LOCALIZATION: ADAPTATIONS FOR THE COMING DOWNSHIFT.

What is localization?

Localization is a process of social change pointing toward localities. It is not, however, strictly about locality, nor is it globalization in reverse. Rather, as overextended economies and resource extraction efforts spend themselves, modern societies will experience a shift from the centrifugal forces of globalization-cheap raw materials and energy, intensive commercialization, displaced wastes, concentrated economic and political power-to the centripetal forces of localization-diminished energy and materials, greater need for personal proficiency and distributed authority. Localization entails increased attention to the tangible, the interpersonal and to place-based community as well as to the natural world, especially that which provides physical sustenance and psychological support. At the same time, it has regional, national and international dimensions.

What is the problem?

Localization is a logical outgrowth of the end of an historically brief period-the age of plentiful raw materials, abundant and highly concentrated energy (especially liquid fossil fuels) and costless waste sinks (e.g., atmosphere, oceans). How societies and individuals adapt to this changed reality becomes one of the defining questions of our time. We will all be asking not if localization occurs, but how localization will proceed, and how it should proceed. We will intuitively see that localization can be a force for good (think healthy food, less anxiety and more neighborliness) or a force for evil (think anarchy, warlords and survivalists). Contrary to the prevailing approaches to environmental problems-global management and technological innovation, which attempt to maintain the status quo, only greener-localization accepts that a fundamental transition will occur and asks how it can be peaceful, just, psychologically enriching and ecologically resilient.

This seminar's contribution

Localization is well underway, albeit possibly invisible to global managers and techno-optimists. What it lacks is a unifying theme, a framework for coping with declining net energy and emerging biophysical constraints. This seminar builds such a framework, preliminary as it necessarily must be.

The framework assumes that a fundamental departure from recent life patterns will occur and that much about the transition will be hard. Fortunately, humans' desire for a stable, secure and familiar existence turns out not to be a status quo bias but rather a cognitive map bias, and cognitive maps can be altered. To aid alteration, the framework assumes that a multitude of small experiments will be conducted, quickly and simultaneously, and some will fail. And yet adjusting to austerity can be satisfying in a way present generations have forgotten or never experienced. Localization is thus a dynamic, ongoing and long-term process that, paradoxically for many, can bring out the best in people and be experienced as intrinsically satisfying.

The seminar's structure

The collected works read in this seminar guide members through the nuances of the topic positing that, while historical insights exist, a downshift of this sort is unprecedented. Successful approaches will be those that engage people and institutions in their own discovery of how to transition well.

• 1. The first section outlines the context of localization and the need and inevitability of making a transition. This material will help seminar members envision positive future scenarios, some quite familiar, others novel.
• 2. The next section outlines ways to organize, govern, and provision ourselves under a more austere existence. Some look to our agrarian past, others to new patterns of exchange and ownership structure.
• 3. The third section explores human needs and strengths, and the conditions that enable reasonable and satisfying behavior. Throughout, brief but positive case studies will be presented and principles extracted.

What is an Integrative Seminar?

Another acceptable version of an Opus is an Integrative Seminar. These follow the same general structure as a Master's Project although with a weekly seminar at its core.í‚   An integrative seminar involves 6 credit hours of activity (2 for the seminar and 4 for the related research), produces individually, or small-team, authored documents equivalent to a Master's Project report, and will be completed during the Fall 2010 and Winter 2011 academic year. Integrative Seminars typically draw on a mixture of classic and recent writings while addressing a current, often large-scale, problem which often has no single client or physical locality.

í¢â‚¬ ¢1.í‚  í‚  í‚  í‚  í‚  í‚   An Integrative Seminar will be defined by faculty or established by students under the advisement of faculty.

í¢â‚¬ ¢2.í‚  í‚  í‚  í‚  í‚  í‚   Students opting to pursue this option do not need to register for the Master's Project Planning Course (NRE 701.888).

í¢â‚¬ ¢3.í‚  í‚  í‚  í‚  í‚  í‚   Student interested in the Integrative Seminar entitled "Localization: Adaptations for the coming downshift" should register for NRE 662 Winter 2010, so that the instructors can establish NRE 662 in Fall 2010.í‚   í‚  However, no work for NRE 662 will be completed in this coming winter term (Winter 2010).