Ernest Callenbach
Encyclopedia
Ernest Callenbach is an American
writer
. Life & Work =
Born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania
, he attended the University of Chicago
, where he was drawn into the then 'new wave' of serious attention to film as an art form. After six months in Paris
at the Sorbonne
, watching four films a day, he returned to Chicago and earned a Master’s degree in English and Communications.
Callenbach then moved to California. From 1955 to 1991, he was on the staff of the University of California Press
(Berkeley
). A general copywriter for a number of years, he edited the Press's Film Quarterly
from 1958 until 1991. He also occasionally taught film courses at U.C. and at San Francisco State University
.
For many years Callenbach edited the Natural History Guides at the U.C. Press. He began to take environmental issues and their connections to human value systems, social patterns, and lifestyles just as seriously as he had taken film. He was heavily influenced by Edward Abbey
. He is therefore known as an author of green
books, namely as author of the ecological
utopia
s Ecotopia
(1975) and Ecotopia Emerging
(1981). (While his novel popularized the term "ecotopia," it was actually coined by the ethnographer E. L. Anderson.)
In terms of concepts of human involvement with the ecology, as well as some of the economic and social concepts, the Ecotopia books are related to what is known as the sustainability
movement. Callenbach’s Ecotopian concept is not "Luddite
" — he does not reject high technology, but rather his fictional society shows a conscious selectivity about technology. As an example, with its emphasis on personal rather than impersonal interaction, Callenbach’s Ecotopian society anticipates the development and liberal usage of videoconferencing
.
Indeed, for all his involvement with print publications, Callenbach remained quite interested in visual media. Aspects of his book Ecotopia in some ways anticipated "reality TV" — which emerged into recognition, and was given a label as a genre, 20 or more years later — because in the story the daily life of the legislature and some of that of the judicial courts is televised in this fictional society, and televised debates (including technical debates concerning ecological problems) met a need and desire among citizens.
Callenbach has been a part of the circle of West Coast technologists, architects, social thinkers, and scientists which has included such luminaries as Ursula K. Le Guin
, Starhawk
(Miriam Simos), Sim Van der Ryn
, Peter Calthorpe
, Stewart Brand
, Kevin Kelly, J. Baldwin
, and John Todd
. As with a number of these others, he has been a speaker, discussion panellist, and essayist.
Recently, Callenbach has introduced the story of a real-world community movement in Japan that is reminiscent, in its aims and practices, of his Ecotopian society. He visited Japan and investigated the Yamagishi movement
. It encompasses some three dozen intentional communities founded on the same underlying principles: living an ecologically based integration of people with agriculture (pig, cattle, and chicken livestock rasing, and organic-vegetable and fruit farming), and living a social life based on principles of democracy, mutual understanding, support, and health. Each individual settlement is referred to as jikkenji (‘demonstration community for the world’).
In 2009, Callenbach was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Freiburg
. Freiburg is noted for its renewable energy
industry and has been called a "green utopia".
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
. Life & Work =
Born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania
Williamsport, Pennsylvania
Williamsport is a city in and the county seat of Lycoming County, Pennsylvania in the United States. In 2009, the population was estimated at 29,304...
, he attended the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, where he was drawn into the then 'new wave' of serious attention to film as an art form. After six months in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
at the Sorbonne
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
, watching four films a day, he returned to Chicago and earned a Master’s degree in English and Communications.
Callenbach then moved to California. From 1955 to 1991, he was on the staff of the University of California Press
University of California Press
University of California Press, also known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish books and papers for the faculty of the University of California, established 25 years earlier in 1868...
(Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
). A general copywriter for a number of years, he edited the Press's Film Quarterly
Film Quarterly
Film Quarterly is a film journal published by University of California Press, in Berkeley, California, United States. It was first published in 1945 as Hollywood Quarterly, was renamed The Quarterly of Film Radio and Television in 1951, and received its current title in 1958...
from 1958 until 1991. He also occasionally taught film courses at U.C. and at San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
.
For many years Callenbach edited the Natural History Guides at the U.C. Press. He began to take environmental issues and their connections to human value systems, social patterns, and lifestyles just as seriously as he had taken film. He was heavily influenced by Edward Abbey
Edward Abbey
Edward Paul Abbey was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental...
. He is therefore known as an author of green
Green Movement
The Green Movement refers to a series of actions after the 2009 Iranian presidential election, in which protesters demanded the removal of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from office...
books, namely as author of the ecological
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
s Ecotopia
Ecotopia
Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston is the seminal utopian novel by Ernest Callenbach, published in 1975. The society described in the book is one of the first ecological utopias and was influential on the counterculture, and the green movement in the 1970s and thereafter.-The...
(1975) and Ecotopia Emerging
Ecotopia Emerging
Ecotopia Emerging by Ernest Callenbach is a fictionalized history of the events leading up to the secession of Northern California, Oregon and Washington to form the steady-state, environmentalist nation of Ecotopia along the Pacific Coast of the United States...
(1981). (While his novel popularized the term "ecotopia," it was actually coined by the ethnographer E. L. Anderson.)
In terms of concepts of human involvement with the ecology, as well as some of the economic and social concepts, the Ecotopia books are related to what is known as the sustainability
Sustainability
Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...
movement. Callenbach’s Ecotopian concept is not "Luddite
Luddite
The Luddites were a social movement of 19th-century English textile artisans who protested – often by destroying mechanised looms – against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work and changing their way of life...
" — he does not reject high technology, but rather his fictional society shows a conscious selectivity about technology. As an example, with its emphasis on personal rather than impersonal interaction, Callenbach’s Ecotopian society anticipates the development and liberal usage of videoconferencing
Videoconferencing
Videoconferencing is the conduct of a videoconference by a set of telecommunication technologies which allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously...
