"Build half a million more homes" ... but to what extent are really 'innovative schemes' being sought and introduced by local authorities to provide affordable housing?

There is a lot of pressure to build - and conflicting legal opinions on what it means:
Futures Forum: The pressures to build on green fields: in the Southwest - "The lack of a local plan for meeting housing targets does not necessarily undermine the protection that our countryside merits."

The Local Government Association has released its 'plan' outlining what a future government as of next May should be doing on the vital issues of housing, employment and health:

THE FIRST 100 DAYS AND BEYOND

In May 2015 the country will have a new government which will determine the future of our nation not just until the end of the decade but also for future generations.

This new government will be faced with a number of difficult issues. At the top of the in-tray will be the ‘must do’ tasks it will have to tackle.
Our offer, to whoever forms that government, is to help them deal with the issues that matter most to the people of this country, changing lives for the better and investing in the future of our nation.

More detail on what the new government will need to do – in its first 100 days – to secure a bright future for the people of this country can be found in our document, available here:

DOWNLOAD 100 DAYS PUBLICATION
Local Government Association | INVESTING IN OUR NATION'S FUTURE

Its first 'pledge' is to 'build half a million more homes':

HELPING EVERYONE FIND HOMES AT AN AFFORDABLE PRICE

The shortage of houses in this country is a top priority for people and buying a home is increasingly out of reach for many. Over the last two Parliaments, the number of people under 45 who can afford their own home has fallen by a fifth. More than three million adults aged 20-34 are now living with their parents; house prices are rising faster than average earnings and there are 1.7 million households on waiting lists for affordable homes across England.

Councils are ambitious for their communities and the people who live in them. They want to build more local, affordable homes but currently they are restricted in their ability to do so. Councils have demonstrated that when they are given the powers, resources and flexibilities they can build at scale. Councils are focused on making the best use of land that is available and appropriate for housing including prioritising the use of brownfield land through their local plans where this makes sense locally.



OUR PLANS WOULD PROVIDE HALF A MILLION MORE HOMES SO PEOPLE CAN FIND A PLACE THEY CAN AFFORD.

INNOVATING TO BUILD

Councils are delivering innovative schemes to build more homes:
Eastleigh Borough Council
The Preston, South Ribble and Lancashire City
Gateshead Council

Local Government Association | Homes

And their website allows closer analysis at local level:

Local Government Association | LOCALISED DATA

However, there are questions:

> To what extent does the LGA have its own 'perspective' on these matters?

The Local Government Association LGA), which represents more than 370 councils in England and Wales, wants a raft of new measures to help tackle the housing crisis head-on – staving off an ever-swelling swathe of householders priced out from getting on the housing ladder.

The call comes after government figures show that 221,000 new homes are needed every year. Yet currently, based on last year's figures, only half that amount is being built.

Media releases | Local Government Association

> To what extent will the lack of a Five-Year Housing Plan mean councils are in fact powerless?

Without an up-to-date and demonstrable housing land supply, the total number of houses to be developed in your area could be taken out of your hands. For example, an appeal was allowed in June 2012 against Torbay Borough Council for 155 dwellings when the council could not demonstrate an up-to-date five year housing land supply. In the absence of a more recent locally derived and tested housing land supply, the Inspector stated that:

"the CLG 2008-based household projection figures constitute the most reliable up-to-date figures, and therefore the best evidence on which to base my assessment of Torbay's housing supply position."

With the acceptance of these figures through appeal, it means that a higher number of houses (than those desired by the council) in line with the 2008-based figure can now legitimately be provided by developers, until the council's supply figures are next tested and a new Local Plan is adopted.

Local planning | PAS
5 year land supply for dummies | East Devon Alliance
Futures Forum: The pressures to build on green fields: in the Southwest - "The lack of a local plan for meeting housing targets does not necessarily undermine the protection that our countryside merits."

> To what extent are really 'innovative schemes' being sought and introduced by local authorities?

11 Affordable Housing Alternatives for City Dwellers

by Cat Johnson, originally published by Shareable | JUL 8, 2014

After World War II, white, middle-class Americans flocked to the suburbs from the city. This shift was described by Alan Ehrenhalt in his 2013 book, The Great Inversion. The result is that the diverse communities that make cities resilient creative centers are being displaced or forced to find new, affordable housing options.

Here, we’ve rounded up 11 affordable housing alternatives for city dwellers because if we want cities to thrive, we need to rethink how we house everybody, not just the rich.

1. Community Land Trusts

A community land trust is a nonprofit organization that develops permanently affordable housing for the community by taking the cost of the land out of the speculative market. There are also community land trust gardens, commercial buildings, civic buildings, green spaces, rural projects and more, but the core of the model is to create opportunities for lower income families to find stable, affordable housing. One example of land trust housing is the San Francisco Community Land Trust. Learn how to start a community land trust here.

2. Accessory Dwelling Units

Also called mother-in-law suites, accessory dwelling units (ADUs) are secondary units that exist on property that would normally have only one dwelling on it. These include free-standing guest houses, converted garages, and basement apartments. Sometimes these are built without the proper permits, but they offer a way to house more people on an existing parcel of land. Cities, including San Francisco, are increasingly looking at ADUs as a relatively quick and easy way to increase housing supply.

