New Book - Riders on the Storm: the Climate Crisis and the Survival of Being - due 6 August 2020

Poacher's Pilgrimage: an Island Journey is now out in paperback from Birlinn (UK/world) and Cascade (USA)

"This is the book I've been waiting to read all my life" - Cameron McNeish, mountaineer & BBC broadcaster

"Fascinating, provocative and, occasionally, very funny" - Joanna Kavenna, Times Literary Supplement

"I felt I had been led to holy ground" - Brian D McLaren, Foreword to the Cascade edition 

Video clips: Opus Earth author interview (5 mins); BBC TV Adventure Show (12 mins) Royal Society Ed TEDx (12 mins) 

Click picture for hi-res photo downloads

Shortcut links to Key Material

@alastairmci

[Contact information]

[Upcoming Events public itinerary]

[Booking me & accountability]

[Published articles - chronological]

Published articles - classified index:

1. Community

2. Globalisation

3. Nonviolence

4. Sustainability & climate

5. Land Reform

6. Superquarries

7. Epistemology

8. Scottish constitutional

9. Psychology & ethnology

10. PNG & South Pacific

11. Theology & philosophy

12. Consciousness studies

13. Mythology & poetics

14. Spirituality

Other Key Links

[An Idea of Speaking Topics]

[Index of rare third party resources]

[Interviews, podcasts, videos, TEDx]

[BBC Thoughts for the Day]

[Letters to the Press]

New This Past Year:  [Salted with Fire - Easter reflection for the Iona Community (March 2020)]  [Dark Mountain 10th anniversary essay: God Carry Me (Jan 2020)]  [Papua Visitors Mussel Feast at Croirgerraidh (Aug 2019)]  [Healthy Community, Healthy Land: Report of West Papua Province study tour to Hebrides (Jul 2019)]  [Doom and Dharma - politics of climate change & regenerative culture, in The Ecologist (Jul 2019)]  [Towards Third Millennium Christianity - PCN public lecture (Jun 2019)]  ['Spirituality and Social Activism' - book chapter with Matt Carmichael (May 2019)]  [Land, Heritage and Freedom - Forager podcast interviewed by Myles Irving (Apr 2019, 1hr 25 min)]  [GalGael Trust Isle of Iona visit report (Mar 2019)]  ["Keep thinking about the stories I'm telling you": Obituary for Agnus Maclennan of Kirkibost & Achmore (Feb 2019)]  [Data Set on our solar & heat pump renewable energy system - 64% cut in domestic carbon emissions (2019)]  [Interviews - press, radio, TV, podcast (to date)]  [BBC Thoughts for the Day (to date)]  [Twitter feed]

Hello, and a warm welcome to the website of Alastair McIntosh. Thank you for visiting my home page. See below for contact details and my public itinerary. Also, the tabs above for main themes, and links to the left for a classified index of publications and some other ports of call.

Since 2004 I've live within the old parish boundary of Govan in the city of Glasgow, Scotland, where I am a founding trustee of the GalGael Trust. This works with multiple facets of urban poverty in seeking to release blocked flows within the human spirit. Since 1996, my work has been mainly freelance. I am a Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology (CHE) of which I was previously director, an honorary senior research fellow (professor) in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Glasgow, and have held honorary fellowships or professorships at the universities of Strathclyde (Department of Geography & Sociology), Ulster (Academy of Irish Cultural Heritages) and Edinburgh (School of Divinity).

I run this site to represent myself professionally. Its main purpose is to make my published work readily available. Forgive it being an amateur website that is self-maintained, using antique FrontPage software from the last century. If you've only landed here to get the retro experience, then make yourself at home.

Nearly all of what I've posted has been previously published or delivered as an address, usually involving peer review. It includes items from local newspapers, the national press, academic papers in refereed scholarly journals, magazine contributions, published letters and poetry, reports, speeches and some broadcasts. There are also sections with my interviews, podcasts and video, and of rare 3rd party resource material. The latter is where I've scanned important but hard-to-find documents that are essential to my work or that of folks with whom I work.

I live with my wife, Vérène Nicolas who I met in Ireland in 1996. I was running a study tour and she was working on a farm, having a background in agriculture, economics and rural development. These days her work is mainly with transformative learning and collaborative leadership in community-based organisations. Both of us are Quakers.

