Messaging a New Economy: Education, Media, Public Campaigns

A new economics will require the development of new curriculum material, both in content and presentation.  It will be multi-disciplined, acknowledging that the transition to a new economy will involve a complex cultural change. It will draw upon theoretical as well as practical application and will be a distributed learning, relying on social media, informal learning circles, and peer education. Where is this new economics training emerging? Panelists include representatives of the Global Development And Environment Institute at Tufts University, the Gund Institute at University of Vermont, the Sustainability Institute at Bard College, the Economics in Transition Program at Schumacher College in England, and student organizers of the March 2012 Transition to a New Economy Conference at Harvard University. Relatedly, speakers will discuss how we can best bring the story of this emerging movement to the attention of media and build public campaigns that will lead to change. 

Online Resources

Watch videos, read articles, and explore blogs and websites.

• Publication: Principles for a New Economy-- The New Economy Network
• Lecture: “Creating a Post-Corporate World” — David Korten
• Video: The Crisis of Capitalism” — RSA Animation
• Lecture: “A New Direction for Economics Education” — Neva Goodwin
• Video: “Moral Politics” —  George Lakoff
• Blog: “Yes, There is an Alternative” — IPS Proposal for an Alternative to our Economic System
• Video: Apeiron educating Rhode Island in green economy principles
• Website: Adbusters- "Thought Control in Economics" — Tom Green
• Website: Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy's Envisioning the Good Life

Annotated Bibliography

The annotated bibliography contains more scholarly and technical materials related to this theme.  Download a pdf of the Messaging the New Economy annotated bibliography.

Related Books

Our staff has compiled book lists on each conference theme on WorldCat.org, a catalog of libraries around the world.  Use WorldCat to locate a book at a library near you.  Explore the Messaging for a New Economy book list.

 

Principles for A New Economy

 

The purpose of an economic system is to help organize human activities in ways that create healthy and resilient human communities and ecosystems for both present and future generations.

 

To achieve these purposes, deep system-wide change is urgently needed to reverse conditions typical of contemporary global, regional, national and local economies that exhibit one or more of the following serious flaws. They are:

 

• Unsustainable: They over-consume and degrade the resources upon which their long-term prosperity depends.

• Unfair: They multiply financial advantages to those already advantaged at the expense of those most in need.

• Unstable: They lack resilience in a time of growing volatility and rapid social, political and technological change.

• Undemocratic: They operate with inadequate democratic control and accountability on the part of their most powerful economic organizations - corporations, financial institutions and governments.

• read more

David Korten's 2000 Lecture on Creating a Post-Corporate World

The forces of corporate globalization are being advanced by an alliance of the world's largest corporations and most powerful governments. This alliance is backed by the power of money, and its defining goal is to integrate the world’s national economies into a single borderless global economy in which the world's megacorporations are free to move goods and money without governmental interference in a quest for ever greater shareholder return. read more

Animation Depicting David Harvey's "Crisis of Capitalism"

Neva Goodwin's June 2010 Call for  A New Direction for Economics Education

About 40% of college students in the United States take at least one economics course. Students who, two years later, have forgotten the diagrams and equations, are likely to still retain an impression that only selfishness is rational, that limitless greed is a universal human characteristic, and that economic success can be assessed strictly in terms of the dollar value of consumption..read more

U.C. Berkeley Professor George Lakoff talks Moral Politics

IPS Proposes  Alternative to our Current Economic System

How about an economy that encourages the stewardship of forests, fisheries, and land for community needs? One that encourages agriculture that is good for the soil, feeds everyone an adequate diet, and reorients industry for people’s needs? How about a finance system that helps small enterprises and an economy that creates enough good jobs and livelihoods so that youth see a future at home?...Yes, There is An Alternative

Apeiron's Push for a Green Economy in Rhode Island

AdBusters: Thought Control in Economics - Tom Green, Ph.D. candidate UBC

And although people like [William] Rees have invented new tools for understanding what happens when the economy presses against ecological limits, it seems that on university campuses only the mainstream, limits-denying school of economic thought has the official stamp of approval. The big issues of our era – and the theories that might help explain them – are not being discussed in economics lectures. I decided to check in with some leading dissident economists to find out why mainstream economics had such a monopoly on our economic thinking.

Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy's Envisioning the Good Life

The evidence is all around us — the global human economy has grown too large.  Continued economic growth (especially in high-consuming nations) is at best irresponsible, and at worst risks ecological collapse and resource deprivation for future generations. The logical way forward for nations of the world is to take a different path to achieve sustainable, healthy, and equitable lifestyles for citizens.