3. Public Housing

Public housing has been demonized in the U.S., but in Europe it serves millions of middle- and low-income families successfully while checking runaway speculation in the private market. As Shareable co-founder Neal Gorenflo argued in his Hack the Housing Crisis speech, creating more public and cooperative housing is key to tackling the housing crisis in San Francisco and beyond. Any long-term solution to the housing crisis requires taking a significant amount of housing out of the speculative market, which will require big, complex, policy change. This analysis of public housing in New York City, Singapore, and Vienna shows the way.

4. Cooperatives

Housing cooperatives are a proven path to affordable housing where the residents own and manage a property together. By pooling their buying power, members can save on the purchase cost as well as on expenses such as utilities and WiFi. Housing coops come in all sizes and require skillful organizing to thrive. If you can't find a housing coop nearby to join, then start one. Check out Shareable staffer Mira Luna's guide to starting one.

5. Baugruppen

Originating in Germany, baugruppen is a model for sustainable, affordable housing that is co-designed, co-created and co-owned by its residents. Drawing from both cohousing and condominium models, baugruppen is built around the specific needs and desires of individual communities and keeps costs significantly down by removing developers from the picture. For more information about baugruppen see Baugruppen: Germany's Sustainable Community Housing Model.

6. Micro Houses

Micro houses—including tiny houses, cottages, shipping containers, mobile homes and more—offer affordable housing for those who can live in small spaces. Small homes are less expensive and more energy efficient than larger houses and they can be built or wheeled into lots that can't accommodate larger homes. And micro houses are small and customizable enough to lend themselves to innovative housing solutions. For instance, there's a tiny house village for the homeless in Austin, Texas.

7. Tiny Apartments

Tiny apartments allow for incredible housing density in cities. Generally falling in the 100 to 200 square foot range, there are, however, some extreme examples that test the limits of tiny. In Tokyo, for instance, there are apartments that are aptly described as coffin-sized. A recent street art project parodying the high cost of housing in San Francisco saw trash cans and planter boxes going several thousand dollars each. For those who can embrace minimalism, tiny apartments offer an affordable alternative to expensive urban housing.

8. Senior Community Housing

Seniors prize safety, location, affordability, and community engagement in housing. Enter senior community housing. The idea is that seniors, rather than living in isolated apartments or houses, can live in housing communities that prioritize community interaction. Many of these are designed with affordability in mind. Good examples of senior community housing are the Mary Helen Rogers Senior Community in San Francisco and the Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly in Boston, Massachusetts.

9. Modular Housing

Pre-fabricated, modular dwellings offer interesting housing options including placing housing units on top of existing buildings. They can also be more affordable and energy efficient than traditional homes. As Taeko Takagi of ZETA Design + Build pointed out, factory-built homes take 75 percent less time to build than traditional construction and save 20 percent in materials cost. Modular homes could provide housing on idle land quickly, efficiently and affordably. At the event, Tim McCormick, founder of Houselets suggested that small, prefabricated homes could even be put in garages, driveways, and parking spaces.

10. Coliving

Coliving combines shared housing, community living, and collaboration on professional projects in one neat package. Sharing housing is nothing new—college students and young city-dwellers regularly share housing to cut costs. But there are differences that separate rent-paying housemates from a coliving community. Primarily, coliving is, from the outset, built around an intention to create a tight, productive community to accelerate personal and community development. Chelsea Rustrum, an entrepreneur and coliving advocate, describes it like this: “We have this vision in common of how we want to change the world.” For more information about coliving check out the article Hacking Home and Coliving.org.

11. Work Trade

Work trade for housing offers a way to exchange skills and elbow grease for a place to live. Services bartered can include pet-sitting, childcare, yard maintenance, elder-care, house-sitting, handyperson services, gardening and much more. Benefits of work trades can include paying rent with your time rather than dollars, and work flexibility. One drawback of work trade is that you may end up living where you work, but in the right situation, if clear boundaries and communication are set, this isn't an issue.

11 Affordable Housing Alternatives for City Dwellers

YMCA reveals innovative solution to affordable housing crisis
Britain’s housing crisis: five possible solutions | Housing crisis News | The Week UK
Low-cost, sustainable design could help ease housing crisis
One Spanish town's solution to the country's housing crisis - SmartPlanet
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Energy-switching advice from SidEnergy ... Sat 9th August ... at Sidmouth Farmers' Market

The Sid Valley's local community energy cooperative will be offering advice this coming Saturday:

Energy Switching

SidEnergy aims to provide guidance and information about the variety of deals available for the purchase of gas and electricity from a any chosen supplier.

SidEnergy has a partnership with Good Energy to purchase 100% green energy. Customers switching to Good Energy will receive £25 discount and Sid Energy also receive £25 for community benefit.

SidEnergy also provides advice on switching to other energy suppliers to save money.

Disclaimer SidEnergy is not responsible for any outcomes of switching to Good Energy or any other energy supplier.

