Joanna Macy

Joanna Rogers Macy, Ph.D (sometimes listed as Joanna R. Macy or Joanna Macy; born May 2, 1929), is an environmental activist, author, scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology.

Biography

Macy graduated from Wellesley College in 1950 and received her Phd in Religious Studies in 1978 from Syracuse University, Syracuse. She studied there with Huston Smith, the influential author of The World's Religions (previously entitled The Religions of Man). She is an international spokesperson for peace, justice, and environmentalism, most renowned for her book Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World and the Great Turning initiative, which deals with the transformation from, as she terms it, an industrial growth society to what she considers to be a more sustainable civilization. She has created a theoretical framework for personal and social change, and a workshop methodology for its application. Her work addresses psychological and spiritual issues, Buddhist thought, and contemporary science.

Macy travels giving lectures, workshops, and trainings internationally. Widowed in January 2009, she lives in Berkeley, California, near her children and grandchildren. She serves as adjunct professor to three graduate schools in the San Francisco Bay Area: the Starr King School for the Ministry, the University of Creation Spirituality, and the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Works

• Coming Back to Life : Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World; Joanna R. Macy, Molly Young Brown; New Society Publishers (1998); ISBN 0-86571-391-X
• Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age; New Society Pub, (1983); ISBN 0-86571-031-7
• Dharma and Development: Religion as resource in the Sarvodaya self help movement; Kumarian Press revised ed (1985); ISBN 0-931816-53-X
• Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural System (Buddhist Studies Series); State University of New York Press (1991); ISBN 0-7914-0637-7
• Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God; poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy; Riverhead Books(1996); ISBN 1-59448-156-3
• Thinking Like a Mountain: Toward a Council of All Beings; Joanna Macy, John Seed, Pat Fleming, Arne Naess, Dailan Pugh; New Society Publishers (1988); ISBN 0-86571-133-X
• Widening Circles (memoir); New Society, 2000
• World as Lover, World as Self; Parallax Press (2005); ISBN 0-938077-27-9

See also

• David Korten, a collaborator with Macy on the Great Turning Initiative

External links

• Joanna Macy's website on the work of Experiential Deep Ecology
• Gaia Foundation of Western Australia — an Australian organisation based on the principles of Deep Ecology.
• California Institute of Integral Studies
• Interview with Joanna Macy by John Malkin — published in ascent magazine, summer 2008
• The Healing on Mother Earth Project — a Sebastopol, Ca organisation based on the principles of deep ecology.
• "The Work that Reconnects" — Video series of a workshop with Joanna Macy.