Degrowth in Practice: Developing an Ecological Habitus within Permaculture Entrepreneurship
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. The Emergence of an Ecological Habitus
“The range of possibilities inscribed in a habitus can be envisaged as a continuum. At one end, habitus can be replicated through encountering a field that reproduces its dispositions. At the other end of the continuum, habitus can be transformed through a process that either raises or lowers an individual’s expectations. Implicit in the concept is the possibility of a social trajectory that enables conditions of living that are very different from initial ones.”[32]
3. Building New Forms of Capital to Support the New Ecological Habitus
4. Research Design and Methodology
5. Data Collection
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- Participation in an annual permaculture convergence, the annual conference of permaculture practitioners in the region. Over fifty permaculturalists gathered for three days in a permaculture homestead to exchange information, discuss issues important to the permaculture movement, display products, hold several workshops on how to create and improve resilience, and exchange seeds. Among the important issues discussed were permaculture education and certification, hosting for students and banking seeds.
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- Extensive field notes were collected of the conversations held during the three-day convergence with permaculture entrepreneurs and permaculture students.
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- Video recordings were made of presentations during the convergence.
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- Three-hour visits to four permaculture homesteads.
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- Interviews with permaculture entrepreneurs outside their homesteads.
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- Participation in public seminars and workshops.
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- Extensive use of interaction over social media (WhatsApp and Instagram) with PEs over two years.
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- Archival materials (educational material, newspapers, YouTube videos, Instagram, and permaculture magazine articles and newsletters).
6. Data Analysis
7. Permaculture
Introduction to the Case Study: Permaculture in Brazil
8. Results
8.1. The Transition: Constructing an Ecological Habitus and Acquiring New Forms of Capital
“In the beginning of my journey, when starting closing doors and throwing away the keys, I was beaten on all sides by the guardians of the imposed world; it would have been impossible without poetry.”(HT)
“When I decided to stop trading life for the end of life and trying to live only on the emancipatory skills that I had cultivated with the help of many friends, the risks and difficulties were all in my cognitive maps and spreadsheets that I nurtured for a few years. Everything was foreseen. Even the day the money would run out, and I would go back to being scared and overwhelmed by it. But there is no cognitive map, spreadsheet or plan for domesticated uncertainty. In the process, I was fortunate to have many friends, among them one who is now dead, helping me to understand and deal with uncertainties. He told me that the way of life I intended to abandon was far more uncertain than the one I intended to embrace. The previous one was uncertain due to its nature (exchanging life for the end of life). The one I embraced is uncertain, not as to its nature, but only as to its possibility. Possibility that has been in effect for five years, but every day...one at a time. As in the prayer that awaits the realization of the possibility of each day: “...Give us this day our daily bread...” Is such a way of life uncertain? Yes...like life: uncertain about the possibilities for effectuation, not about nature.”HT
“People talk a lot about how bad things are, but no one seemed to do anything to change them, so when I started reading about agroecology, permaculture… I started asking myself where I belonged in the world, asked questions about the wider structures that dictate how I lived my life. I had a very well-paid job, a secure career, but I would lie awake in the dark weighing up whether to move away from my job and apartment. I started seeing things in a totally different way… a new car was no longer an achievement, a reason for enjoyment. It became painful to look at big expensive cars. They represent the loss of life, destruction of nature, diseases, suffering…I began to realise that things which were good for me were likely to have a deleterious effect on nature and on society I saw that some people were trying to find answers to the current problems. Since then, I have changed a lot in my life”(MA)
“The good life has been sold as travelling to paradisical places, a big house, luxury, but in order to get all those things you need to sell your life, you need to give away what is most precious, your time, your freedom. But most people do not realise this.”(SM)
“Some books have been quite influential in my life. Small is Beautiful has been a very important one, but it is also a question of timing, to read a book, to have a conversation, in the right moment of your life, when you may be open for a radical change, or when you need to make radical change to feel alive”(AT)
“People ask me—Oh, aren’t you going to look for a job?—and I said no.—So you’re not going to work anymore?—I said I will, but I’m not looking for a job. I’m going to do something of my own, because I don’t want to work for anyone anymore, because I think I’m capable of doing something of my own. And what is this something? It can be anything, anything that I want to do and that I dedicate my time, my attention, my commitment [to], I will do it, and it will happen, and I will make money out of it”(CL)
“Permaculture changes something inside. Because the question of permaculture is like a new perspective on life…the transformation is internal, and I found my way through permaculture and I saw it… it was different… I cannot go back to an urban life, to an 8 to 5 workday in an office, using public transport everyday… but we need to survive in an environment that is not the ideal, so we also need to adapt, [and] sometimes we need to compromise.”
