Issues
Above all, I focus on climate and energy issues — which are covered in this category on this blog site. I have focused a lot on climate justice movement-building, but I also support efforts to tackle climate and energy problems through practical, community networks (for skill-sharing, for example).
Transportation and food issues also are major concerns for me.
With any issue, I focus a lot on challenging any injustices or market failures. In other words: I’m concerned about political-economics structures and dynamics — which I cover in the blog categories that are here and here).
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Activism and academia
I am a PhD candidate and an activist. I’m not going to try to keep a running tally of affiliations, and projects, and such though. But I will make these points about my blogging -
I typed out the following blurb at a point when my blogging was something inbetween, and separate from, my activism and my academic studies -
What I publish on this blog is barely linked to universities and scholarly publishing. Although I think that this blog is a form of sociological analysis, this site definitely is not academic scholarship — which is different, in some ways. When I write as an academic, I have to bring more focus and authoritative grounding to that university work (through scholarly citations, and so on). I don’t try to maintain those scholarly standards on this blog. And in academic publishing there also isn’t nearly as much room for imagery — to give a different sort of example.
As for activism -
I see this blogging as a way of providing some more perspective, beyond the narrower horizons of a lot of activist groups and projects. Sometimes activists don’t have an apparent sense of what they ultimately are challenging, or a clear sense of how they ultimately will try to bring about change, or an articulated vision of what sort of world they ultimately would prefer to live in. In short, I’m saying that activism can be too short-sighted and fragmented. I don’t see how that sort of activism can amount to much — aside from a mess. Visions, principles, and analysis are important too, and I see this blog as a way to work out some of those questions.