SidEnergy | Energy Switching

... at the monthly farmers' market in the centre of town:

Sidmouth Farmers Market

When: 9:30 AM 9th August

Where: St John Hall Blackmore Drive EX10 8LA

Regular monthly Saturday market proving local meat, vegetables, bakery, jams and crafts.

See also:

• Sustainable Sidmouth
• Food Group
• Farmers' Market

Vision Group for Sidmouth - Farmers Market
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"More people want more homes" ....... or maybe not ....... "The idea that people can now choose better where new housing goes is just complete nonsense."

There has been quite some reaction to the new Housing Minister's notion that 
"Nimbys have had their day":
Futures Forum: "More people want more homes"
New planning minister suggests Nimbys have had their day - Telegraph

Housing minister's survey spin angers campaigners
By Western Morning News | Posted: August 04, 2014

By Phil Goodwin, WMN reporter, Twitter: @goodwin_phil



Residents of Feniton, Devon, successfully objected to plans, lodged under current planning rules, to increase the size of their village by almost 42%

Rural communities without local council plans have rejected Government claims that “nimbyism” was on the wane thanks to planning reforms.

New planning minister Brandon Lewis claimed the results of a recent survey suggested the “not-in-my-back-yard” lobby had been won over by the New Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) He said there had been a “dramatic swing” in public opinion – with almost half of people now in favour of new housing in their area – prompted by a move to push sustainable development and give locals a greater say.

The comments have caused anger in the countryside where the reforms have triggered a huge surge in planning applications for new house building – often in the face of significant local opposition.

Claire Wright, an independent district and county councillor, who is bidding to be the next MP for East Devon, said the claims were “nonsense”.

“The planning changes have forced communities into exhausting battles against inappropriate and unwanted housing,” she added. “Appeals are through the roof thanks to the vagueness of the policy and the result is high-paid lawyers battling it out, as we had in the Feniton super inquiry. The idea that people can now choose better where new housing goes is just complete nonsense.”

The minister’s claims came after the Government published the results of a British Social Attitudes survey which found that the proportion of people in favour of house building in their area had risen from 28% to 47% between 2010 and 2013. By contrast, the proportion of people opposed to the construction of new homes in their communities fell from 46% to 31% in that time.

The results were drawn from face-to-face interviews with around 1,000 people, and showed the highest opposition to new homes among respondents living in a small city or town (34%), followed by villages and suburbs (32%).

Opposition was lowest among those living in large cities at just 17%. Mr Lewis, who was promoted to Housing and Planning minister in the recent reshuffle, hailed the survey as evidence that reforms had made house building more acceptable. “Since 2010 there has been a dramatic swing in public opinion about house building,” he said. “Now that local people have a bigger say over where new housing goes they are much happier to support housing building in their area.”

A researcher working on the study told the WMN they would not have framed the results in quite this way, adding that it showed that a third of people still opposed house building in their area.

The study said: “Home owners, those living in small cities and towns and in rural areas were still more likely to be opposed than renters and those living in large cities.”

The Coalition has faced controversy over its decision to rip up 1,200 pages of planning protections and replace them with a new planning rulebook with a new bias in favour of sustainable development. It has made it hard for councils to refuse schemes where they are unable to show an approved local plan setting targets for housing or demonstrate they have a five-year supply of development land available.

Susie Bond, an independent East Devon district council for Feniton – where villagers banded together to fight off plans for many more homes – said people living where local authorities had failed to approve local plans had no choice but to fight. “When we were told as a village that we had to have a 5% increase, we engaged with the process to see where we could put them,” she added. “But because we have no local plan, under the new rules developers were able to come and target us and we ended up with something like 42% – that’s not nimbyism, that’s just fighting inappropriate development.”

Shaun Spiers, chief executive of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, dismissed the report as a “propaganda bulletin” for the Government’s planning reforms.

Housing minister's survey spin angers campaigners | Western Morning News
Local Independent councillors share their views on “localism” | East Devon Alliance
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On the Transition: "Future Primitive"

A reminder from a posting a couple of days ago
- in the light of a proposal to work less and take more time out:

Jared Diamond, the scientist who has done more than anyone to draw lessons from “the world until yesterday”, argued that “Hunter-gatherers practised the most successful and longest-lasting lifestyle in human history”

Futures Forum: In Praise of Idleness: 
"If Hadza nomads get by on 14 hours’ work a week, why can’t we?"

It seems, then, that the hunter-gather way of life could be quite attractive...

Over the years, cinema has explored this option.
The latest offering opens with extraordinary scenes...

With humanity all but wiped out following a simian flu epidemic caused by all that hubristic monkeying around with experimental drugs, the apes have been left relatively free to develop a new society, one comprising treetop fortresses, evolved hunter-gatherer techniques, a sophisticated form of sign language and an idealistic set of principles...

Film review: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (12A) - The Scotsman
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) | Political Film Blog

And the cult film 'Fight Club' provides another vision of a post-apocalyptic world:



"In the world I see – you're stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway."