“I was working hard in what I thought would be a permaculture community, building a communitarian house, following permaculture designs, but I was the only one with a permaculture background. The others were not aware of it. I had to convince them of the simplest things related to permaculture, but it did not work. Then I decided to sell my share in the community, and now I’m starting again, taking another course on permaculture design, and looking for a new plot of land where I can start my own individual homestead…”(CL)
“We have totally different backgrounds. I worked in marketing, and my wife was a nurse, [but] we have made a transition to permaculture. It took some years: we moved more and more into permaculture and at the same time moved gradually away from our previous careers. Now we dedicate our time only to permaculture: we produce and sell organic bread and organic cosmetic products, and my wife works in education. We are learning new things every day, it is a matter of trial and error, everything is new, we learn from other PEs, we exchange knowledge all the time. It has been hard sometimes…but I never thought of giving up. We’ve re-discussed our path from time to time, like reviewing a path we were going along, whether it was right, whether it needed to change and such. From time to time we do it, but then it’s a function of design, you always re-design, reorganize the house. Permaculture is continuous experimentation…”(MR)
“When I thought I would like to quit my job, I was already married, I already had my first son and I had already incurred debts. I had a twenty-year mortgage, I had a car that I would have to pay for during the next five years, so I thought, I can’t be irresponsible, I have to leave with a reserve before I risk living off the activities I started to develop, but let this reserve guarantee me at least a year, at the very least, without having to take money from anywhere. So, I had to take precautions about that. I was only able to call the boss and announce my resignation when my spreadsheet said: you already have money for one year. This is the main difficulty, which is so difficult that, even if you plan, you end up running out of money because the money runs out in a year and you still haven’t been able to develop the activities you imagined and you still have a rope wrapped around your neck. The difficulty is always the financial issue and the whole turnaround. However much there has been a change in values, philosophical and spiritual, this thing of dealing with money, of abolishing the credit-card paradigm: of using credit, using money that you don’t have sometimes to buy things you don’t need. Abolishing this and starting to live with the money you have on the day, if you don’t have you don’t buy things, this is the main difficulty. It’s a total reprogramming, because we were trained for something else.”
8.2. Permaculture Entrepreneurship and the National Welfare System
“When moving into permaculture, private education for the kids and health insurance could not be excluded from our list. We have small children, and to depend on the public health system or public schools is not a good thing”(ME)
“When people talk about treatment, it is embedded in their discourse, the idea of individual treatment, so they are more likely to treat the effect in the individual than the cause of the disease, which is more likely to be caused by the way we live in contemporary society.”(CD)
“We don’t have private health insurance, we’ve never had health insurance, we used the SUS. For some time now, Eve (his wife) needed physical therapy…the SUS was creating a lot of difficulties. We tried some alternative ways and it went a little slower, then we paid for some private consultations to be able to solve the problem, and it wasn’t cool, so we decided to pay for health insurance. We’re going to look for other alternatives as well, other medical alternatives for later. We see that mainstream medicine itself does not provide what we want.”(MR)
8.3. The New Habitus and Capitalist Relations
“I had planned leaving my job for years, but when I did it, I realized that I could do nothing, I had to learn how to survive in this totally new environment. I saved money to pay the bills for a little more than a year, [but] it was not enough. At least two years were needed to learn a new skill and be able to support my family. It’s fine now, but I faced a tough time.”(HT)
“Permaculture is less about technicalities and more about the changing world view, the transformation of values: when you start entering this new universe, you start paying attention to several things that you could not see before. You find new solutions to old problems, but you find problems where there were none. If you are about to build a house, you are not going to buy cement and bricks: you look around, you try to find materials that are already around you and start thinking about the material for each new project, and always try to minimize it. You do not contract people to build your house, you invite friends to help you. They bring knowledge and goodwill, and you can be surprised at how many people show up to help and to work hard for free.”(PO)
