Product Description

It is easy to feel helpless in the face of the torrent of information about environmental catastrophes taking place all over the world. In Soil and Soul, Scottish activist and academic Alastair McIntosh shows how it is still possible for individuals to take on the might of corporate power and emerge victorious. Alastair's beliefs are rooted in his upbringing on the Isle of Lewis. In the first part of his book he explores the ways in which the old way of life in the Hebrides was threatened with extinction by global capitalism; he does not advocate a return to some kind of preindustrial golden age, but balances the gains of modernity against what has been lost - in particular the disintegration of communities governed by a sense of mutual responsibility. The second part of the book demonstrates how Alastair's principles of community empowerment can be successfully put into practice. Working closely with the inhabitants of the Isle of Eigg, Alastair was partly responsible for the first-known case in which Scottish tenants cleared a laird from his own estate. The people of Eigg raised sufficient funds to purchase their island from their landlord, very much against his will, thus galvanizing public demands for widespread land reform in Scotland. Plans to turn a Hebridean mountain into a superquarry were overturned after Alastair persuaded Native American War Chief Sulian Stone Eagle Herney to come to Scotland and testify at the public enquiry. This extraordinary book incorporates theology, economics, ecology, history and politics as the author journeys towards a radical new philosophy of place. The daring and imaginative responses to the destruction of the natural world he describes make this an uplifting, empowering and inspirational read.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1080074 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Review
'This is a world-changing book, one of the most important I have ever read, which will transform our perception of ourselves, our history and our surroundings'

Ecologist
Few activists win such resounding victories in their lifetime ... None that I know have have done it with such a natural gift for storytelling.

Observer
McIntosh writes beautifully ... gripping and often moving

Customer Reviews

There is enough here for everyone
`Soil and Soul` is a story of one thing and many things; the Earth and its people. Alastair McIntosh provides us with an object lesson and demonstration inhow the welfare of the later is indivisibe from that of the former. He demonstrates this interconectivity by telling the story of how crofters, on the Hebridean island of Eigg, reclaimed their custodianship of the land from the Laird and thus ended nearly 1000 years of injustice and feudal land tenure. He also tells the story, as yet unresolved, of the worlds largest aggregates consortiums attempts to gain licence to hollow out a superquarry on the Isle of Harris which would result, as one local put it, turn Harris into `..the gravel pit of Europe`.

`Soil and soul` is, though, more than the lineal accounting of eco campaigning and legal battles from an author who was intimately involved with both issues. Much of the book is given over to matters of history, theology, feminism and ecology. McIntosh begins with the tale of how Kings and corporations, power and wealth, have, over the centuries, in the Scottish Highlands obscenely stolen, terrorised and bullied it indigenous people. Inherent in this process, he posits,was the wilful destruction of native spirituality and self sufficiency all in the pursuit of power and worship of Mamon. In one sense then it is the history, writ small, of much of the history of the world.

If you blanch at the invocation of Mamon then perhaps this book isn`t for you. McIntosh doesn`t pull his theological punches. His spiritual outlook is deeply rooted in pagan christianity and its deep reverence of the `Mother Earth` and an imminent god. Passages from the Bible are often quoted. Do not, though, be put off by his pertinant meanderings into eco-feminism or liberation theology. He is never pompous or pious but he does, on occasion, vere towards the precious but this simply underlines his integrity and honesty. He is also prone to drift into the kind of academic-speak that, this fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology, might use with his undergraduates. But this is a small price to pay for the overall cogency of his beliefs, the subjects of which, in less rigourous hands, may be made to appear as just so much nouveaux-hippy wishful thinking. McIntosh doesn`t let this happen for a minute.

This book contains much to energise and sustain anyone who is perhaps only beginning to question our relationship with the land we live on and with. As a young man I read William Morris` `News From Nowhere` which as the years roled on revealed itself to be the book most influential on my sensibilities. I have no doubt that this book will have a similar revelatory impact upon some unsuspecting 17 year old who is yet to read it.

Before I had finished my copy I had sent another copy to a friend. Even if you do not wear a chunky jumper or knit your own yoghurt there is much here to be divined in this excellent book. It realy is the gift that keeps on giving.

Review by John Seed, Rainforest Information Centre, NSW
Alastair McIntosh's Soil and Soul leads me on from my first reading of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The same thirst for justice, the same identification of the eloquent bard with the voiceless ones rekindles poetry and revolution in the readers heart and thunders forth "alarm! alarm!" as deep as any Biblical prophesy.

McIntosh is able to leave one foot firmly planted in the old ways of a native Celtic people and the other slap bang in the middle of scholarly argumentation thereby bridging the great divide between poetry and science. He helps us to come to terms with our broken hearts and understand the dysfunctional power behind the carnage.

Soil and Soul is a major work which stretches us from the psychohistory of colonisation as seen through the lens of Hebridean culture to inspiring, empowering and entertaining case histories of community empowerment and cultural healing in which the author has played a pioneering part: read it!

- John Seed (author of Thinking Like a Mountain).

Most important book I have ever read
This book is essential reading for all those who care about the way our society is developing. Alastair McIntosh shows by examples such as the Harris superquarry that the giant corporates can be taken on and defeated. He does this in such a way as to (re)awaken a genuine sense of reverence for the Earth in general and my own country Scotland in particular. I have read it once since I received it at Christmas and I will be reading it again very soon!