Ours is an era of breathless talk about innovation, technical change, and disruption –- all for the presumed greater good. But what if the focus on relentless innovation has obscured the more important work of maintenance and care? Historian Lee Vinsel discusses the trajectory of technical innovation and its valorization, as well as the devaluing of maintaining what already exists. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Lee Vinsel and Andrew L. Russell, The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most Currency, 2020
The Maintainers
The post Hyping Innovation, Neglecting Maintenance appeared first on KPFA.

Hyping Innovation, Neglecting Maintenance

Acclaimed program of ideas, in-depth analysis, and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social, and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. Against the Grain is co-produced and co-hosted by Sasha Lilley and C. S. Soong.

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For over half a century, Big Oil and the plastics industry, through their trade associations and front groups, have sold the public the false idea that plastics are recyclable. Recycling became the mantra of good ecological stewardship, promoted by the likes of city governments, school children, and environmental groups. Davis Allen lays out the mass-marketing of a deception.
Resources:
Center for Climate Integrity, The Fraud of Plastic Recycling: How Big Oil and the Plastics Industry Deceived the Public for Decades and Caused the Plastic Waste Crisis February, 2024
The post The Plastics Recycling Deception appeared first on KPFA.

The Plastics Recycling Deception

Reclaiming the commons sounds good in the abstract, but what’s being done on a practical level? Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma, the Hawai‘i-based co-founders of Eating in Public, describe projects like Free Gardens and Free Stores. Also: Wren Awry discusses the volume to which Chan and Sharma contributed an essay.
Eating in Public
Wren Awry, ed., Nourishing Resistance: Stories of Food, Protest, and Mutual Aid PM Press, 2023
The post Food & Freedom appeared first on KPFA.

Food & Freedom

In the United States, few things seem as wholesome as camping, letting us temporarily escape the daily grind and commune with nature and each other. But Phoebe Young argues that camping has a complicated history, which tell us a lot about Americans’ notions of nature and the nation. She discusses the various forms that camping has taken in this country, from recreational camping to the encampments of those without shelter to Occupy Wall Street. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Phoebe S.K. Young, Camping Grounds: Public Nature in American Life from the Civil War to the Occupy Movement Oxford University Press, 2021 
The post The Politics of Camping appeared first on KPFA.

The Politics of Camping

A hallmark of our age is feeling we’re perpetually struggling with time—not having enough of it to accomplish seemingly endless tasks and obligations, while swimming in a sea of distractions. Can we cope if we learn, following the gurus of time management, to become ever more disciplined and productive? Or does that just feed into a capitalist logic that doesn’t benefit us? Journalist Oliver Burkeman discusses the perils of time management orthodoxy.
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Fund Drive Special: Mastering Time?

In “The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg,” Jerry Aronson paints a compelling portrait of the legendary writer, visionary, activist, and spiritual seeker.
The post Fund Drive Special: Allen Ginsberg appeared first on KPFA.

Hyping Innovation, Neglecting Maintenance

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