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Do It Yourself: A Handbook For Changing Our World: A Handbook For Changing Our World
Do you really want to change the world? If the answer is YES, then this book shows you how.
Leading a sustainable and truly radical life encompasses a whole variety of things that challenge the mainstream. This book shows how we can make real changes to the way we live. In simple steps, it describes how you can create sustainable and equitable ways of living that can help transform not just your own life, but the society around you.
The book weaves together analysis, stories, experiences, and practical guides, examining nine different areas where people are transforming their lives and society---right here and now.
Accessible and informative, this DIY handbook brings alive the rich potential of grassroots activism and shows how we can work together to create just, equitable, and sustainable societies.
Covering everything from cultural activism to health, autonomous spaces, food, alternative media, popular education, and direct action, it shows you how to:
set up a housing cooperative
do a workshop on climate change
build a passive solar heating system
start an independent media project
set up a social center
make interventions in the urban landscape that are funny and inspiring
and lots more!
Leading a sustainable and truly radical life encompasses a whole variety of things that challenge the mainstream. This book shows how we can make real changes to the way we live. In simple steps, it describes how you can create sustainable and equitable ways of living that can help transform not just your own life, but the society around you.
The book weaves together analysis, stories, experiences, and practical guides, examining nine different areas where people are transforming their lives and society---right here and now.
Accessible and informative, this DIY handbook brings alive the rich potential of grassroots activism and shows how we can work together to create just, equitable, and sustainable societies.
Covering everything from cultural activism to health, autonomous spaces, food, alternative media, popular education, and direct action, it shows you how to:
set up a housing cooperative
do a workshop on climate change
build a passive solar heating system
start an independent media project
set up a social center
make interventions in the urban landscape that are funny and inspiring
and lots more!
320 pages, Paperback
First published June 27, 2007
About the author
Kim Bryan
20 books2 followersKim Bryan has served as co-author, editor, and consultant for multiple books about science, animals, culture, and technology. She is the author of Puppy Care, and has contributed to dozens of titles including Animal Life by Katie Pearson and Earth by Michael Allaby. She served as an editor for the sustainable lifestyle compendium Do It Yourself: A Guide to Changing Our World.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 17, 2010
Fifteen or so chapters by different hands: free education, sustainable living, health, autonomous spaces, direct action, cultural activism. Each written by people doing the thing rather than by a single voice explaining it. That’s the collaborative object doing what a single-author manual can’t: fifteen people with different practices produce internal disagreement the editors can’t smooth out.
The cap is light rather than heavy. A handbook exists to hand you portable instructions, and that’s the form working as designed. The same reasoning that puts The Peoples’ Citizenship Guide at 3. What lifts this above it is that the chapters are accounts of what people actually did, including where it went wrong, rather than a set of correct answers to carry away.
The load-bearing party, and it’s the check. The reader who tries this and can’t: no time, no housing security, a job that doesn’t permit it. DIY culture has a documented tendency to assume a life with slack in it, and whether the book knows that is what separates 4 from 5.
LQ 3. Multi-authored, practical register, uneven by construction. The Pluto Press design work is decent.
The chapters appear as ordinary anthology assembly. In their words: to gather into one place many of the inspiring examples and ideas that we have come across in an attempt to make them more accessible.
The cap is light rather than heavy. A handbook exists to hand you portable instructions, and that’s the form working as designed. The same reasoning that puts The Peoples’ Citizenship Guide at 3. What lifts this above it is that the chapters are accounts of what people actually did, including where it went wrong, rather than a set of correct answers to carry away.
The load-bearing party, and it’s the check. The reader who tries this and can’t: no time, no housing security, a job that doesn’t permit it. DIY culture has a documented tendency to assume a life with slack in it, and whether the book knows that is what separates 4 from 5.
LQ 3. Multi-authored, practical register, uneven by construction. The Pluto Press design work is decent.
The chapters appear as ordinary anthology assembly. In their words: to gather into one place many of the inspiring examples and ideas that we have come across in an attempt to make them more accessible.
July 18, 2011
I've seen this in many activists' book shelves and rightly so. It's a practical resource to consult and get started.
What I also really like is the emphasis on everyday life because "Trying to persuade people that global capitalism is a bad thing because it is destroying the Amazon rainforest is a waste of time." (248)
What I also really like is the emphasis on everyday life because "Trying to persuade people that global capitalism is a bad thing because it is destroying the Amazon rainforest is a waste of time." (248)
June 17, 2018
Although at the time I read the book some links were outdated, it still was very useful introduction to many DIY subjects from how to make a bio-toilet to how to make a workshop and many other subjects. As it is a practical book, it's hard to read it just once. You might want to check it anytime you want to build something at home or garden or have questions on how to organize something.
to-resume
October 7, 2011I'm falling in love with this book! It's mind-stretching & VERY practical. Really transforming I believe..Highly recommended
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews