Peter Berg’s Writings

A Metamorphosis for Cities: From Gray to Green

By Peter Berg | June 25, 1995

A Metamorphosis for Cities is an article that outlined the blueprint for transforming urban areas to bring them into “balanced reciprocity with natural systems.” Subsequent work by Planet Drum Foundation in cooperation with the Eco City Movement in Ecuador stems from the vision this article described. [Excerpted with permission from Putting Power in its Place, edited by Judith and Christopher Plant (New Society Publishers, 1992)] […]

BIOREGIONS

By Peter Berg | June 30, 1983

Bioregions is the precursor to Berg’s 2002 revision, Bioregionalism: An Introduction. This article, which originally appeared in the British periodical Resurgence #98 (May/June 1983), provides context for the evolution of bioregional thinking. It serves as both an introduction and a reference for bioregional thinking, with clear and concise definitions of bioregion and reinhabitation, as well as a simple analysis of why bioregions are important. * * […]

Bioregion and Human Location

By Peter Berg | April 11, 1983

Bioregion and Human Location was a talk that Peter gave at the University of North Carolina in 1982 (published originally in All Area #2, Spring 1983). It lays out the argument that “there has to be a new politics based on reincorporating the social and natural sciences together in a way that is appropriate for developing a planetarian civilization.” It’s been a ferocious run the […]

Reinhabitory Theater

By Peter Berg | April 1, 1978

This is an improvisation guide for performing stories that come specifically from native northern California Pomo. Maidu, Karok and Pit River tribal traditions. The “coyote stories” feature human/animal characters and were told around fires during the rainy winter months for both entertainment and philosophical reference to human and planet events. * * * The stories embody multi-species consciousness; human beings as such don’t have to […]

Amble Toward Continent Congress

By Peter Berg | July 4, 1976

Planet Drum Continent Congress Bundle (1976) Reprinted 1992 Amble Toward Continent Congress is a manifesto to overcome the politics of extinction, the Earth-colonist globalism which exhausts whole continents, their people, and moves now to devastate deep floors of our planetary oceans. This piece was distributed with one of the early Planet Drum Bundles, and was written to counter the patriotic fervor of the US Bicentennial in 1976. […]

Bioregion

By Peter Berg | October 21, 1973

A bioregion is defined in terms of the unique overall pattern of natural characteristics that are found in a specific place. The main features are generally found throughout a continuous geographic terrain and include a particular climate, local aspects of seasons, landforms, watersheds, soils, and native plants and animals. People are also counted as an integral aspect of a place’s life, as can be seen […]

HOMESKIN

By Peter Berg | March 24, 1970

…on the summer solstice in 1968, the Diggers began radiating out from San Francisco to other regions and cities to spread their anti-materialistic and increasingly earth-centered ideas. Homeskin was a statement of vision and intent for this exodus. It expands what had been the Diggers’ mainly urban experiment with mutualistic anarchism to now embrace the vast natural interdependence found in Earth’s biosphere. It was specifically […]

TRIP WITHOUT A TICKET

By Peter Berg | December 20, 1966

GUERILLA THEATER Our authorized sanities are so many Nembutals. “Normal” citizens with store-dummy smiles stand apart from each other like cotton-packed capsules in a bottle. Perpetual mental out-patients. Maddeningly sterile jobs for strait-jackets, love scrubbed into an insipid “functional personal relationship” and Art as a fantasy pacifier. Everyone is kept inside while the outside is shown through windows: advertising and manicured news. And we all […]