On Saturday, April 5th at 3PM EDT, the Schumacher Center is hosting a two part event at Saint James Place in Great Barrington, MA: the Third Annual Robert Swann Lecture and the First Annual Common Wealth Prize. Barbara Wood and James Boyce are the speakers. The event is free but registration is requested. Please join us. More details below.

Robert Swann and E.F. Schumacher were good friends who shared a similar analysis of the social, cultural, and ecological problems facing the World’s communities. And they shared a passion for building the framework of a new economics that would help communities thrive in all their multiplicity. We are pleased that Barbara Wood, Schumacher’s daughter and biographer, has agreed to deliver this year’s Robert Swann Lecture.

In her lecture, “Revisiting Schumacher: Challenge, Courage, and Change,” Barbara will address the two sides of her father’s work—the economic and the spiritual. These two aspects of his thinking are highlighted and contrasted in Schumacher’s books, Small is Beautiful and A Guide for the Perplexed, respectively. Barbara will argue that each of these are integral to the other. They were not separate avenues of inquiry, but rather one, informing each other in a quest for a deeper truth.
_____________________________________________________________________
Author and entrepreneur Peter Barnes approached the Schumacher Center last year with the idea for an Annual Common Wealth Prize recognizing a leading contributor to the field. We are delighted to host the Prize and are grateful for Peter’s vision and support.

The inaugural recipient is James K. Boyce, an author, naturalist, economist, and senior fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Following Barbara Wood’s presentation, Professor Boyce will deliver his acceptance talk titled Common Wealth for All: Caring for our planet and for each other.

About the Lecture:
The gifts of nature may be free, but securing them for the benefit of all is not. It takes hard work to safeguard lands, air, and water from being despoiled. It takes hard work to keep natural resources from being monopolized by a powerful few. Fossil fuels today exemplify these twin dangers. To stabilize the planet’s climate, nations must put a hard ceiling on the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas. The resulting higher fuel prices will generate very large revenues. By recycling this money to the public as carbon dividends, we can consolidate support for protecting the climate by simultaneously protecting the economic security of working people. More generally, common wealth owned equally by all can provide the foundation for universal basic income, helping to forge a more just and democratic economy.