ABSTRACT

In the face of what seems like a concerted effort to destroy the only planet that can sustain us, critique is an important tool. It is in this vein that most scholars have approached environmental crisis. While there are numerous texts that chronicle contemporary issues in environmental ills, there are relatively few that explore the possibilities and practices which work to avoid collapse and build alternatives.

The keyword of this book’s full title, 'Perma/Culture,' alludes to and plays on 'permaculture', an international movement that can provide a framework for navigating the multiple 'other worlds' within a broader environmental ethic. This edited collection brings together essays from an international team of scholars, activists and artists in order to provide a critical introduction to the ethico-political and cultural elements around the concept of ‘Perma/Culture’. These multidisciplinary essays include a varied landscape of sites and practices, from readings from ecotopian literature to an analysis of the intersection of agriculture and art; from an account of the rewards and difficulties of building community in Transition Towns to a description of the ad hoc infrastructure of a fracking protest camp.

Offering a number of constructive models in response to current global environmental challenges, this book makes a significant contribution to current eco-literature and will be of great interest to students and researchers in Environmental Humanities, Environmental Studies, Sociology and Communication Studies.

chapter |12 pages

Introduction

part I|69 pages

Pattern languages

chapter 2|14 pages

Bringing forth an ecotopian future

The production of imagined futures through contemporary cultural practices

chapter 4|13 pages

Murray River Country

Challenging water management practices to (re)invent place

part II|50 pages

Transitions in practice

chapter 6|16 pages

The art of permatravel

chapter 7|9 pages

Momentum in the age of sustainability

Building up and burning out in a transition town

chapter 9|13 pages

The problem with money

Possibilities for alternative, sustainable, non-monetary economies

part III|76 pages

Revolution disguised as gardening

chapter 10|19 pages

A war against weeds

Combating climate change with polycultural pacifism

chapter 11|15 pages

Regeneration

Loss and reclamation in African-American agrarianism

chapter 13|14 pages

Sharing food, sharing knowledge

Food and agriculture in contemporary art practices