Tyler Durden - In The World I See (Fight Club Scene Videosu - Mynet SahneTv
After the Beginning on Pinterest
Future Wilderness | “In the world I see you’re stalking elk through...

All these ideas touch on so-called 'primitivism':
John Filiss: What Is Primitivism?
Richard Heinberg: The Primitivist Critique of Civilization

One of the foremost writers on 'primitivism' is the American writer John Zerzan:
John Zerzan: anti-civilization theorist, writer and speaker

Here is a profile from the Guardian some years ago:

Anarchy in the USA

John Zerzan doesn't have a car, a credit card or a computer. He lives a quiet life in a cabin in Oregon and has sold his own blood plasma to make ends meet. So why does corporate America think he is the Antichrist? Duncan Campbell meets an improbable guru

The Guardian, Wednesday 18 April 2001
[Zerzan] is not alone in his disquiet. Last year, in a fascinating treatise in Wired, Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, one of whose friends was a victim of Kaczynski, said that although he believed that the Unabomber's actions had been criminally insane, there had been some merit in the case he made against a headlong technological rush to the future. He and Zerzan have since corresponded.

Profile of American anarchist John Zerzan | World news | The Guardian

Zerzan makes some very provocative and challenging proposals - if we are going to be able to 'transit' from today's society to a truly-sustainable one:

On the Transition: Postscript to Future Primitive

John Zerzan

Transporting food thousands of miles, not an atypical pursuit today, is an instance of pointless activity, as is producing countless tons of herbicide and pesticide poisons. The picture of humanity starving if a transformation were attempted may be brought into perspective by reference to a few other agricultural specifics, of a more positive nature. It is perfectly feasible, generally speaking, that we grow our own food. There are simple approaches, involving no division of labor, to large yields in small spaces.

Agriculture itself must be overcome, as domestication, and because it removes more organic matter from the soil than it puts back. Permaculture is a technique that seems to attempt an agriculture that develops or reproduces itself and thus tends toward nature and away from domestication. It is one example of promising interim ways to survive while moving away from civilization. Cultivation within the cities is another aspect of practical transition, and a further step toward superseding domestication would be a more or less random propagation of plants, a la Johnny Appleseed.

Regarding urban life, any steps toward autonomy and self-help should be realized, beginning now, so that cities may be all the more quickly abandoned later. Created out of capital's need to centralize control of property transactions, religion, and political domination, cities remain as extended life-destroying monuments to the same basic needs of capital. Something on the order of what we know now as museums might be a good idea so that post-upheaval generations could know how grotesque our species' existence became. Moveable celebration sites may be the nearest configuration to cities that disalienated life will express.

Along with the movement out of cities, paralleling it, one might likely see a movement from colder climes to warmer ones. The heating of living space in northern areas constitutes an absurd effort of energy, resources, and time. When humans become once again intimate with the earth, healthier and more robust, these zones would probably be peopled again, in altogether different ways.

As for population itself, its growth is no more a natural or neutral phenomenon than its technology. When life is fatally out of balance, the urge to reproduce appears as compensation for impoverishment, as with the non-civilized gatherer-hunters surviving today, population levels would be relatively quite low.

Enrico Guidoni pointed out that architectural structures necessarily reveal a great deal about their social context. Similarly, the isolation and sterility of shelter in class society is hardly accidental, and deserves to be scrapped in toto. Rudofsky's Architecture Without Architects deals with some examples of shelter produced not by specialists, but by spontaneous and evolving communal activity. Imagine the inviting richness of dwellings, each unique not mass produced, and a part of a serene mutuality that one might expect to emerge from the collapse of boundaries and artificial scarcities, material and emotional.

On the Transition
Future Primitive (John Zerzan) | The Anarchist Library
Future Primitive Revisited: Amazon.co.uk: John Zerzan: Books
Future Primitive and Other Essays - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Zerzan counters the notion that a rejection of the modern lifestyle means we must all go away and 'live in caves':

THE ANARCHO-PRIMITIVIST WHO WANTS US ALL TO GIVE UP TECHNOLOGY

By Roc Morin Jun 27 2014

“Whenever I think of [inventor of the computer] Alan Turing, I think about the Apple logo,” began John Zerzan. “The logo is an apple with a bite out of it. Of course, Turing supposedly smeared cyanide on an apple and bit into it after being persecuted by the government for being gay. A bite from an apple is also associated with our expulsion from the Garden of Eden. I don’t think that’s quite the message they’re trying to convey, but there it is.”

I had arranged an interview with arguably the world’s most prominent anti-technology philosopher via email. The interview was to be conducted via Skype.

VICE: You advocate for all of civilisation to abandon technology and return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. How do you feel about the Skype call that we’re having right now?

John Zerzan: I was on the Art Bell show years ago and he kept saying that to be consistent with my philosophy, I should live in a cave. I said, “Yeah, you’re right, but then this conversation wouldn’t be possible.” You have to try to connect with people. You have to be part of the conversation in society or else you’re not serious.

