Helena Norberg-Hodge

A short book that argues that local community is the antidote to everything that ails society right now. The focus is on locally grown food, connection through conversations, engagement in civic life, meeting and loving people who are different from you because they are part of your physical community.

This is by far the most successful of the suite of books I've been reading the past few years that try to imagine how we can get ourselves to a "better" (less demanding, less constrained, less angry, less depressed) world. There are tangible actions to be found here, and the prescription has the resonance of truth. That said, the author is enough of a stereotype that I have some reservations (white girl who got to know a remote people during the '70s and made it her life's work to proselytize for their unmodernized culture).… (mehr)

Publisher description

This gripping portrait of the rapidly evolving socioeconomic life of Ladakh - the Western Himalayan land known as "Little Tibet" - offers crucial lessons in sustainable development as its people attempt to balance growth and technology with cultural values. This account moves from the author's first visit in idyllic, nonindustrial Ladakh in 1974 to the present, showing the profound changes as the region was opened to foreign tourists, Western artifacts and technologies, and pressures for economic growth. These changes brought generational conflict, unemployment, inflation, environmental damage, and threats to the traditional way of life.
Appalled at the negative changes, the author helped establish the Ladakh Project (later renamed the International Society for Ecology and Culture) to seek sustainable solutions to preserve cultural values and environmental health, while facilitating the Ladakhis' hunger for modernization. This model undertaking effectively combines educational programs for all social levels with the design, demonstration, and promotion of appropriate technologies such as solar heating and small-scale hydro power.

This examination of how modernization changes the way people live and think challenges us to redefine our concepts of "development" and "progress." More than anything else, Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh stresses the need for the global community to find ways to carry traditional wisdom into the future.… (mehr)