The Institute for Social Ecology (ISE) was a significant flowering of political ecology from the 1960s and 1970’s counterculture. It was co-founded in 1974 by its most prominent thinker, Murray Bookchin, and Dan Chodorkoff. Bookchin wrote extensively about food and agriculture from the early 1950s. In 1962, his first book on pesticides appeared, shortly before Rachel Carson’s more famous Silent Spring on the same topic. As an autoworker brought up in The Bronx district of New York, he was an […]
Stefan Szczelkun will read from his book Plotlands of Shepperton - a unique artist’s book on a massively under-researched area of the history of housing, soon to be re-released in large format. Szczelkun's commentary on Britain's plotlands reveals the houses to be haunted by their radical history. Do they contain a key to the ‘housing problem’ that the establishment dare not countenance? Following his reading, Stefan will discuss this and more in conversation with BRHG's Paul Smith.
On this history walk we will discover how Bristolians were fed during the early modern era (17th-19th Centuries). Hear how a rapidly expanding urban area, without the ability to feed itself, was kept supplied. How Bristol in turn helped supply the rural hinterland and its relationship with Wales and the wider world. How the market system worked, and how it was regulated, at times by the civic authorities, or by the “moral economy” and the crowd. What happened when the chain broke, and how did […]