“It is necessary to learn new skills, to search and develop them, in a process of trial and error. In the beginning my drive was that I was quite dissatisfied with many things in my working life… I was in pain, not only psychological pain but physical pain as well. From an office in a multinational to agroforestry, that’s a radical political change towards life… I became, after all, many things. I had to rescue skills that I had been prevented from developing and that until recently my grandmother had them all. She even had more, which allowed her, for example, to live off of the house. So, there is a guiding movement …which is to try to rescue the house as a means of production, to free the house from the reduced condition of a mere centre of consumption.”(HT)
8.4. Building New Social Capital
“There are some who don’t even come here. There are some who think it’s cool, but think it’s cool from the outside: ‘it’s cool, it’s cool to live like this’, but they don’t come to spend any time here, and when they show up, they soon ask, “Where’s the television? Where is this, where is that…”(MR)
“People in my family thought it was a kind of brief trend in living. They did not believe I would change and really engage with permaculture, yet here I am, several years already. Over time I lost contact with some of them. It’s like living in different worlds.”(PT)
“For those who are environmentally conscious, respect others, believe in science, wish for the [COVID-19] vaccine and better days, we wish you cheer, health and strength to continue in this New Year! We hope to learn how to take a few more steps in search of a fully sustainable life! This as we understand should be the true new normal!! For the denialists, bolsominions and the like, we wish you luck!”
“Permaculture is a new journey for me, I believe for most of us; there is no such a thing as a definitive answer. We are experimenting, so it’s important to have peer support, other people like myself, who have experienced the same difficulties, failures and successes, people who get to know all the things that you’ve been up to and who understand the problems you’re facing…it is often very exhausting to swim against the tide. We need peers who remind us why you’re doing it and who put you back in touch with the drives and reasons that made you start the journey in the first place. It is really rewarding…I can see now that I’ve got a really strong support network. It’s turned out to be much more interesting and fulfilling than I thought it would be...”(PW)
9. Discussion and Conclusions
Funding
Informed Consent Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
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Interviewee’s Initial Codes | Gender | Status | Activities |
---|---|---|---|
HT | Male | Owner | Organic Food Production, Educator |
CL | Female | Freelancer | Art Producer |
PT | Female | Freelancer | Art Producer |
MR | Male | Co-Owner | Organic Food Production, Education |
OF | Male | Owner | Organic Food Production, Hospitality |
MP | Female | Freelancer | Consultancy |
MA | Female | Owner | Consultancy and Education |
PE | Male | Owner | Ecologist, Consultancy |
ME | Male | Owner | Organic Food Production |
PO | Female | Co-owner | Consultancy |
PW | Male | Owner | Organic Food Production, Education |
TR | Female | Freelancer | Biologist, Education |
CD | Female | Co-Owner | Organic Cosmetics Production, Education |
SM | Male | Owner | Organic Food Production |
AR | Female | Owner | Organic Cosmetics, Education |
AT | Male | Owner | Organic Food Production, Consultancy |
CAM | Female | Owner | Hospitality |
First Order | Second Order (Theoretical Concepts) | Examples |
---|---|---|
Employment security | “I had a very well-paid job, a secure career, but I would lie awake in the dark weighing up whether to move away from my job and apartment” MA | |
Uncertainty | Emergence of conflicting expectations (different fields of action) | “The good life has been sold as travelling to paradisical places, a big house, luxury, but in order to get all those things you need to sell your life, you need to give away what is most precious, your time, your freedom.” “People ask me—Oh, aren’t you going to look for a job?—and I said no.” CL |
Conflicting values | Sources of change (the transitions between fields of action) | “People talk a lot about how bad things are, but no one seemed to do anything to change them, so when I started reading about agroecology, permaculture… I started asking myself where I belonged in the world, asked questions about the wider structures that dictate how I lived my life” MA “In the beginning of my journey, when starting closing doors and throwing away the keys, I was beaten on all sides by the guardians of the imposed world; it would have been impossible without poetry.” HT |