.
Indeed, for all his involvement with print publications, Callenbach remained quite interested in visual media. Aspects of his book Ecotopia in some ways anticipated "reality TV" — which emerged into recognition, and was given a label as a genre, 20 or more years later — because in the story the daily life of the legislature and some of that of the judicial courts is televised in this fictional society, and televised debates (including technical debates concerning ecological problems) met a need and desire among citizens.
Callenbach has been a part of the circle of West Coast technologists, architects, social thinkers, and scientists which has included such luminaries as Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books, essays, and short stories, notably in fantasy and science fiction...
, Starhawk
Starhawk
Starhawk is an American writer and activist. She is well known as a theorist of Paganism, and is one of the foremost popular voices of ecofeminism. She is a columnist for Beliefnet.com and On Faith, the Newsweek/Washington Post online forum on religion...
(Miriam Simos), Sim Van der Ryn
Sim Van der Ryn
Sim Van der Ryn is acknowledged as a leader in "sustainable architecture." He is also a researcher and educator. Van der Ryn's driving professional interest has been applying principles of physical and social ecology to architecture and environmental design....
, Peter Calthorpe
Peter Calthorpe
Peter Calthorpe is a San Francisco-based architect, urban designer and urban planner. He is a founding member of the Congress for New Urbanism, a Chicago-based advocacy group formed in 1992 that promotes sustainable building practices.-Biography:...
, Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation...
, Kevin Kelly, J. Baldwin
J. Baldwin
James Tennant Baldwin is an American industrial designer and writer...
, and John Todd
John Todd (biologist)
John Todd is a biologist working in what is sometimes considered the general field of ecological design, in that his ideas often involve applications that become the basis of alternative technologies. His principal professional interests have included solving problems of food production and...
. As with a number of these others, he has been a speaker, discussion panellist, and essayist.
Recently, Callenbach has introduced the story of a real-world community movement in Japan that is reminiscent, in its aims and practices, of his Ecotopian society. He visited Japan and investigated the Yamagishi movement
Yamagishi movement
The Yamagishi movement is a network of egalitarian intentional communities which originated in Japan. People in these communities live without money and with minimal personal possessions, but their needs are provided for by the community. There are no bosses or set working hours. Their primary...
. It encompasses some three dozen intentional communities founded on the same underlying principles: living an ecologically based integration of people with agriculture (pig, cattle, and chicken livestock rasing, and organic-vegetable and fruit farming), and living a social life based on principles of democracy, mutual understanding, support, and health. Each individual settlement is referred to as jikkenji (‘demonstration community for the world’).
In 2009, Callenbach was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Freiburg
University of Freiburg
The University of Freiburg , sometimes referred to in English as the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.The university was founded in 1457 by the Habsburg dynasty as the...
. Freiburg is noted for its renewable energy
Renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...
industry and has been called a "green utopia".
Books by Ernest Callenbach
- Living Poor With Style (New York: Bantam, 1972)
- EcotopiaEcotopiaEcotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston is the seminal utopian novel by Ernest Callenbach, published in 1975. The society described in the book is one of the first ecological utopias and was influential on the counterculture, and the green movement in the 1970s and thereafter.-The...
(1975) - Ecotopia EmergingEcotopia EmergingEcotopia Emerging by Ernest Callenbach is a fictionalized history of the events leading up to the secession of Northern California, Oregon and Washington to form the steady-state, environmentalist nation of Ecotopia along the Pacific Coast of the United States...
(1981) - The Ecotopian Encyclopedia (1981)
- A Citizen Legislature (1985 rev. ed. 2008)
- Publisher's Lunch (1989)
- Ecology: A pocket guide (1998; rev. ed. 2008)
- Living Cheaply With Style: Live Better and Spend Less (Berkeley: Ronin, 1993). ISBN 0-914171-61-5
- Living Cheaply With Style: Live Better and Spend Less, Second edition (Berkeley: Ronin, 2000). ISBN 1-57951-014-0
- Bring Back the Buffalo!: A Sustainable Future for America's Great Plains (2000)
Further reading
- Ernest Callenbach "Ecotopia in Japan?," in: Communities 132 (Fall 2006), pp. 42–49.
- R. Frye, "The Economics of Ecotopia," in: Alternative Futures 3 (1980), pp. 71–81.
- K.T. Goldbach, "Utopian Music: Music History of the Future in Novels by Bellamy, Callenbach and Huxley," in: Utopia Matters. Theory, Politics, Literature and the Arts, ed. F. Viera, M. Freitas, Porto 2005, pp. 237–243.
- U. Meyer: "Selling an 'ecological religion'. Strategies of Persuasion in Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia". In: M. Lotz, M. van der Minde, D. Weidmann (Hrsg.): Von Platon bis zur Global Governance. Entwürfe für menschliches Zusammenleben. Marburg 2010, pp. 253-280.
- H. Tschachler, "Despotic Reason in Arcadia. Ernest Callenbach's Ecological Utopias," Science Fiction StudiesScience Fiction StudiesScience Fiction Studies is an academic journal founded in 1973 by R.D. Mullen. The journal is published three times per year by DePauw University. As the name implies, the journal publishes articles and book reviews on science fiction, but also occasionally on fantasy and horror when the topic...
11 (1984), pp. 304–317.
External links
- Ernest Callenbach's website
- Callenbach's - non-religious - Earth's Ten Commandments
- Interview with James Heddle
- Ecotopia in the News
- Article by Scott Timberg