The Anarcho-Primitivist Who Wants Us All to Give Up Technology | VICE United Kingdom

One of the first to challenge the stereotypes of the 'primitive' was Marshall Sahlins:

The "original affluent society" is a theory postulating that hunter-gatherers were the original affluent society. This theory was first articulated by Marshall Sahlins at a symposium entitled "Man the Hunter" held in Chicago in 1966. The significance of the theory stems from its role in shifting anthropological thought away from seeing hunter-gatherer societies as primitive, to seeing them as practitioners of a refined mode of subsistence.

At the time of the symposium new research by anthropologists, such as Richard B. Lee’s work on the !Kung of southern Africa, was challenging popular notions that hunter-gatherer societies were always near the brink of starvation and continuously engaged in a struggle for survival.[1] Sahlins gathered the data from these studies and used it to support a comprehensive argument that states that hunter-gatherers did not suffer from deprivation, but instead lived in a society in which "all the people’s wants are easily satisfied."[2]

Original affluent society - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And there has been considerable research since:

Jared Diamond's most recent book, The World Until Yesterday, published in 2012, asks what the western world can learn from traditional societies. It surveys 39 traditional small-scale societies of farmers and hunter/gatherers with respect to how they deal with universal human problems. The problems discussed include dividing space, resolving disputes, bringing up children, treatment of elders, dealing with dangers, formulating religions, learning multiple languages, and remaining healthy. The book suggests that some practices of traditional societies could be usefully adopted in the modern industrial world today, either by individuals or else by society as a whole.

Jared Diamond - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Play Makes Us Human V: Why Hunter-Gatherers' Work is Play:
Hunter-gatherers made work play by making it optional.
Published on July 2, 2009 by Peter Gray in Freedom to Learn



Our word 'work' has two meanings. It can mean any unpleasant activity; or it can mean any productive or useful activity, regardless of its pleasantness or unpleasantness. The first of these meanings is the opposite of play; the second is not. We use the same word for the two meanings, I suppose, because in our culture's history the two meanings have so often overlapped. Productive activity conducted by slaves, servants, and hired hands with no sense of choice about what they are doing indeed is work in both senses of the term.

Play Makes Us Human V: Why Hunter-Gatherers' Work is Play | Psychology Today

How Hunter-Gatherers Maintained Their Egalitarian Ways
The important lessons from hunter-gatherers are about culture, not genes. 
Published on May 16, 2011 by Peter Gray in Freedom to Learn

I have in previous posts commented on hunter-gatherers' playfulness; their playful religious practices; their playful approach toward productive work; their non-directive childrearing methods; and their children's playful ways of educating themselves. In all of those posts I emphasized the egalitarian, non-hierarchical nature of hunter-gatherer society.

If just one anthropologist had reported all this, we might assume that he or she was a starry-eyed romantic who was seeing things that weren't really there, or was a liar. But many anthropologists, of all political stripes, regarding many different hunter-gatherer cultures, have told the same general story. There are some variations from culture to culture, of course, and not all of the cultures are quite as peaceful and fully egalitarian as others, but the generalities are the same. One anthropologist after another has been amazed by the degree of equality, individual autonomy, indulgent treatment of children, cooperation, and sharing in the hunter-gatherer culture that he or she studied. When you read about "warlike primitive tribes," or about indigenous people who held slaves, or about tribal cultures with gross inequalities between men and women, you are not reading about band hunter-gatherers.

Even today some people who should know better confuse primitive agricultural societies with hunter-gatherer societies and argue, from such confused evidence, that hunter-gatherers were violent and warlike. For example, one society often referred to in this mistaken way is that of the Yanomami, of South America's Amazon, made famous by Napoleon Chagnon in his book subtitled The fierce people. Chagnon tried to portray the Yanomami as representative of our pre-agricultural ancestors. But Chagnon knew well that the Yanomami were not hunter-gatherers and had not been for centuries. They did some hunting and gathering, but got the great majority of their calories from bananas and plantains, which they planted, cultivated, and harvested. Moreover, far from being untouched by modern cultures, these people had been repeatedly subjected to slave raids and genocide at the hands of truly vicious Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese invaders.[1] No wonder they had become a bit "fierce" themselves.

How Hunter-Gatherers Maintained Their Egalitarian Ways | Psychology Today

This is borne out by one of today's foremost anthropologists:

A review of David Greaber's 'Anthropology Against the State'

November 3, 2005 By S. Shukaitis

Rejecting both the Hobbesian fable of the "war of all against all" and the blatant forms of racism and Eurocentrism used to argue that so called "primitive" societies have no bearing on and are completely removed from the world we live in, Graeber explores the endless variety of political and organization which have existed throughout the world. From the Tsimhety of northwest Madagascar to Amazonian tribes what emerges are the dynamics of struggle and contention, of insurrection and resistance that have existed not just through the past two hundred years of European history but arguably since the dawn of human existence.

The anthropological cannon, from James Frazer to Pierre Clastres, once removed from its arcane status as obscure purely academic knowledge, brims with ideas and examples of social organization that could be of use to organizers seeking for alternatives practices. Organizers and radical theorists have long drawn from anthropology to find useful ideas for their work, from the Situationists usage of the potlatch of the Kwakiutl to current practices of consensus, which have existed through numerous indigenous societies throughout the world long before activists began to employ them for spokescouncils. Anarchism in this light is revealed not to be a political philosophy invented by a particular set of bearded European males sometime in the 1800s, but rather the practices of voluntary association, cooperation, and egalitarian social arrangements pervading societies worldwide.