What I do and stand for (updated January 2020)

What is found here broadly represents my work in human ecology - the study of and participation in relationships between the natural environment and the social environment. Some define human ecology in terms of population, environment, resources and development (PRED). My approach also integrates the psychological and spiritual backdrop to being a conscious human being in a living world. Much of my work is informed by the combination of practical action, study and reflection. In this, I am especially influenced by liberation theology - theology that liberates theology to do what it should do. In choosing what issues to work on, I therefore ask questions like:

In recent years, it has been the last of these questions that most binds my work together. To do human ecology, like doing theology, is to pull on a tangled ball of string. You cannot unravel one loop until you've understood the network of connections. For me, such interconnection is the essence of reality and the basis of consciousness. It is about the spiritual, which is to say, life as love made manifest. It is the innermost structure that underpins the outer forms of things, including their psychology, ecology, politics, economics and forms of collective religious expression. That is why I believe that what the world most needs today is a deepening of spiritual vision. Science gives outer sight, but spirituality complements this with insight. Such understanding is the key to my work and ability to maintain hope, even where the grounds for optimism might be frayed.

My background, writing and activism

Born in 1955, all of my school education (1960-73) took place in the community where I was raised, on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides or Western Isles. A traditional Scottish education allows for a generalist worldview. I hold a BSc in geography from the University of Aberdeen (1973-77) submajoring in psychology and moral philosophy, a financial MBA from the University of Edinburgh (1980-81), and a PhD by published works in liberation theology, land reform and community empowerment from the Academy of Irish Cultural Heritages, University of Ulster (2008). For a CV and short bio see here.

My work is mainly represented through the books and articles linked from the tabs along the top of this page. The best known are Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power (2001) and Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition (2008). My books have variously been described as "world-changing" by George Monbiot, "inspirational" by Rowan Williams while Archbishop of Canterbury, "careful, sober reasoning" by the philosopher Mary Midgley, and "truly mental" by the singer Thom Yorke of Radiohead.

My two most recent books draw together much of my life's work. Spiritual Activism - Leadership as Service (Green Books, 2015) is co-authored with Matt Carmichael. It is a practical guide, based on a quarter century of postgraduate teaching, and was named Book of the Year by Sir Jonathan Porritt, formerly chair of the UK Government's Sustainable Development Commission.

Poacher's Pilgrimage: an Island Journey (Birlinn, 2016; Cascade 2018 in USA) has been described by the Rev Kathy Galloway of the Iona Community as "a quite wonderful book - a theology of justice and peace and love re-presented through human ecology." I use a twelve day walk through remote and rugged terrain on the island of my childhood to explore the roots of war and alienation in our times. It breaks through into an ecology of the imagination, and spiritual insights for the third millennium.

My best-known work includes Scottish land reform as commenced with the Isle of Eigg (1990 - present), the Harris superquarry battle (1992 - 2004), the spirituality of community, identity, belonging and place (1986 - present), nonviolence and understanding war (1976 - present), the psychospirituality of climate change (2006 to present), and radical human ecology (1990 - present). For further information on my current work and campaigns click here.

Less well-known is my work with South Pacific education, development and ethnography (1980-91 in Papua New Guinea and 2012 onwards in Indonesian West Papua), sustainable tropical forestry (1984-95), micro-hydro electric and alternative energy (1978-86 and 2012 onwards), the depth psychology of cigarette advertising (1995-96), corporate social responsibility in the cement industry with Lafarge (2004-13), NGO marketing, PR, finance & management (1980-1990), parapsychology and consciousness research (1973-1980), cultural psychotherapy, conflict and power analysis (1994 - present), the GalGael Trust, urban poverty and cultural renewal (1997 - present) and applied liberation theology (1977 - present).

Availability for Events, livelihood and travelling

Since 1996 I've made my living on an entirely self employed basis - writing, broadcasting with the BBC, keynote speaking at events, workshops, retreats, taught courses and consultancy. For availability see my public itinerary, and a rough idea of the kind of things I talk about at this list. My personal financial accountability, my suggesting scale of charging for events, and my approach to travel in the face of climate change is given here. We now have good broadband so I am able to connect for online talks and presentations if required.

Places at which I have spoken or taught in recent years include the universities of Strathclyde, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Exeter, Bath, Cape Breton, Saskatchewan and Florida, the Russian Academy of Sciences (Economics Dept), INSEAD European Management School, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Glasgow School of Art, the British Council, the Irish School of Ecumenics at the University of Ireland, the World Council of Churches, Groupe Credit Mutuel, Shell plc, Nokia Research Centre, Lafarge SA (where I sat until 2013 on their Sustainability Stakeholders' Panel), the Edinburgh International Festival, the Schumacher Lectures and Schumacher College, Greenbelt Festival, the Society for Ecological Regeneration, Friends of the Earth, WWF International and UK, Australia's Rainforest Information Centre, Transition Towns, the Diocese of Liverpool, the Iona Community, the Scottish Crofting Foundation, International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the Learning and Skills Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Scottish Government, the Jakarta Institute of Theology, the Defence Academy's Joint Services Command & Staff College (JSCSC, on nonviolence), the Royal College of Defence Studies, École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr, the Irish Military College and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.

