Green Journal, Issue 29, Winter 2009, ISSN:1076-7975

/pdf/review-the-transition-handbook-from-oil-dependency-to-local-24t3f86olu.pdf

Review: The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience

This book was first published in 1982. Unemployment is perhaps one of the most serious social problems. In economic terms the cost of unemployment, both to the individual and to the collective, is extremely high. But unemployment has other effects too. In this book Marie Jahoda looks beyond the obvious economic consequences, to explore the psychological meaning of employment and unemployment. The book is an accessible and nontechnical account of the contribution which social psychology can make to understanding unemployment and clearly reveals the limitations of an exclusive concentration on its economic aspects. Professor Jahoda shows that the psychological impact is hugely destructive, throwing doubt on the popular diagnosis that the work ethic is disappearing. She also analyses the experience of unemployment in the context of the experience of employment and argues that one of the socially destructive consequences of large-scale unemployment is that it detracts from the need to humanise employment.

Employment and Unemployment

B human: how could that be an issue? Perhaps it wasn’t in the past, when what it is to be human was agreed by all and taken for granted. But if we look back to the past, we must try to ensure we look back to the real past, and not simply project back an idealized form of the present. Whatever “being human” is, whatever modes of being human there are, it is something fashioned by relationships: with our mother, the other members of the family, our peers, our friends, the opposite sex. Being human is less something given than something that develops, something we discover. Perhaps, as Father John Behr has suggested in various recent works, we should think rather of becoming human, rather than being human: being human is a goal, a telos, the fulfilment of our image-likeness to God.1

On being human

The article aims to deepen the understanding of structural social work from the point of view of the ecosocial framework. It analyses selected current international literature from the debate on the new wave of various interpretations of ecological social work. The debate shares four main themes: (a) a global perspective, (b) a critical view of professional social work, (c) a holistic ecosocial transition of society and (d) environmental and ecological justice. The ecosocial framework challenges structural social work to follow the principles of sustainable development and considers environmental issues as a crucial part of the goals and practical activities of structural social work.

The ecosocial approach in social work as a framework for structural social work

• Summary: This article explores the knowledge of community-based social workers in the context of an action research project aimed at exploring the practitioners’ own descriptions of their knowled...

Transferable and Negotiated Knowledge Constructing Social Work Expertise for the Future

The eco-social approach in social work and the challenges to the expertise of social work

/pdf/the-ecosocial-transition-of-societies-the-contribution-of-4qgkecbz5t.pdf

The Ecosocial Transition of Societies : The contribution of social work and social policy

The article contributes to sustainability transition research by indicating the significance of transformative grassroots innovations in the context of social work research. We introduce the integrative concept of ecosocial innovation in order to demonstrate how grassroots innovations can successfully combine social, ecological and economic aspects of a sustainability transition. By ecosocial innovations, we refer to social innovations with a strong ecological orientation (e.g., recycling workshops, urban gardening, participatory unemployment projects and new local economies). The data consists of 50 examples of ecosocial innovations in Finland, Italy, Germany, Belgium and the UK. We investigate how ecosocial innovations interconnect ecological, economic and social goals and study the factors of their integrative crucial capacity. On the basis of qualitative data analysis and thematic categorisation of ecosocial innovations, we identify five integrative practices: diversity of activities, successful networking, addressing new livelihood, focus on food and explicit conceptual work on sustainability. Very often these integrative practices emerge as pragmatic solutions to local needs. For the participants, the ecosocial innovations can be relevant sources for new livelihood and wellbeing beyond the conventional labour market. Foremost, ecosocial innovations are valuable as forerunners for sustainability transition in practice.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/7/2107/pdf

Kati Närhi

Papers

The ecosocial approach in social work as a framework for structural social work

Transferable and Negotiated Knowledge Constructing Social Work Expertise for the Future

The eco-social approach in social work and the challenges to the expertise of social work

The Ecosocial Transition of Societies : The contribution of social work and social policy

Ecosocial Innovations and Their Capacity to Integrate Ecological, Economic and Social Sustainability Transition