Anthropology Against the State
Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To finish with Zerzan and his overview of anthropology:

Future Primitive: John Zerzan

This ideological view of our past has been radically overturned in recent decades, through the work of academics like Richard Lee and Marshall Sahlins... archaeologists John Fowlett, Thomas Wynn, and others have shown, those humans possessed an intelligence at least equal to our own.

Robert Ardrey (1961, 1976) served up a bloodthirsty, macho version of prehistory, as have to slightly lesser degrees, Desmond Morris and Lionel Tiger. Similarly, Freud and Konrad Lorenz wrote of the innate depravity of the species, thereby providing their contributions to hierarchy and power in the present.

Fortunately, a far more plausible outlook has emerged, one that corresponds to the overall version of Paleolithic life in general. Food sharing has for some time been considered an integral part of earliest human society (e.g. Washburn and DeVore, 1961). Jane Goodall (1971) and Richard Leakey (1978), among others, have concluded that it was the key element in establishing our uniquely Homo development at least as early as 2 million years ago... 

One of the telling arguments in favor of the cooperation thesis, as against that of generalized violence and male domination, involves a diminishing, during early evolution, of the difference in size and strength between males and females. Sexual dimorphism, as it is called, was originally very pronounced, including such features as prominent canines or "fighting teeth" in males and much smaller canines for the female.

Electron microscope studies of fossil teeth found in East Africa (Walker 1984) suggest a diet composed primarily of fruit, while a similar examination of stone tools from a 1.5 million-year-old site at Koobi Fora in Kenya (Keeley and Toth 1981) shows that they were used on plant materials. The small amount of meat in the early Paleolithic diet was probably scavenged, rather than hunted (Ehrenberg 1989b).

Lewis Binford's "Were There Elephant Hunters at Tooralba?" (1989) is a good instance of such a closer look, in which he doubts there was significant hunting until 200,000 years ago or sooner. Adrienne Zihlman (1981) has concluded that "hunting arose relatively late in evolution," and "may not extend beyond the last one hundred thousand years." And there are many (e.g. Straus 1986, Trinkhaus 1986) who do not see evidence for serious hunting of large mammals until even later, viz. the later Upper Paleolithic, just before the emergence of agriculture.

Though of course the much-maligned Neanderthal has been pictured as a primitive, brutish creature - in keeping with the prevailing Hobbesian ideology - despite manifest intelligence as well as enormous physical strength (Shreeve 1991)...

The start of an appreciation of domestication, or taming of nature, is seen in a cultural ordering of the wild, through ritual. Evidently, the female as a cultural category, viz. seen as wild or dangerous, dates from this period. The ritual "Venus" figurines appear as of 25,000 years ago, and seem to be an example of earliest symbolic likeness of women for the purpose of representation and control (Hodder 1990). Even more concretely, subjugation of the wild occurs at this time in the first systematic hunting of large mammals; ritual was an integral part of this activity (Hammond 1974, Frison 1986).

Agriculture enables greatly increased division of labor, establishes the material foundations of social hierarchy, and initiates environmental destruction. Priests, kings, drudgery, sexual inequality, warfare are a few of its fairly immediate specific consequences (Ehrenberg 1986b, Wymer 1981, Festinger 1983). Whereas Paleolithic peoples enjoyed a highly varied diet, using several thousand species of plants for food, with farming these sources were vastly reduced (White 1959, Gouldie 1986).

Given the intelligence and the very great practical knowledge of Stone Age humanity, the question has often been asked, "Why didn't agriculture begin, at say, 1,000,000 B.C. rather than about 8,000 B.C.?" I have provided a brief answer in terms of slowly accelerating alienation in the form of division of labor and symbolization, but given how negative the results were, it is still a bewildering phenomenon. Thus, as Binford (1968) put it, "The question to be asked is not why agriculture...was not developed everywhere, but why it was developed at all." The end of gatherer-hunter life brought a decline in size, stature, and skeletal robusticity (Cohen and Armelagos 1981, Harris and Ross 1981), and introduced tooth decay, nutritional deficiencies, and most infectious diseases (Larsen 1982, Buikstra 1976a, Cohen 1981). "Taken as a whole...an overall decline in the quality--and probably the length--of human life," concluded Cohen and Armelagos (1981).

Duffy (1984) points out that the present day gatherer-hunters he studied, the Mbuti Pygmies of central Africa, have been acculturated by surrounding villager-agriculturalists for hundreds of years, and to some extent, by generations of contact with government authorities and missionaries. And yet it seems that an impulse toward authentic life can survive down through the ages: "Try to imagine," he counsels, "a way of life where land, shelter, and food are free, and where there are no leaders, bosses, politics, organized crime, taxes, or laws. Add to this the benefits of being part of a society where everything is shared, where there are no rich people and no poor people, and where happiness does not mean the accumulation of material possessions." The Mbuti have never domesticated animals or planted crops.

