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Shaun Chamberlin

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English author and activist

Shaun Chamberlin
NationalityBritish
Alma materUniversity of York and Schumacher College

Shaun Chamberlin is an author and activist, based in London, England. He is the author of The Transition Timeline, co-author of several other books including What We Are Fighting For, chair of the Ecological Land Co-operative, and was one of the earliest Extinction Rebellion arrestees.

He is also known for his collaboration with the late David Fleming, having brought his award-winning lifework Lean Logic to posthumous publication, drawn from it the paperback Surviving the Future, and served as executive producer on Peter William Armstrong's 2020 feature film about Fleming's legacy - The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled Civilisation?

Biography

Chamberlin studied at Schumacher College in 2006, where his teachers included Rob Hopkins and David Fleming. Hopkins met his future co-founders of the now-global Transition Towns network during the course, and Chamberlin remained a key figure, co-founding Transition Town Kingston before authoring the movement's second book, The Transition Timeline.

He also retained close links with Fleming, and they together advised the UK government's feasibility study into his influential TEQs system for fuel/electricity rationing in the face of climate change. Shortly after Fleming's death in 2010, an All Party Parliamentary report advocating TEQs, authored by Fleming and Chamberlin and endorsed by twenty MPs, met with a controversial reception both in the UK and internationally. During this period Chamberlin also spent eighteen months as a director of the campaigning organisation Global Justice Now.

In 2012 he collaborated with David Graeber, John Holloway, Ann Pettifor and others on What We Are Fighting For: A Radical Collective Manifesto, and was also the editor of Mark Boyle's The Moneyless Manifesto. He and Boyle then collaborated towards the realisation of a moneyless community, in partnership with the Ecological Land Co-operative, of which he became chair in 2015.

In 2016, he took a manuscript left by his late mentor David Fleming and edited it for posthumous publication as Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It. This uniquely structured hardback was published alongside the paperback Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy, conceived and created by Chamberlin after Fleming's death, and consisting of content from Lean Logic which he selected and edited into a conventional read-it-front-to-back narrative.

The twinned books were critically acclaimed, won several awards including first place in the 2017 New York Book Show, and were named in multiple Book of the Year lists. They also gave rise to both Peter William Armstrong's 2020 film The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled Civilisation? and Sterling College (Vermont)'s $1.5m EcoGather project, including the online program Surviving the Future: Conversations for Our Time, led by Chamberlin since 2020.

Views and Ideas

Chamberlin argues that the key challenge of modernity is responding to what he describes as the dilemma of economic growth - "either we cease growing, and so collapse the economy on which we all depend, or continue to grow until we overwhelm and destroy the ecosystems on which we all depend". He contends that unless we address this, the economy will inevitably continue its ecological destructiveness, though also highlights that such behaviour is demonstrably not merely human nature, since many cultures - especially indigenous cultures - have a long track record of acting otherwise.

Accordingly, his writing and participation with activist projects like the Ecological Land Co-operative, Occupy and Extinction Rebellion emphasise the possibilities for living in fulfilling ways that do not support our collective drive towards life on a devastated planet. He personally does not fly, and he and Mark Boyle complement their writing by living as part of the community at 'The Happy Pig' in County Galway, Ireland, which Chamberlin has described as "a bastion for the renaissance of the non-monetary economy".

Drawing on David Fleming's work, he has argued that a post-growth rediscovery of culture and community is inevitable, yet only likely after civilisational collapse.

He also frequently addresses psychological and spiritual topics such as grief and despair in the face of our collective predicament. He is noted for coining the widely-adopted term 'Dark Optimism', which The Guardian's Anne Karpf has characterised as "facing dark truths while believing unwaveringly in human potential", and which inspired EXPO 1: Dark Optimism at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 2013, featuring artists including Ansel Adams, Joseph Beuys, Agnes Denes, Olafur Eliasson and Adrián Villar Rojas.

