Click picture for hi-res photo download

Shortcut links to Key Material on this web

[Contact information]

[Engagements itinerary

[BBC Audio Interview/Profile]

[Links to Other Websites]

[Published articles by (chronological listing)]

[Published articles by classified subject index:]

1. Community

2. Globalisation

3. Nonviolence

4. Sustainability

5. Land Reform

6. Superquarries

7. Epistemology

8. Psychology

9. PNG & Pacific

10. Spirituality

11. Consciousness

12. Mythology

The links below shortcut to a cross-section of material on this website

[Index of rare third party resources on this website]

[The Return of the Summit of Mount Roineabhal, Harris]

[Spiritual Activism MSc Module at the CHE]

[PDF leaflet for 2008-09 CHE courses at Strathclyde University]

[BBC Thoughts for the Day]

[Le Monde Diplomatique article - land reform & national identity]

[Europe, Globalisation and Sustainability]

[Scotland, Nature & Religion]

[Cold War Psychohistory]

[Power of Love: What can nonviolence say to violence?]

[People & Parliament: the full technical report]

[Embracing Multicultural Scotland: CHE's "Who's a Real Scot?" report]

[Dream Job Report - minority ethnic opportunity in Scotland]

[The Harris superquarry lawsuit: Do corporations have human rights?]

[Liberation Theology in Community Empowerment]

[Esquivel's Stations of the Cross]

[Land reform & Eigg campaign]

[Review article Michael Fry's Wild Scots - land reform & historical revisionism]

[Sustainable Community Housing Policy - consultation paper]

[The Highland Clearances & colonial psychodynamics]

[Combatting Islamophobia]

[Origins of the Bougainville Crisis]

[United Nations paper - Celtic biodiversity & geopoetics]

[Edinburgh International Festival lecture on identity & belonging]

[The late Colin Macleod of the GalGael Peoples of Scotland]

[The GalGael Peoples: 1996 poem on identity, & GalGael Trust]

[Celtic shamanism and cultural psychotherapy]

[Consciousness research]

[Fairy Hills & conservation]

[St Andrew: nonviolence, feminism & Scots nationhood]

British science policy: a classical & ecofeminist critique]

[The science of Dr Strangelove]

[Discounted Cash Flow & weak sustainability critique]

[Historical critique of usury]

[Erós & Thanatos: tobacco advertising psychopathology]

[Poverty, Chastity & Obedience]

[Environmental Education for Adaptation - report on university environmental education]

[The Cult of Biotechnology?]

[State of Scottish fishing industry]

[Sustainable tropical forestry - Wokabout Somils in S. Pacific]

[Healing Nationhood (book)]

[Eigg Freedom Shlide - 12/8 celebratory jig]

New Here: [New Book - Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition, info & launch with Scottish Govt Minister for the Environment, 25 June 08]  [Third Way article on Spirituality of Stillbirth (4MB), June 08]  [Scottish fishing industry ESRC/Scottish Govt presentation, Mar 08]  [Submission to Scottish Govt Rural Housing Inquiry, Mar 08]  [INSEAD sharing/debate with Lafarge Vice-President, Harris Superquarry, Feb 08]  [Walter Wink Festschrift on spiritual activism, Jan 08]  [Audio archive of land reform broadcasts from the 1990s, Dec 07]  [Schumacher Briefing on Community, due Autumn 2008]

Hello, and a warm welcome to the website of Alastair McIntosh. Thank you for visiting my homepage. Located in Glasgow, Scotland, I am writer, lecturer, social activist, broadcaster and campaigning academic from the Isle of Lewis; a Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology (CHE), a director of the GalGael Trust, a Visiting Fellow of the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages at the University of Ulster, and Visiting Professor of Human Ecology at the University of Strathclyde. See below for contact details. Use the tabs above for main themes, and the links to the left for a classified index and items that might be of particular interest.

What I Do and Why this Website (updated June 2008)

When you take an interest in major world problems of our time, it's like pulling on a tangled ball of string. You can't unravel one loop until you've understood the interconnections with all the rest. As such, my work is extremely varied, but what joins it all up is a fundamental passion for that which gives life - with community that is social, ecological and even spiritual.    

The purpose of this website is to represent myself professionally in self-employment and to make material available that I have unearthed over more than three decades of exploration, action and reflection. It comprises a constantly growing range of work representing my field of human ecology - the study and participation in the relationships between the natural environment and the social environment. Some would define human ecology as simply being the relationships between population, environment, resources and technology (PRET). I don't think this goes far enough. We need also to incorporate the psychological and spiritual context of what it means to be human beings. I therefore do human ecology with attitude. It is linked together by always asking such questions as, "Is what I'm doing now feeding the hungry?", "Is it relevant to the poor or to the broken in nature?", "Does it contribute to understanding and meaningfulness?", and the central spiritual question, "Does it give life?" 

