(excerpt from the book's intro, and a brief summary from a local paper) This was an interesting, if short, read! Briefly: the book covers some experiences from a women's collective that builds cob...
This was an interesting, if short, read! Briefly: the book covers some experiences from a women's collective that builds cob structures (among several other things) together off in the backwoods of British Columbia. They pack up their stuff and their children, then go camp out at the job site as a work party to make the change they want to see in the world.
My impression is that it's intentionally radical and not necessarily one for one replicable, however, a lot of what they do/did is:
child care is provided for all participants, and costed in their proposals,
compensation is based around whatever is sustainable, not maximizing profit,
decisions are made as a group, not via a strict hierarchy,
no dudes allowed on the jobsite
... that last one requires a bit of context. They note that, in several anecdotes, men and women alike will accidentally start behaving per their rigid social roles in mixed company, to their own detriment (and the stated goal of the collective, which includes empowering women).
One example given was that a husband who dropped off his wife and children felt the need to direct the jobsite, which resulted in a bunch of stress on his part: they were used to working without supervision, which seemed like chaos, but ultimately eventually worked. When informed that everything is A OK and going to plan, you can sit down because we don't need help, that was an immense weight off of his shoulders. The moral of the story being that socially burdening men with being leaders blinds us to the possibility of allowing others -- or groups of people -- to share the responsibility.
They also dive into a bunch of anti-capitalist messaging, which I won't go into since it's been beaten to death in other topics, and I'm not certain if it's the core message they're getting across 😅 broadly, I think the authors' are trying to empower people to think of and create alternatives to the systems which constrain their options today, which necessarily means for 99% of us that they're critiquing capitalism.
They also delve into some general discontent around the notions of building codes/engineering, life safety, and property ownership, which gave me pause. I don't recommend buying the book for effectively that reason alone: although they're doing some really cool stuff, replicating it at scale would statistically put people in harms way (and imo would also environmentally devastate the Earth's ecosystems). But the core ideas are still neat!
Overall I liked it, and would recommend borrowing a copy at the library for an afternoon read if the topic of literally building a brighter future appeals to you. It's a pretty easy read, but is imo kinda repetitive (apparently each section was written by different authors, which shows). Maybe skip the last section on construction techniques, and go do some research on structural engineering/building science, though :3
(excerpt from the book's intro, and a brief summary from a local paper)
This was an interesting, if short, read! Briefly: the book covers some experiences from a women's collective that builds cob structures (among several other things) together off in the backwoods of British Columbia. They pack up their stuff and their children, then go camp out at the job site as a work party to make the change they want to see in the world.
My impression is that it's intentionally radical and not necessarily one for one replicable, however, a lot of what they do/did is:
... that last one requires a bit of context. They note that, in several anecdotes, men and women alike will accidentally start behaving per their rigid social roles in mixed company, to their own detriment (and the stated goal of the collective, which includes empowering women).
One example given was that a husband who dropped off his wife and children felt the need to direct the jobsite, which resulted in a bunch of stress on his part: they were used to working without supervision, which seemed like chaos, but ultimately eventually worked. When informed that everything is A OK and going to plan, you can sit down because we don't need help, that was an immense weight off of his shoulders. The moral of the story being that socially burdening men with being leaders blinds us to the possibility of allowing others -- or groups of people -- to share the responsibility.
They also dive into a bunch of anti-capitalist messaging, which I won't go into since it's been beaten to death in other topics, and I'm not certain if it's the core message they're getting across 😅 broadly, I think the authors' are trying to empower people to think of and create alternatives to the systems which constrain their options today, which necessarily means for 99% of us that they're critiquing capitalism.
They also delve into some general discontent around the notions of building codes/engineering, life safety, and property ownership, which gave me pause. I don't recommend buying the book for effectively that reason alone: although they're doing some really cool stuff, replicating it at scale would statistically put people in harms way (and imo would also environmentally devastate the Earth's ecosystems). But the core ideas are still neat!
Overall I liked it, and would recommend borrowing a copy at the library for an afternoon read if the topic of literally building a brighter future appeals to you. It's a pretty easy read, but is imo kinda repetitive (apparently each section was written by different authors, which shows). Maybe skip the last section on construction techniques, and go do some research on structural engineering/building science, though :3