Duane Elgin is an American author, speaker, educator, consultant, and media activist.

For more than three decades, he has researched and written about the personal and collective dimensions of the human journey, including the topic of "voluntary simplicity", also known as Simple living

Simple living

Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want...

. Richard Gregg coined the term "voluntary simplicity" as one path to simple living, in The Value of Voluntary Simplicity (1936); E. F. Schumacher

E. F. Schumacher

Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher was an internationally influential economic thinker, statistician and economist in Britain, serving as Chief Economic Advisor to the UK National Coal Board for two decades. His ideas became popularized in much of the English-speaking world during the 1970s...

 argued against the notion that "bigger is better" in Small Is Beautiful

Small Is Beautiful

Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered is a collection of essays by British economist E. F. Schumacher. The phrase "Small Is Beautiful" came from a phrase by his teacher Leopold Kohr...

(1973); and Elgin carried on the promotion of the simple life in Voluntary simplicity (1981).

Elgin has worked as a senior social scientist with the think-tank, SRI International

SRI International

SRI International , founded as Stanford Research Institute, is one of the world's largest contract research institutes. Based in Menlo Park, California, the trustees of Stanford University established it in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic development in the region. It was later...

, where he coauthored numerous studies on the long-range future for government agencies such as the National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

 and the President's Science Advisor. He has also worked as a senior staff member of a joint Presidential-Congressional Commission on the American Future. Over the past twenty years, he has co-founded three non-profit organizations concerned with media accountability

Media accountability

Media accountability is a phrase that refers to the general belief that mass media has to be accountable in the public’s interest - that is, they are expected to behave in certain ways that contribute to the public good....

.

Elgin has an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

, an MA in economic history from the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

, and an honorary Doctor of Philosophy for work in ecological and spiritual transformation from the California Institute of Integral Studies

California Institute of Integral Studies

California Institute of Integral Studies is a private institution of higher education founded in 1968 and based in San Francisco, California. It currently operates in three locations just south of the Civic Center district...

, San Francisco, CA.

Elgin is a visiting faculty member in the Conscious Evolution Master's Degree Program at The Graduate Institute

Books

• Elgin, Duane. Voluntary simplicity : toward a way of life that is outwardly simple, inwardly rich [1981]. Rev. ed. New York : Quill, c1993. 240 p. ; 21 cm. ISBN 0-688-12119-5 (pbk.)
• Stanford Research Institute. City size and the quality of life : an analysis of the policy implications of continued population concentration / prepared by the Stanford Research Institute ; Subcommittee on Rural Development of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, United States Senate. Washington : U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1975. Prepared for the National Science Foundation by Duane Elgin and others.
• Elgin, Duane. Promise ahead : a vision of hope and action for humanity’s future 1st ed. New York : W. Morrow, 2000. xv, 224 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. ISBN 0-688-17191-5
• Elgin, Duane. Awakening earth : exploring the evolution of human culture and consciousness 1st ed. New York : Morrow, c1993. 382 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. ISBN 0-688-11621-3

See also

• Simple living
  Simple living
  Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want...
  
  
• Richard Gregg
• E. F. Schumacher
  E. F. Schumacher
  Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher was an internationally influential economic thinker, statistician and economist in Britain, serving as Chief Economic Advisor to the UK National Coal Board for two decades. His ideas became popularized in much of the English-speaking world during the 1970s...
  
  

External links

• Awakening Earth. Duane Elgin's official site.
• Duane Elgin MP3 audio - from Shift in Action, sponsored by Institute of Noetic Sciences