Acquiring skills | Creating new capital (the development of social and cultural capital) | “Permaculture for me is a new journey, I believe for most of us; there is no such a thing as a definitive answer. We are experimenting, so it’s important to have peer support, other people like myself”,PW |
Transitioning lifestyles | “We have totally different backgrounds. I worked in marketing, and my wife was a nurse, [but] we have made a transition to permaculture. It took some years: we moved more and more into permaculture and at the same time moved gradually away from our previous careers.” MR | |
Immersion in the permaculture universe | Cognitive change—The emergence of an ecological habitus. | “Some books have been quite influential in my life. Small is Beautiful has been a very important one, but it is also a question of timing…” AT |
Ecological habitus | “Permaculture changes something inside. Because the question of permaculture is like a new perspective on life…the transformation is internal” CL |
PC Ethics | |
---|---|
Care for the Earth | To promote a life in harmony with Planet Earth by: (1) maintaining a living soil; (2) stewardship of the earth; (3) supporting biodiversity; (4) defending the sacredness of life. |
Care for People | Permaculture pursues the benefits of human beings—not merely for nature conservation. |
Fair Share | Set limits to consumption and reproduction, and redistribute surpluses. The pursuit of long-term social justice. Every living being (not only human beings) have the right to enjoy their integrity. Alternative economic maxims such as the economy for the common good, ecology and social issues belong together. |
Holmgren’s 12 Permaculture Principles | Short Description |
---|---|
| Before starting on the landscape design, observe what had happened previously on the site, and interact with people who had been working and living there previously. Get to know the site before starting to modify it. |
| Minimize the use of imported resources. Design the landscape to maximize the capture of water, sunlight, soil, and biomass in order to become more resilient. |
| Efforts must create value. Design systems that avoid wasting energy and resources, being able to obtain a yield in a sustainable way. |
| Accepting feedback is fundamental to assessing the effects of interventions and improving the design. Feedback is critical to learning the earth’s limits. |
| Use the power of the sun, the wind and other renewable sources to provide energy, grow food and regenerate the environment. |
| Reuse first and recycle all possible materials. The system must be designed to avoid wasting effort, thus increasing its efficiency. Re-purpose as much as possible. The generation of waste has negative impacts in several activities. |
| Observe patterns in nature, and leverage the observed patterns. Study the pattern of what sustainable living might be and then refine into the detail appropriate for each particular site. |
| Developing good relationships with other people and organizations in the area. Good relationships among people support a more peaceful, equitable society. |
| Make essential needs more local. Simplify technological alternatives. Become less dependent on complex solutions and imports. |
| Biodiversity supports healthy ecosystems. Try to diversify crops and energy sources. A diversity of people is also central to an equitable society. |
| The edges are often overlooked. However, the interface between things is where the most interesting events take place and are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system. Pay due attention to the diversity found in the margins. |
| To be aware of the changing landscape and conditions, as well as of the resources available in order to be resilient in responding to these evolving changes. |
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Rocha, R.S.S. Degrowth in Practice: Developing an Ecological Habitus within Permaculture Entrepreneurship. Sustainability 2022, 14, 8938. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14148938
Rocha RSS. Degrowth in Practice: Developing an Ecological Habitus within Permaculture Entrepreneurship. Sustainability. 2022; 14(14):8938. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14148938
Chicago/Turabian StyleRocha, Robson Silva Sø. 2022. "Degrowth in Practice: Developing an Ecological Habitus within Permaculture Entrepreneurship" Sustainability 14, no. 14: 8938. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14148938
APA StyleRocha, R. S. S. (2022). Degrowth in Practice: Developing an Ecological Habitus within Permaculture Entrepreneurship. Sustainability, 14(14), 8938. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14148938