Among the members of non-agriculturalist bands resides a highly sane combination of little work and material abundance. Bodley (1976) discovered that the San (aka Bushmen) of the harsh Kalahari Desert of southern Africa work fewer hours, and fewer of their number work, than do the neighboring cultivators. In times of drought, moreover, it has been the San to whom the farmers have turned for their survival (Lee 1968). They spend "strikingly little time laboring and much time at rest and leisure," according to Tanaka (1980), while others (e.g. Marshall 1976, Guenther 1976) have commented on San vitality and freedom compared with sedentary farmers, their relatively secure and easygoing life.

Flood (1983) noted that to Australian aborigines "the labour involved in tilling and planting outweighed the possible advantages." Speaking more generally, Tanaka (1976) has pointed to the abundant and stable plant foods in the society of early humanity, just as "they exist in every modern gatherer society." Likewise, Festinger (1983) referred to Paleolithic access to "considerable food without a great deal of effort," adding that "contemporary groups that still live on hunting and gathering do very well, even though they have been pushed into very marginal habitats."

As Hole and Flannery (1963) summarized: "No group on earth has more leisure time than hunters and gatherers, who spend it primarily on games, conversation and relaxing." They have much more free time, adds Binford (1968), "than do modern industrial or farm workers, or even professors of archaeology."

The non-domesticated know that, as Vaneigem (1975) put it, only the present can be total. This by itself means that they live life with incomparably greater immediacy, density and passion than we do. It has been said that some revolutionary days are worth centuries; until then "We look before and after," as Shelley wrote, "And sigh for what is not...."

The Mbuti believe (Turnbull 1976) that "by a correct fulfillment of the present, the past and the future will take care of themselves." Primitive peoples do not live through memories, and generally have no interest in birthdays or measuring their ages (Cipriani 1966). As for the future, they have little desire to control what does not yet exist, just as they have little desire to control nature. Their moment-by-moment joining with the flux and flow of the natural world does not preclude an awareness of the seasons, but this does not constitute an alienated time consciousness that robs them of the present.

The Andaman Islanders, west of Thailand, have no leaders, no idea of symbolic representation, and no domesticated animals. There is also an absence of aggression, violence, and disease; wounds heal surprisingly quickly, and their sight and hearing are particularly acute. They are said to have declined since European intrusion in the mid-19th century, but exhibit other such remarkable physical traits as a natural immunity to malaria, skin with sufficient elasticity to rule out post-childbirth stretch marks and the wrinkling we associate with ageing, and an `unbelievable' strength of teeth: Cipriani (1966) reported seeing children of 10 to 15 years crush nails with them. He also testified to the Andamese practice of collecting honey with no protective clothing at all; "yet they are never stung, and watching them one felt in the presence of some age-old mystery, lost by the civilized world."

Also in the Kalahari Desert, van der Post (1958) meditated upon San/Bushman communion with nature, a level of experience that "could almost be called mystical. For instance, they seemed to know what it actually felt like to be an elephant, a lion, an antelope, a steenbuck, a lizard, a striped mouse, mantis, baobab tree, yellow-crested cobra or starry-eyed amaryllis, to mention only a few of the brilliant multitudes through which they moved." It seems almost pedestrian to add that gatherer-hunters have often been remarked to possess tracking skills that virtually defy rational explanation (e.g. Lee 1979).

Turnbull (1976) looked on the structure of Mbuti social life as "an apparent vacuum, a lack of internal system that is almost anarchical." According to Duffy (1984), "the Mbuti are naturally acephalous - they do not have leaders or rulers, and decisions concerning the band are made by consensus." There is an enormous qualitative difference between foragers and farmers in this regard, as in so many others. For instance, agricultural Bantu tribes (e.g. the Saga) surround the San, and are organized by kingship, hierarchy and work; the San exhibit egalitarianism, autonomy, and sharing. Domestication is the principle which accounts for this drastic distinction.

Domination within a society is not unrelated to domination of nature. In gatherer-hunter societies, on the other hand, no strict hierarchy exists between the human and the non-human species (Noske 1989), and relations among foragers are likewise non-hierarchical. The non-domesticated typically view the animals they hunt as equals; this essentially egalitarian relationship is ended by the advent of domestication.

When progressive estrangement from nature became outright social control (agriculture), more than just social attitudes changed. Descriptions by sailors and explorers who arrived in "newly discovered" regions tell how wild mammals and birds originally showed no fear at all of the human invaders (Brock 1981). A few contemporary gatherers practiced no hunting before outside contact, but while the majority certainly do hunt, "it is not normally an aggressive act" (Rohrlich- Leavitt 1976). Turnbull (1965) observed Mbuti hunting as quite without any aggressive spirit, even carried out with a sort of regret. Hewitt (1986) reported a sympathy bond between hunter and hunted among the Xan Bushmen he encountered in the 19th century.

