Roseland on Illich "By saying this I know that I am opening a Pandora's Box as I haven't done before in my life... ." -Ivan Illich, conversation at Rainhouse, March 12, 1981 Yes, indeed. As Illich himself readily acknowledges, his thinking in the last year has taken a significant turn from the direction of the last decade or so. It's an exciting turn. I also expect he'll take a fair amount of flak for it from many corners, from dismayed students to long-time critics. What's new with Illich? No longer does he symbolize de-institutionalization-seeing the problem with education as schools; with health, hospitals; with transportation, automobiles. Now he is asking even harder questions-harder to conceptualize as well as to answer-such as why we need education or transportation in the first place. Comprehension is difficult here because, notorious a scholar as he is, Illich is not a visionary. When asked about his ideal society he talks about "vernacular life" but cannot describe it. "f can't imagine it, but I can study it!" he told an audience here. May 1981 RAIN Page 7 A significant development is that Illich has discovered feminism, and in particular the ever-growing body of literature that makes up feminist history. Books like Ann Douglass' The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Avon Books; 1978) paved the way, through analyzing the development of activities such as housework, for Illich' s formulation of the notion of the shadow economy. "It is a terrible mistake, an idiotic mistake in which I'd also fallen," he told us, "to consider the domestic work of 19th century wives of wage-workers as nothing but a modern form of age-old reproductive activities. I challenge therefore the idea of Marxist 'reproduction' as much as the capitalist concept of 'privilege of consumption."' Illich himself provided the most su.ccinct summation of his growth in answering a question after his address here in Portland: "I have not spoken about de-institutionalizing education-I never used that word-I would perhaps have followed that line of thought 15 years ago. I now am trying to do everything I c_an to reduce the need for education, transportation, medical care."□□ -Mark Roseland ACCESS - ---------- ----- ---------- - -- - ENERGY - -- - -- ------------------- -- Lessons of the NASA Tech House (NAS 1.21:442), by Richard Allaway, 1980, 38 pp., from: • Superintendent of Documents U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, DC 20402 In 1976, NASA set out to build a house using every conservation technology they could think of, then had a family live there for a year to see how it worked. Some of the things they tried betray the engineering mindset of the people who designed it. For example, the house makes only minimal use of passive solar design techniques for space heating, while relying heavily on a complicated activ solar system coupled to a water source heat pump. Other ideas, however, are worth a second look. The most revealing part of this study was the reaction of one member of the family living in the house: One of the main things that struck us about living in the Tech house was that a technically designed, very efficient house is not really the total answer to the question of saving energy for the entire family. We didn'! make as efficient use of the Tech UPPER MANIFOLD From The Solar Water Book COLLECTOR HEAT EXCHANGER house as we might have, partly because some of the features didn't fit into our lifestyle very well. I would like to see a lot more attention devoted to the way in which the technological systems that we are going to use to meet the energy crunch interact with people's habits, the way they live, what they think about their house, and so on. -KB The Solar Water Heater Book: Building and Installing Your Own System, by Roger Bryenton, Ken Cooper and Chris MattockA...1980, 69 pp., from: Renewable Energy in Canada 415 Parkside Drive Toronto, Ontario M6R 227 CANADA This is one of the best books I've seen on building your own solar water heater. They give complete materials lists, detailed instructions, and drawings to help you build a thermosyphon system or an active system. Included are all those little tricks that make things easier to build and make things work better once the system is in place. The information on start-up and troubleshooting is invaluable. -Gail Katz
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