The articles reproduced in the publications sections of this website are normally material that has already been published in print media elsewhere and has therefore passed through a third party refereeing or editing process. The contents range from items that appeared in small local newspapers to national newspaper features,  papers in peer reviewed scholarly journals, reports and deliveries at conferences. There is also a small amount of 3rd party resource material where I've scanned stuff that's mostly fallen out of print - things like Camara's classic Spiral of Violence, Esquivel's liberation theology images of the Stations, Iain Crichton Smith's essay Real People in a Real Place, and the writings of Melanesian philosophers who influenced me such as Bernard Narokobi. These 3rd party resources comprise only items essential to my work or to the studies of my students, and I regret that I cannot accept unsolicited material that people sometimes send me hoping that links can be posted to this page.

In sum, the pages on this site reflect what I have so far found human ecology to be about. This is not uncontroversial - according to Harvard University's law school, this website has been one of 854 blocked by the People's Republic of China. How's that for a bit of, shall we say, relaxing "armchair persecution"?! 

Please note that this is an amateur website. I maintain it myself, and it's for substance rather than style. Some of the pages are pretty scruffy as I made them when I was still learning about webs. Some of the picture files are overly bulky and therefore slow loading. Sorry about all that, but I just don't have time to run a website that's all bells and smells.

Campaigns, Work & Writing 

My best-known work includes Scottish land reform especially 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 the development of human ecology in Scotland (1990 - present).

Less well-known is my work with South Pacific education, development and ethnography (1980-91), sustainable tropical forestry (1984-95), micro-hydro electric and alternative energy (1978-86), the depth psychology of cigarette advertising (1995-96), the "Glasgow Two" release campaign with TC Campbell (1994 - 2000), NGO marketing, PR, finance & management (1980 - 1990), parapsychology and the psychology of consciousness (1973 - 1980), cultural psychotherapy, conflict and power analysis (1994 - present) and the GalGael Trust, urban poverty and cultural renewal (1997 - present).

For press interviews on some of these issues click here. For information about my major books - Soil and Soul (2001), Love and Revolution (poetry, 2006) and Hell and High Water (2008) click the relevant tabs above. Soil and Soul is my best know book, described by George Monbiot as "world changing", by the Bishop of Liverpool as "life-changing", by Starhawk and "inspirational", and by Thom Yorke of Radiohead as "truly mental".

My work is undertaken as a self-employed academic, writer and activist, working in such venues as Strathclyde University, Queen's University Belfast, Edinburgh University (where I was postgraduate teaching director in human ecology for 7 years), the University of Ulster's Academy of Irish Heritages (a new involvement), and several other universities around the world. Other venues where I have spoken or teach include the Edinburgh International Festival, the Schumacher Lectures and Schumacher College, Greenbelt Festival, the Society for Ecological Regeneration, Groupe Credit Mutuel (a French bank where I have trained management in principles of mutuality), Friends of the Earth, WWF International and UK, Lafarge in Paris (where I intriguingly sit on their Sustainability Stakeholders' Panel), INSEAD European Management School near Paris, the Russian Academy of Sciences Economics Department, the British Council, the Irish School of Ecumenics, the University of Ireland Maynooth, the World Council of Churches, and, rather incongruously but regularly over more than a decade now, the Defence Academy's Joint Services Command & Staff College (Britain's foremost military training establishment).

See the itinerary on this page for links to, or details of, recent and forthcoming events..

Life & Work with Vérène 

My wife, Vérène Nicolas, and I live in Drumoyne in the Greater Govan area of Glasgow. This is the former shipbuilding area and has many social problems but great cultural richness. We chose it because, amongst other things, we already had strong connections there through our longstanding involvement with the Govan-based GalGael Trust (of which I am a founding director and the honorary treasurer). 

Vérène is also a Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology and she co-ordinates the MSc degree in human ecology in partnership with Strathclyde University. We work both closely together and also have our own separate areas of involvement. Her specialist concerns rest with conflict resolution, the empowerment needs of marginalised women, combating racism, activist mentoring and popular education, especially with the Training for Transformation approach from South Africa. She is also training to be a Biodanza dance teacher. Information is on her gradually-updating website - www.VereneNicolas.org.

On New Year's day in 2007 Vérène and I were shaken by the sudden death at 32 weeks of Ossian, the son we'd been expecting. The significance and the richness interwoven with this tragedy is still unfolding, and there is some sharing about this on Vérène's website and in an April 2008 article. Spirituality as that which gives life is central to the work of us both. That is why Ossian's passing had a powerful impact in shaping my book on climate change. We have to learn to face death if we are to understand life.

My Work as of 2008

Since 1996 I have been entirely self-employed. At present my main commitments are various pieces of contract teaching work, especially on the MSc degree with CHE and Strathclyde University where I am responsible for the masters level module in Spiritual Activism. Teaching and lecturing absorbs about a third of my time. The rest is spent writing, researching and campaigning.

From autumn 2006 to spring 2007 I worked on a book Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition, commissioned by Birlinn Press in Edinburgh. This starts with the science and politics, but leads into the psychological and spiritual underpinnings of the consumerism that is the cutting edge of global warming.

In spring and summer 2008 I am commissioned to write a Schumacher Briefing (see below). This will draw upon and document work undertaken by a dozen of my students that has been funded as a research programme into the spirituality of community regeneration by WWF International.

