Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision [Paperback]

Kirkpatrick Sale (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1991

Imagine a world structured around ecological and cultural diversity, rather than national and political parameters. In response to present and impending ecological and economic crises, Kirkpatrick Sale offers a definitive introduction to the unique concept of bioregionalism, an alternative way of organizing society to create smaller scale, more ecologically sound, individually responsive communities with renewable economies and cultures. He emphasizes, among many other factors, the concept of regionalism through natural population division, settlement near and stewardship of watershed areas, and the importance of communal ownership of and responsibility for the land. Dwellers in the Land focuses on the realistic development of these bioregionally focused communities and the places where they are established to create a society that is both ecologically sustainable and satisfying to its inhabitants.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This book sets forth the basic principles of bioregionalism, a concept that defines areas of the earth naturally, by typography and biota, rather than by human dictates. Bioregionalism, Sale asserts, would foster self-sufficiency and a cooperative rather than a competitive economy: "Growth would not be its goal, but sustainability." The author does not so much argue his case as put relevant factual and historical information before the reader while asking, What other choice do we have? Despite some distracting side excursions into disparagement of science and spelling propriety, the presentation is logically compelling. Recommended. Diane M. Brown, Univ. of California Libs., Berkeley
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"If it's radical and leading edge, Sale probably wrote about it sooner and better than anyone else."--UTNE Reader

"Dwellers in the Land is at once an alarm, a directive, and a tonic. One could hardly ask for more."--Kansas City Star

"A serious and wonderful book . . . excellent reading from cover to cover."--Annals of Earth

"Dwellers in the Land addresses questions of the greatest importance to the future of human life. . . . Its truths are timely, and they encourage us to action.”--San Jose Mercury News

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 238 pages
• Publisher: New Society Pub; 2nd edition edition (June 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865712255
• ISBN-13: 978-0865712256
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,223,959 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A remedy for short-sighted environmental policies, May 28, 2000

By 

Kelly Davis (The Smoky Mountains) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision (Paperback)

Kirkpatrick Sale has written a vision of the future that should be drilled into politicians' subconscious and taught in grade school. Sustainable, sane, ecologically minded bioregions. I was particularly struck by his definition of "querencia"--"a deep, quiet sense of inner well-being that comes from knowing a particular place of the earth, its diurnal and seasonal patterns, its fruits and scents, its history and its part in your history . . . where, whenever you return to it, your soul releases an inner sigh of recognition and relaxation." Sale is a wonderful writer, balanced in perspective, and able to distill complex problems into a form that the average mind can comprehend, despite all the arguments pro and con. Read it.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an antidote to rootlessness, July 12, 2001

By 

Craig Chalquist, PhD, author of TERRAPSYCHOLO... (Bay Area, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision (Paperback)

If you've come to suspect that most of the world's problems--pollution, warfare, crime, transnational piracy, mental illness--are inherent in a civilization in decline, you might like this vision of small, face-to-face communities living in respectful accord with the natural world.

The author makes the same point as ecopsychologists and the great whale researcher Roger Payne: built by millions of years of evolution to live in close contact with the wilderness, we who have penned ourselves behind fences and buildings carry with us a ten-thousand-year-old wound....a self-inflicted wound of aching alienation (hence our tendency to alienate--to marginalize--other people).

Read this book, then tour the decidedly un-zoolike San Diego Wild Animal Park while seeing how you feel there. For some this might offer a glimpse of a sanity so centering that you can feel it throughout your body.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a 1991 classic introduction to biogregionalism, March 5, 2010

By 

Ed Philosopher - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision (Paperback)

Weary of the American dream, of the nightmarish destination of the natural world, I looked for another way of life and discovered bioregionalism. All sources pointed to this book, a 1991 classic introduction. And rightly so: it covers the economic, political, and societal necessities for change: things that have not gone of out date over the past two decades. The fact is our planet cannot sustain the American consumerist lifestyle for six-plus billion people. This book presents a better way.