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References

  1. "Shaun Chamberlin". scholar.google.co.uk.
  2. Chamberlin, Shaun (18 November 2018). "Why I'm Rebelling against Extinction (wait, should that really need explaining..?)".
  3. "Getting A Grip". www.resurgence.org.
  4. "Shaun Chamberlin". Sterling College.
  5. "Lean Logic and Surviving the Future: Review". Resilience. 26 December 2016.
  6. "A Clash of Paradigms – Utne". www.utne.com. 9 June 2017.
  7. Fleming Policy Centre announcement of film project, 1 August 2017
  8. Hopkins, Rob. "Patrick Whitefield Reviews 'The Transition Timeline' » Transition Culture".
  9. Jensen, Derrick; McBay, Aric; Keith, Lierre (4 January 2011). Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet. Seven Stories Press. ISBN 9781609801427 – via Google Books.
  10. Dahms, Harry F. (4 December 2009). Nature, Knowledge and Negation. Emerald Group Publishing. ISBN 9781849506069 – via Google Books.
  11. Chamberlin, Shaun (26 January 2010). "Kingston Green Guardian Awards 2010".
  12. "Chamberlin shortlisted for the Sheila McKechnie Foundation Environmental Campaigner Award for his work on TEQs, Sheila McKechnie Foundation, 2008" (PDF).
  13. Chamberlin, Shaun; Maxey, Larch; Hurth, Victoria (4 July 2014). "Reconciling scientific reality with realpolitik: moving beyond carbon pricing to TEQs – an integrated, economy-wide emissions cap". Carbon Management. 5 (4): 411–427. doi:10.1080/17583004.2015.1021563. hdl:10026.1/4311. S2CID 153823081 – via Taylor and Francis+NEJM.
  14. "Transition Free Press (Preview issue) by Transition Free Press Co-op - Issuu". issuu.com.
  15. "Caroline Lucas MP endorses TEQs at Parliamentary launch" – via www.youtube.com.
  16. "Fuel Rationing in U.K. Needed to Cut CO2, Panel Says". Bloomberg.com. 18 January 2011 – via www.bloomberg.com.
  17. Chalk, Natalie (24 January 2011). "Driver fury at petrol ration plan". Express.co.uk.
  18. Fortson, Danny. "Prepare for the return of rationing" – via www.thetimes.co.uk.
  19. Harrell, Eben (18 January 2011). "Brits Ponder Fuel Rationing". Time – via science.time.com.
  20. "British lawmakers propose energy rationing", Financial Times, 18 January 2011
  21. Chamberlin interview on report launch, BBC Radio 5 Live, "Wake Up to Money", 18 January 2011
  22. "Dr. David Fleming: a tribute". theecologist.org.
  23. "Living without oil - Open University course". www.open.edu.
  24. "Shortlist for The Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2013 |".
  25. "About". www.darkoptimism.org.
  26. "Greenham Reach: The families trying to prove that compact, ecological". The Independent. 26 May 2015.
  27. "Planning victory for smallholders who need to live on site". South West Farmer.
  28. ""The Law of the Land", Shaun Chamberlin, STIR, Spring 2015".
  29. "Projects". www.darkoptimism.org.
  30. "Editors' Picks for February 2017".
  31. Hopkins, Rob (13 October 2016). "Celebrating the life of Dr. David Fleming". transitionnetwork.org.
  32. Chamberlin's preface to Lean Logic
  33. "Economic collapse & David Fleming - with Jonathon Porritt and Shaun Chamberlin" – via www.youtube.com.
  34. "Shaun Chamberlin: Surviving The Aftermath Of The Market Economy" – via www.youtube.com.
  35. "For Hallowe'en this year, I'm dressing as the economy". openDemocracy.
  36. Harris, Amalia (26 January 2018). "Surviving the Future Symposium Held at Sterling College". Sterling College.
  37. Garavan, Mark. "Lean Logic and Surviving the Future: Reviews by Mark Garavan – Feasta".
  38. ""Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It", The Royal Geographical Society, 5 December 2016".
  39. "Surviving the Future", Bollier.org, 13 June 2017
  40. "Books of the year 2016". Times Higher Education (THE). 22 December 2016.
  41. "The official page for Dr. David Fleming's Lean Logic & Surviving the Future".
  42. "Environmentalism used to be about defending the wild – not any more | Mark Boyle". the Guardian. 22 May 2017.
  43. "The 6 best sustainability books of 2016 | Greenbiz". www.greenbiz.com.
  44. Lavin, Katie (20 March 2020). "Sterling College Receives $1.5 Million Grant to Launch EcoGather". Sterling College.
  45. ^ Johnson, Ken (30 May 2013). "The Natural World: Here, It's Had Work". The New York Times – via NYTimes.com.
  46. "The Sequel: Life After Economic Growth - Tikkun". www.tikkun.org. 15 November 2018.
  47. Chamberlin, Shaun (6 August 2019). "Humanity - not just a virus with shoes".
  48. Chamberlin, Shaun (8 April 2022). "A post-doom conversation, with Michael Dowd".
  49. "Confessions of a Hypocrite: Utopia in the Age of Ecocide', by Shaun Chamberlin". www.darkoptimism.org. 8 April 2023.
  50. "Projects". www.darkoptimism.org. 8 April 2023.
  51. "Ben Fogle's Channel 5 show New Lives in the Wild - Season 13, Episode 5". www.channel5.com/. 8 April 2023.
  52. Chamberlin, Shaun (5 January 2010). "Heroes and villains in Copenhagen".
  53. Chamberlin, Shaun (20 January 2013). "The secret truth behind environmentalists' favourite argument".
  54. Chamberlin, Shaun (5 November 2011). "OccupyTransition, or 'this Halloween I dressed as the economy'".
  55. Chamberlin, Shaun (22 August 2019). "A post-doom conversation, with Michael Dowd".
  56. "INTERVIEW Shaun Chamberlin on 'Dark Optimism' and the power of grief". 16 March 2015.
  57. Weintrobe, Sally (12 October 2012). Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Routledge. ISBN 9781136206832 – via Google Books.
  58. "Climate change: you can't ignore it | Anne Karpf". the Guardian. 30 November 2012.
  59. Hoelting, Kurt (7 May 2013). "Harnessing Our Dark Optimism".
  60. "Museum of Modern Art press release for EXPO 1, 8 March 2013" (PDF).
  61. "Post Human | Zérodeux / 02".

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