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In order to move global society towards a sustainable "ecotopia," solutions must be engaged in specific places and communities, and the authors here argue for re-orienting environmental anthropology from a problem-oriented towards a solutions-focused endeavor. Using case studies from around the world, the contributors – scholar-activists and activist-practitioners – examine the interrelationships between three prominent environmental social movements: bioregionalism, a worldview and political ecology that grounds environmental action and experience; permaculture, a design science for putting the bioregional vision into action; and ecovillages, the ever-dynamic settings for creating sustainable local cultures.
List of Tables, Figures, and Maps
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Prologue
E.N. Anderson
Introduction: Environmental Anthropology Engaging Ecotopia: An Introduction
Joshua Lockyer and James R. Veteto
PART I: BIOREGIONALISM
Chapter 1. Growing a Life-Place Politics
Peter Berg
Chapter 2. On Bioregionalism and Watershed Consciousness
James J. Parsons
Chapter 3. Growing an Oak: An Ethnography of Ozark Bioregionalism
Brian C. Campbell
Chapter 4. The Adirondack Semester: An Integrated Approach to Cultivating Bioregional Knowledge & Consciousness
Steve Alexander and Baylor Johnson
Further Readings on Bioregionalism
PART II: PERMACULTURE
Chapter 5. Environmental Anthropology Engaging Permaculture: Moving Theory and Practice Toward Sustainability
James R. Veteto and Joshua Lockyer
Chapter 6. Weeds or Wisdom? Permaculture in the Eye of the Beholder on Latvian Eco-Health Farms
Guntra Aistara
Chapter 7. Permaculture in the City: Ecological Habitus and the Distributed Ecovillage
Randolph Haluza-Delay and Ron Berezan
Chapter 8. Culture, Permaculture and Experimental Anthropology in the Houston Foodshed
Bob Randall
Chapter 9. Putting Permaculture Ethics to Work: Commons Thinking, Progress and Hope
Katy Fox
Chapter 10. Permaculture in Practice: Low Impact Development in Britain
Jenny Pickerill
Chapter 11. In Search of Global Sustainability and Justice: How Permaculture Can Contribute to Development Policy
Aili Pyhälä
Further Readings on Permaculture
PART III: ECOVILLAGES
Chapter 12. From Islands to Networks: The History and Future of the Ecovillage Movement
Jonathan Dawson
Chapter 13. Creating Alternative Political Ecologies through the Construction of Ecovillages and Ecovillagers in Colombia
Brian Burke and Beatriz Arjona
Chapter 14. Globalizing the Ecovillage Ideal: Networks of Neighborliness, Seeds of Hope
Todd LeVasseur
Chapter 15. Academia’s Hidden Curriculum and Ecovillages as Campuses for Sustainability Education
Daniel Greenberg
Chapter 16. Ecovillages and Capitalism: Building Sustainable Communities within an Unsustainable Context
Ted Baker
Further Readings on Ecovillages
Joshua Lockyer is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Arkansas Tech University where he is co-creating a bioregionally-based undergraduate anthropology program. He was formerly a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Washington University in St. Louis and a Visiting Research Fellow with the Research Group on Lifestyles, Values, and Environment in the Centre for Environmental Strategy at the University of Surrey.
James R. Veteto is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Texas. He is the director of the Laboratory of Environmental Anthropology and the Southern Seed Legacy project and is currently president of the Culture and Agriculture section of the American Anthropological Association and Research Associate at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas. He is editor of Place-Based Foods of Appalachia: From Rarity to Community Restoration and Market Recovery (2011) and The Slaw and the Slow Cooked: Culture and Barbecue in the Mid-South (2012).
"The book is well structured, engaging and highly topical; it brings together a range of academics and practitioners – itself a potentially interesting and seldom examined dialogue – around three main areas which form the book's structure: Bioregionalism; Permaculture; Ecovillages."
- Malcolm Miles, University of Plymouth
"This is an excellent and timely collection of essays by ecological and environmental anthropologists and other scholars and activists who, together, are redefining the field of human ecology as a contribution to the cultural revolution the world needs, if we are to achieve the transition to sustainability."
- Laura M. Rival, University of Oxford
" [...] a fascinating and significant anthology. The integration in this book of theory and practice, scholar and activist, reprinted classics and new essays, is very creative and admirable. It deals with three contemporary subjects that have been rather neglected by researchers [...] It is current and futuristic in many respects [and] deserves a wide readership."
- Leslie E. Sponsel, University of Hawai'i
