Perma/Culture: ― Imagining Alternatives in an Age of Crisis

While there are numerous texts that chronicle contemporary environmental ills (from toxic contamination to food crises to climate catastrophe), there are relatively few that explore the concrete possibilities and practices that might avert collapse. Attempting to fill this gap, Perma/Culture: Imagining Alternatives in an Age of Crisis offers original contributions by an international group of scholars (in English, Environmental Studies, Sociology, and Communication), activists, and artists, all of which turn critical and creative attention to alternatives that exist alongside crisis.

The chapters offer a varied landscape of sites and practices, from postcolonial bioregionalism among coffee farmers in India to African American back-to-the-land movements; 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. The title, "Perma/Culture," alludes to and plays on "permaculture," an international movement that beganin the 1970s simply by offering a protocol for designing agricultural systems that mimic natural ecosystems but has evolved to reference something much more broadly ethicopolitical and cultural. Though permaculture has received some academic attention, it is almost unknown in Humanities departments, despite its focus on "culture." "Perma/Culture" is one of the first (if not the first) introductions of these concepts for many culture workers and will be of great interest to students and researchers in Environmental Humanities, Environmental Studies, Sociology and Communication Studies.

Molly Wallace is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Queen’s University Canada. She is also?cross-appointed in the School of Environmental Studies

David Carruthers is a PhD Candidate in the Department of English, Queen’s University Canada