Abstract
This article examines a trend over the past two decades towards more explicit politicization in some areas of the ecovillage movement, particularly where covillages engage with related grassroots movements for environmental and social change. It does so using an expanded political ecology framework, also drawing upon 'Multi-level Perspective on Sustainability Transitions' and Gregory Bateson's Ecology of Mind. It argues that apparently apolitical focii on lifestyle change and personal development have in some cases given way to overt recognition of the need for global political change. It attributes this to the global political economy of sustainability becoming more evident and critiques of dominant social, political and economic regimes more compelling and widely accepted.
Highlights
The topic of this article is what we are terming 'permanent cultures.' These we define to mean placebased initiatives that seek to create the conditions, cultural and otherwise, for their own persistence into the indefinite future
This article focuses on ecovillages as key sites for the application, and further development, of permaculture, often in dialogue with Transition and other related movements
Some are indirect, arising through association with the Transition movement, urban permaculture, and direct action and protest movements. Such changes in the political positioning of ecovillages reflect a deeper trend from a predominant emphasis on personal-as-political to increasingly complementing this with efforts towards wider structural change: from rather inward-looking social and cultural experiments to spaces that actively seek to mobilize and support radical political action towards outcomes consistent with the permaculture ethics of earth care, people care and fair shares
Summary
The topic of this article is what we are terming 'permanent cultures.' These we define to mean placebased initiatives that seek to create the conditions, cultural and otherwise, for their own persistence into the indefinite future. Some are indirect, arising through association with the Transition movement, urban permaculture, and direct action and protest movements Such changes in the political positioning of ecovillages reflect a deeper trend from a predominant emphasis on personal-as-political to increasingly complementing this with efforts towards wider structural change: from rather inward-looking social and cultural experiments to spaces that actively seek to mobilize and support radical political action towards outcomes consistent with the permaculture ethics of earth care, people care and fair shares. This trend towards politicization is neither uniform nor universal, or even necessarily general.
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