1st Edition
Sustainable Living at the Centre for Alternative Technology Radical Ideas and Practical Solutions
This book presents a detailed exploration into the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT), an enterprise concerned with finding and communicating sustainable ways of living, established in Wales in 1973. Playing a central role in the global green network, this study examines CAT’s history and context for creation, its development over time and its wider influence in the progression of green ideas at the local, national and international levels.
Based on original archival and ethnographic research, this book provides the first in-depth analysis of CAT and uses the case study to explore wider issues of sustainability and environmental communication. It situates the Centre within current environmental and political discourse and emphasises the relevance and reach of CAT’s practical solutions and creative educational programme. These practical solutions to the destruction of the environment of human activity are increasingly vital in today’s context of climate change, loss of biodiversity and rising levels of pollution. It debates the spectrum of attitudes between environmentalism and ecologism evident at CAT and in broader conversations surrounding sustainability.
Woven throughout the text, the author makes clear what we can learn from CAT’s almost 50 years of experiments and experiences, from his first-hand account of working at the site. This will be a fascinating and revealing read for academics, researchers, students and practitioners interested in all aspects of sustainability and environmental issues.
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Context and Early History of the Centre for Alternative Technology
Chapter 2. From Community to Network
Chapter 3. Decision Making
Chapter 4. Communication, Education and Persuasion
Chapter 5. Zero Carbon Britain
Conclusion
Biography
Stephen Jacobs is Senior Lecturer in Media, Religion and Culture at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. His recent publications include The Art of Living: Foundation: Spirituality and Wellbeing in the Global Context – a multisited ethnographic study of an international meditation organisation. He has had an interest in environmental issues and sustainability since working at the Centre for Alternative Technology in the 1980s. He was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for this project.
"We are living through a series of multiple, interrelated and international crises where climate emergency, poverty and inequality seem like wicked problems with no solution. This study offers a timely account of the ‘practical utopia’ created in the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT). The account of 50 years of innovation, survival, education and renewal offers readers hope – that practical solutions can be found to the environmental crisis, that change can happen and that alternative organisations have a central role to play in creating more inclusive and sustainable societies."
Anita Mangan, Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies, University of Bristol, UK