Where now? - Riders on the Storm: the Climate Crisis and the Survival of Being

I spend about half of most days dealing with correspondence and seeing visitors. It is a joy to get such feedback, though I often struggle to cope with it efficiently. I give priority of time to activists and young scholars (masters and doctorate candidates) working with social, environmental or religious change. When we can, Vérène and I get out in our canoes and we about once a week we have a shared meal with our neighbours at the GalGael Trust, a mile down the road.

One major area of work this past year that builds on themes opened up in Poacher's Pilgrimage is exploring a Christian spirituality that might be fit for purpose for the third millennium, one that rests on principles of nonviolence rather than authoritarian control. As of the autumn of 2019 through to spring 2020, I am working on a short book on climate change for Birlinn, Riders on the Storm, due August 2020 in time for COP26. Here is the draft publisher's blurb.

Dangerous climate change means that massive social change is essential if much of the earth can remain habitable. What needs to happen will challenge our politics, our economics and our technical capacity. But above all these, it will be a challenge to our humanity. In this succinct and passionate new book, Alastair McIntosh examines the drivers in the human psyche that have allowed unfettered consumerism to threaten the planet. He argues for a radical shift in our consciousness of what it means to be human at this stage in our evolution. His message is not one of optimism, but of building on soul and meaning in these troubled times. Of building the capacity for resilience and regeneration that can make us riders on the storm.

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Contact Information:

 

Alastair McIntosh

26 Luss Road

Glasgow

G51 3YD

Scotland / Ecosse

 

 

Email - mail@AlastairMcIntosh.com (preferred first point of contact)

 

Mobile (cellphone): +44 (0) 7444 580 380 (preferred second point of contact)

 

Twitter: @alastairmci (I am not on other social media, I can be DM'd without requiring to follow)

 

For work issues please try to avoid phoning outside weekday working hours. Remember time zones - we're in GMT or BST in summer (i.e. GMT+1). If you need to discuss something that requires much thought I prefer an email first if possible to arrange a mutually convenient calling time. I am on Skype, Facetime and WhattsApp but unless it is a pressing matter please first arrange any call by email or text.

 

 

Directions to our home/office:

 

Public Transport: For public transport in Scotland, it is worthwhile downloading the Traveline Scotland app. If coming from central Glasgow, take the subway (underground train) to either Govan or Ibrox. They're each one mile from our house. From Govan is a more interesting walk, but Ibrox is a simpler route and less congested if we're picking you up by car (see below if walking). From either Govan subway station or the city centre (Renfield St), you can get a McGills Route 26 bus to the second stop on Craigton Road, from where we're the next street up on the right. The fare is £3.60 from town as of the start of 2018). They're every 10 or 16 minutes during the day, but the timetable is unreliable. Our house is no. 26, half way along Luss Rd on the right. If coming from city centre's Queen St or Central stations, the stops for the 26 bus are on Renfield Street (extending onto Union Street). Taxis up from Govan are about £4, from city centre about £12, and from the airport about £20.

 

If walking from the subway exit at Ibrox, turn right onto Copland Road. Up to the lights and turn right. Pass alongside the Rangers football stadium, go straight on over the first roundabout, straight over the second roundabout, on to the lights, turn right down Craigton Road, and Luss Road is the 5th exit on the left (depending on what you count as an exit).

 

By Car: If coming on the M8 from east or west, exit at junction 24 (Helen Street), signposted for Govan. Head downhill and over the lights to a roundabout, as if heading to the Clyde Tunnel. Turn left at the roundabout then right at the lights into a residential area, Craigton Road (signposted to "Elderpark Workspace"). Luss Road is the 3rd on the left (or 4th depending on what you count). 

 

If coming by car from the North via the Clyde Tunnel, as you exit the tunnel prepare to take the first left just at the tunnel's end. Be careful - it comes on you very quickly and it's easy to overshoot. This brings you out onto Govan Road with a very large roundabout. Turn right at this, onto Drive Road, passing a Elder Park on your left. At the end of Drive road, keep the park on your left by turning left onto Langlands Road. Take the 3rd right, just before you lose the park, onto Arklett Road, then 2nd right is Luss Road.

 

Avoid the M8 approaches if you can when there's a football match on at Ibrox. There may also be parking congestion at such times. Taxi drivers from outwith this area do not know it well. Tell them that you want Luss Road which is off Craigton Road, and to take the Helen Street exit if coming from the M8.