Good Work
About this book
Good Work carries forward Schumacher's combination of a profound critique of Western industrial society with both a philosophical perspective and a detailed vision of other directions in which we can move, to help answer the questions: "What can I do?" "Where do I start?"Emphasizing such themes as the wiser use of natural resources, energy, economics, technology and science, and the nature and control of organizations, Good Work ranges across the most urgent concerns of humanity while keeping its central focus upon the human being: what individuals can actually do now to make a viable future visible in the present.Good Work stresses how we can liberate ourselves from assumptions which may have been valid in the past but which now are not only invalid but contribute to our own sense of powerlessness. We have convinced ourselves that our technology and large institutions have developed a'i uncontrollable momentum of their own when human experience actually indicates we can both control and redirect them—but only if we realize that the most important single resource is human beings.E. F. Schumacher was the Economic adviser of the National Coal Board in England from 1950 to 1970. German born, in 1930 he went as a Rhodes scholar to study economics at Oxford, and later taught economics at Columbia University. Before his death in 1977 he was a director of the Scott-Bader Company and The Soil Association in England.