Charging for my Work, and Travel Issues

My work is funded entirely from writing, public speaking, teaching, consultancy, small grants and, sometimes but of great value - especially for the needs of the Centre for human Ecology - private benefactors. As transparent fiscal accountability is important in the campaigning work I do, I have made details available at this link.

My address and other contact details, keywords for internet search engines, and events itinerary are given below. Notification of errors within, and the provision of links from other relevant websites to this site, are warmly appreciated. Thank you for visiting.

Click here to go to published articles index

Click here for back  to Top of Page

Contact Information:

 

Alastair McIntosh

26 Luss Road

Drumoyne

Glasgow

G51 3YD

Scotland / Ecosse

 

 

Tel: 0141 445 8750 (+44 141 from overseas)

(Please try to avoid phoning outside weekday working hours, and remember timezones)

Email - see special instructions below

 

Directions to our home/office: If coming from central Glasgow, the easiest way if completing your journey by bus or taxi is to take the subway to Govan. The bus station is right beside the subway. We're on the No. 90 (First Direct) or 289 (Yellow) bus routes (costs about £1). Ask to get off at Craigton Road, just past the Post Office (Luss Rd is the next off to the right). Alternatively, take a taxi either from the stand diagonally opposite the subway station near the Pearce Institute or from the taxi office which has a buzzer on the door beside the Brechin Bar (or call 0141 440 0001). Taxis cost about £3. If walking, the route is easier to describe if you get out at Ibrox subway station which is one mile from our house. Exit the station and turn right onto Copland Road. Up to the lights and turn right. Pass the Rangers football stadium, go straight on over the first roundabout, on to the second roundabout and straight over, then following the instructions as shown in the next paragraph.

 

If coming by car 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.

 

 

Contacting me by Email:  mail@AlastairMcIntosh.com .... important instructions if emailing me .... first, make sure you spell it right - the capitals don't matter here, but I get loads of people who understandably spell my name wrong and then wonder why they never hear back. Second, check on my itinerary (above) to ensure I'm around as Verene usually insists that I take her rather than the computer on holiday. And third, I'm really sorry but as my email address is all over the web, I am forced to use the SpamArrest "Accept List" system to avoid the couple of hundred spams a day that otherwise come in. What this means is that if you email me from an address not already on my "accept" list, including an alternative email address that you maybe use, I will not normally see your email until you respond to a "challenge message", which will require you, only once, to type a particular word into the system. If you do this you will then be added to my accept list and I will be able to receive the message you just sent plus all future ones without further hassle. The challenge message is sent out almost immediately, so if you are a stranger emailing me, and it's urgent, please wait a few minutes then check your in-box to respond to the challenge. The exception to this requirement is in situations where I have authorised emails from an entire domain to be accepted, for example, with institutions with which I work closely. In such cases your email will get straight through without challenge. A major problem, however, is when your email system or your domain can mistakenly think that my challenge message is spam and junks it before you see it. Apart from mis-spellings of my name, this is the main cause of me not getting emails. Accordingly, if you are in doubt as to whether I might have got your message or not, please follow up by phone on the above number but, please, avoiding weekends and evenings. If I'm not in, leave a message saying when you sent your message, and if it's there I'll manually dig it out of the spam filter. Very sorry about all that, but it's the only way I can manage the mail I receive. I do, by the way, try to respond even if very briefly to all emails received, though sometimes this can take quite a while if I'm under pressure.

Website keywords: Centre for Human Ecology - Action for Transformation Programme with Verene Nicolas - working with spirituality, community empowerment project, land reform, social justice, ecological justice, cultural regeneration, liberation theology, ecofeminism, deep ecology, interfaith, multiculturalism, combating Islamophobia, Quakerism, Quakers, transpersonal psychology, parapsychology, individuation, C.G. Jung, development, democratic intellect, GulfWatch, activist training, Training for Transformation, the Scottish constitution, St Andrew, saltire, Declaration of Arbroath, Isle of Eigg Trust, GalGael Trust, Iona Community, Isle of Lewis, Leurbost, Liurbost, Luirbost, Liurboist, Líurboist, Lurebost (does our village have an identity crisis?), North Lochs, Isle of Harris, Papua New Guinea, Highlands, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, Lingerabay superquarry, Lingerbay, Lafarge, Redland, People & Parliament, Embracing Multicultural Scotland, Carbeth Hutters, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian Orthodox Church, Schumacher Society, appropriate technology, micro-hydro electric, indigenous values, indigenous technologies, music, penny whistle, poetics, geopoetics, bard, bardic school and, of course, in the full Celtic tradition of Scots mythopoesis ... the faeries, fairies and faerie out from under the fairy hill.

Name spelling variants: Alastair Iain McIntosh, Alastair I. McIntosh, A. I. McIntosh, A. McIntosh, Alistair MacIntosh, Alastair MacIntosh, Alistair MacIntosh, Alastair Mackintosh, Alistair Mackintosh, Alasdair Mackintosh, Alistair McIntosh, Alasdair McIntosh, Mc Intosh, AlastairMcIntosh, Alisdair, Alister, Alligator (well, that's what Microsoft's spell-check suggests!).  .