As regards violence among gatherer-hunters, Lee (1988) found that "the !Kung hate fighting, and think anybody who fought would be stupid." The Mbuti, by Duffy's account (1984), "look on any form of violence between one person and another with great abhorrence and distaste, and never represent it in their dancing or playacting." Homicide and suicide, concluded Bodley (1976), are both "decidedly uncommon" among undisturbed gatherer-hunters. The `warlike' nature of Native American peoples was often fabricated to add legitimacy to European aims of conquest (Kroeber 1961); the foraging Comanche maintained their non-violent ways for centuries before the European invasion, becoming violent only upon contact with marauding civilization (Fried 1973).

Coontz and Henderson (1986) point to a growing body of evidence in support of the proposition that relations between the sexes are most egalitarian in the simplest foraging societies. Women play an essential role in traditional agriculture, but receive no corresponding status for their contribution, unlike the case of gatherer-hunter society (Chevillard and Leconte 1986, Whyte 1978). As with plants and animals, so are women subject to domestication with the coming of agriculture. Culture, securing its foundations with the new order, requires the firm subjugation of instinct, freedom, and sexuality. All disorder must be banished, the elemental and spontaneous taken firmly in hand. Women's creativity and their very being as sexual persons are pressured to give way to the role, expressed in all peasant religions, of Great Mother, that is, fecund breeder of men and food.

The men of the South American Munduruc, a farming tribe, refer to plants and sex in the same phrase about subduing women: "We tame them with the banana" (Murphy and Murphy 1985). Simone de Beauvoir (1949) recognized in the equation of the plow and the phallus a symbol of male authority over women.

As Wilson (1988) put it succinctly, "Revenge, feuds, rioting, warfare and battle seem to emerge among, and to be typical of, domesticated peoples."

Sahlins (1972) spoke of this eloquently: "The world's most primitive people have few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all, it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilization."

Future Primitive (John Zerzan)
Running on Emptiness: The Failure of Symbolic Thought (John Zerzan) | The Anarchist Library

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Pennington Point: latest cliff falls

After quite a dramatic rock fall, the Herald covered the story on its front page of the dangers around cliff erosion at the Eastern Beach:
Latest local news & information in Sidmouth | Sidmouth Herald

... as well as the longer-term dangers a couple of weeks back:
‘We need defences now,’ says storm-hit seafront resident - News - Sidmouth Herald

Here are some photos just uploaded onto ‪#‎Sidmouth‬ by Stefan Wolf:



Stefan Wolf - Photos from Stefan Wolf's post | Facebook



Stefan Wolf - Photos from Stefan Wolf's post | Facebook



Stefan Wolf - Photos from Stefan Wolf's post | Facebook

Thanks to: 
The Byes - Sidmouth, United Kingdom - Park | Facebook

See also:
Streetlife | New Landmark. | Page 1

And:
Futures Forum: Sidmouth Beach Management Plan Steering Group to collect more data - and to meet in September
Futures Forum: Pennington Point and Port Royal... on Streetlife
Futures Forum: Longshore drift at Sidmouth: photographs from the shore
Futures Forum: Pennington Point: 1950 and 2013
Futures Forum: Pennington Point: rock falls
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We are now in the middle of National Maritime Week.
Here's a very handy overview from the Friends of the Byes:

The Byes shared Wildlife Watch's photo.

30 July

To celebrate #NationalMarineWeek what can you find on #Sidmouth beaches? There's lots of exciting things to be found.

Click on the link to download your own PDF >http://www.wildlifewatch.org.uk/images/Downloads/spotters/shoreline%20detective%20compressed.pdf

The Byes - Sidmouth, United Kingdom - Park | Facebook

From the Wildlife Trusts:

National Marine Week: 26th July -10th August 

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  Rockpooling © Alison Forward

26th July -10th August 2014

The UK's marine environment provides a haven for some of our most fascinating wildlife, such as basking sharks, grey seals, puffins and dolphins.

Each year The Wildlife Trusts celebrate the UK's amazing sea animals and plants during National Marine Week and this year it's the starfish! The Wildlife Trusts’ focus is on five of the 13 starfish species which can be seen around the UK coast; the common, spiny, brittle, bloody Henry starfish and the cushion star.

That's because throughout the summer, The Wildlife Trusts are asking children to write to the Prime Minister, David Cameron MP, asking him to protect our seas and sea life.

Pupils pledge their support by sending him a starfish, in a bid to get more special places at sea protected, through the designation of Marine Conservation Zones.

This is your chance to explore the seashore, discover dunes and wallow with whelks - however you don't have to wait for National Marine Week to get out there!

Both coastal and inland Wildlife Trusts offer a wide range of events that uncover the magic of the marine world. Contact your local Wildlife Trust, or visit our events pages, for activities and events in your area!

However, if you want to make your own marine adventure, we’ve got it all right here, whatever the weather and whatever your budget and no matter what your mood! Just click here, for more information.

For more superb marine information, images, video clips etc. check out BBC Nature UK.

National Marine Week | The Wildlife Trusts

See also:
Futures Forum: Marine Conservation Zones for Devon
Futures Forum: Marine Conservation Zone: not for Lyme Bay...
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