Local Futures

The Economics of Happiness

Donate Now
You are here: Home / Activist Tools / Recommended Readings

Recommended Readings

Our most recent additions to this list are:

  • Winne, Mark. 2019. Food Town USA. Island Press. Read more here.
  • Kothari, Ashish et al, eds. 2019. Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. AuthorsUpFront
  • Zuboff, Shoshana. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Profile Books; Main edition
  • Langlands, Alexander. 2019. Craeft, an inquiry into the origins and true meaning of traditional crafts. W. W. Norton & Company

About Localization and Globalization:

  • Bennholdt-Thomsen Veronica & Mies Maria. 1999. The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalised Economy. Zed Books
  • Douthwaite, Richard.J. 1998. Short Circuit: Strengthening Local Economics for Security in an Unstable World
  • Galeano, Eduardo. 2001. Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World. St. Martins’s Press
  • International Forum on Globalization. 2002. Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc.
  • Latouche, Serge. 1993. In the Wake of the Affluent Society. Zed Books
  • Latouche, Serge. 2009. Farewell to Growth. Polity Press
  • Mitchell, Mark T. and Peters, Jason. 2018. Localism in the Mass Age. Front Porch Republic Books
  • Robinson, Jennifer, M. and Farmer, James.R. 2017. Selling Local: Why Local Food Movements Matter
  • Sale, Kirkpatrick. 2000. Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision and Human Scale. University of Georgia Press
  • Schumacher, E.F. 1973. Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. New York: Harper and Row, and London: Blond and Briggs Ltd
  • Seabrook, Jeremy. 2004. Consuming Cultures: Globalization and Local Lives. New Internationalist Publications Ltd
  • Shiva, Vandana. 2005. Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace. South End Press; 1st edition
  • Shuman, Michael. 2000. Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age. New York: Routledge
  • Shuman, Michael. 2007. The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition. Berrett-Koehler Publishers; 2nd edition
  • Young De, Raymond and Princen, Thomas. 2019. The Localization Reader: Adapting to the Coming Downshift.

About Economic Development:

  • Alexander, Samuel. 2015. Sufficiency Economy: Enough, for Everyone, Forever. Simplicity Institute Publishing
  • Berry, Wendell. 1987. Home Economics. North Point Press
  • Berry, Wendell. 2005. The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays. Shoemaker & Hoard
  • Berry, Wendell. 2010. What matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth. Counterpoint; First Edition edition
  • Deb, Debal. 2009. Beyond Developmentality: Constructing Inclusive Freedom and Sustainability. Routledge
  • Eisenstein, Charles. 2011. Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in the Age of Transition. Evolver Editions
  • Escobar, Arturo. 2011. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton University Press; With a New preface by the author edition
  • Ewen, S. 2001. Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture. Basic Books
  • Gibson-Graham, J.K. Cameron, Jenny. Healy, Stephen. 2013. Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming our Communities. University of Minnesota Press
  • Heinberg, Richard. 2011. The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality. Clairview Books
  • Hopkins, Rob. 2008. Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience. Green Books; 1st edition
  • Illich, Ivan. 2001. Tools of Conviviality, and Deschooling Society. Marion Boyars
  • Jackson, Tim. 2011. Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet. Routledge; Reprint edition
  • Korten, David. 1995. When Corporations Rule the World. West Hartford, Connecticut: Kumarian Press
  • Kohr, Leopold. 2001. The Breakdown of Nations and the Overdeveloped Nations. Green Books; New edition
  • Kothari, Ashish and Srivastava, Aseem. 2012. Churning the Earth: The Making of Global India. Viking (India)
  • Kothari, Ashish et al, eds. 2019. Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. AuthorsUpFront
  • Mander, Jerry, and Edward Goldsmith (eds.). 1996. The Case Against the Global Economy: and For a Turn Toward the Local. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books
  • McLaren, Deborah. 1998. Rethinking Tourism and Ecotravel: The Paving of Paradise and What You Can Do to Stop It. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press
  • Moreno, Camila and Speich Chassé, Daniel and Fuhr, Lili. Carbon Metrics, Global abstractions and ecological epistemicide. Volume 42 of the Publication Series Ecology. Edited by the Heinrich Böll Foundation 2015
  • Mumford, Lewis. 1971. Myth of the Machine, Vol 1 & 2. Mariner Books
  • Pickett, Kate and Wilkinson, Richard. 2018. The Inner Level: Howe More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone’s Wellbeing. Allan Lane
  • Polanyi, Karl. 2002. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Beacon Press
  • Princen, Thomas. 2002. Confronting Consumption. MIT Press
  • Rahnema, Majid (ed.). 1997. The Post-Development Reader. London and New Jersey: Zed Books
  • Sachs, Wolfgang (ed.). 1992. The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London and New Jersey. Zed Books
  • Sahlins, Marshall. 1974. Stone Age Economics. Aldine Transaction
  • Schor, Juliet B. 2005. Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, and The Overworked American, and The Overspent American. Scribner; Reprint edition
  • Scott. James, C. 1999. Seeing Like a State. Yale University Press
  • Shuman, Michael H. 2012. Local Dollars and Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity. Chelsea Green Publishing
  • Stoll, Steven, 2017. Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia. Hill & Wang;
  • Street, Paul. 2014. They Rule: the 1% vs. Democracy. Paradigm Publishers
  • Winner, Langdon. 1988. Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. University of Chicago Press; New edition
  • Zuboff, Shoshana. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Profile Books; Main edition

About Food & Agriculture:

About Cultural Development:

  • Bodley, John H. 2008. Victims of Progress. AltaMira Press; 5th edition
  • Gandhi, Mohandas. 1997. Hind Swaraj and other writings. Cambridge University Press; New Ed edition
  • Jensen, Derrick. 2000. A Language Older Than Words. New York: Context Books
  • Langlands, Alexander. 2019. Craeft, an inquiry into the origins and true meaning of traditional crafts. W. W. Norton & Company
  • Orr, David. 1994. Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment and the Human Prospect. Washington, D.C. and Covelo, California: Island Press
  • Rushkoff, Douglas. 2019. Team Human. W. W. Norton & Company, 1 edition
  • Snyder, Gary. 2010. The Practice of the Wild. Counterpoint
  • Taylor, Mark C. 2014. Speed Limits: Where Time Went and Why We have so Little Left. Yale University Press
  • Thoreau, Henry David. 1995. Walden: Or, Life in the Woods. Dover Publications Inc.; New edition

About Ladakh:

See also: Recommended Readings for Global to Local Workshops

Sign up for our email updates

Join the
International Alliance for Localization

Donate Now