Chris Smaje

Smaje is not the only person I've read who suggests the future belongs to a small farm rural economy. I've read enough from various sources that I completely agree with his argument and don't need to be convinced. Smaje sets out his argument in meticulous, sometimes tedious detail. If you are a detail person, you will love this book! Where he gets less detailed is at the end of the book suggesting how we might arrive at this small farm future from where we are now. Naturally he can't say for sure, he can only offer possibilities of how it all might work if we go about it deliberately. Nonetheless, it is all still rather vague, insisting that a rural republicanism is the way to go while acknowledging there are many flaws and issues that would need to be worked out so we don't end up with a repressive social order for women, minorities, etc. As a female, I find his passing acknowledgment of the dangers not good enough. Not that he has to figure it all out, but since he is a white male, he is severely lacking in his understanding of the danger. And while it would be nice if we can plan our energy decent and our small farm future, I don't see this actually happening. It will come about because it has to in a likely chaotic crash, which Smaje doesn't address in any way.… (altro)

Wildly ... Imaginative... Reasoning, Close Yet Still Incorrect Conclusion. Most any math teacher (even former ones like myself) have stories of situations where when told to "show their work", a student somehow has so-incorrect-as-to-nearly-be-incomprehensible reasoning, but somehow still manages to wind up at an answer that is close but still not quite correct. Maybe a decimal point in the wrong position, but the right actual digits in the right sequence, for example. Another example relevant here would be a space mission to explore Jupiter's moon Europa that somehow launches when Jupiter is at its furthest point from Earth and launches away from Jupiter (or any reasonable path to the planet) to boot... and yet still manages to wind up on Callisto - another of the Galilean Moons of Jupiter with similar properties, though not the originally intended target and not as rich in desired attributes for the science aboard the mission.

This is effectively what Smaje has done here. More conservative readers may not make it even halfway into the first chapter, which is little more than a *very* thinly veiled anti-capitalist diatribe. Even more liberal/ progressive readers will have some tough pills to swallow with Smaje's ardent defense of at least some forms of private property as the chief means of achieving his goals. And at the end, Smaje does in fact manage to do at least some version of what he sets out to do - make some level of a case for A Small Farm Future. The case Smaje makes here is indeed intriguing, despite being so deeply flawed, and absolutely worthy of further examination and discussion. It seems that he is simply too blinded by his own political and philosophical backgrounds to truly make the case as it arguably should have been made. Recommended.… (altro)