Joanna Macy | |
|---|---|
 Macy in 2006 | |
| Born | Mary Joanne Rogers (1929-05-02)May 2, 1929 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Died | July 19, 2025(2025-07-19) (aged 96) Berkeley, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Author, Buddhist scholar, environmental activist |
| Spouse | [1] |
| Relatives |
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Mary Joanne Rogers Macy (May 2, 1929 – July 19, 2025), known asJoanna Macy, was an American environmental activist, author and scholar ofBuddhism,general systems theory anddeep ecology. She was married to Francis Underhill Macy, the activist and Russian scholar who founded theCenter for Safe Energy.[2]
Macy was born Mary Joanne Rogers in Los Angeles on May 2, 1929, and was brought up in New York City.[1] Macy credits poet and activistMuriel Rukeyser with starting her on the path to becoming a poet and writer herself. When she was a high school student in New York City, she cut school and took the train fromLong Island toManhattan in order to attend apoetry reading by Rukeyser; the hall was already full to capacity when Joanna arrived, but Rukeyser invited her to come onto the stage and sit at her feet during the reading. In 1953, she married Francis Macy, who died in 2009; the couple had three children.[1]
Macy graduated fromWellesley College in 1950 and received her Ph.D. in religious studies in 1978 fromSyracuse University,Syracuse. Her doctoral work, under the mentorship ofErvin László, focused on convergences between causation insystems thinking and theBuddhist central doctrine of mutual causality or interdependent co-arising.
Macy was an international spokesperson foranti-nuclear causes, peace, justice, andenvironmentalism,[3] most renowned for her bookComing Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World and theGreat 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 created a theoretical framework for personal and social change, and a workshop methodology for its application. Her work addressed psychological and spiritual issues, Buddhist thought, and contemporary science.
In the early 1980s Macy and her family settled in theSan Francisco Bay Area. She died inBerkeley, California, on July 19, 2025, at the age of 96, from complications following a fall.[1][4][5]
Macy first encountered Buddhism in 1965 while working withTibetan refugees in northern India, particularly the Ven. 8thKhamtrul Rinpoche, SisterKarma Khechog Palmo, Ven. Dugu Choegyal Rinpoche, and Tokden Antrim of the Tashi Jong community. Her spiritual practice was drawn from theTheravada tradition ofNyanaponika Thera and Rev. Sivali ofSri Lanka,Munindraji ofWest Bengal, and Dhiravamsa ofThailand.[6]
Key formative influences to her teaching in the field of the connection to living systems theory wereErvin Laszlo who introduced her to systems theory through his writings (especiallyIntroduction to Systems Philosophy andSystems, Structure and Experience), and who worked with her as advisor on her doctoral dissertation (later adapted asMutual Causality) and on a project for theClub of Rome.Gregory Bateson, through hisSteps to an Ecology of Mind and in a summer seminar, also shaped her thought, as did the writings ofLudwig von Bertalanffy,Arthur Koestler, andHazel Henderson. She was influenced in the studies of biological systems byTyrone Cashman, and economic systems byKenneth Boulding.Donella Meadows provided insights on the planetary consequences of runaway systems, andElisabet Sahtouris provided further information about self-organizing systems in evolutionary perspective.[6]
Macy traveled giving lectures, workshops, and trainings internationally. Her work, originally called "Despair and Empowerment Work", was acknowledged as being part of thedeep ecology tradition after she encountered the work ofArne Naess andJohn Seed,[7] but as a result of disillusion with academic disputes in the field, she called it "the Work that Reconnects". She was affiliated with three graduate schools in theSan Francisco Bay Area: as a research scholar at theStarr King School for the Ministry,[8] as an adjunct professor at theUniversity of Creation Spirituality,[9][failed verification] and as a member of the Council of Sages at theCalifornia Institute of Integral Studies.[10]
