> [!summary] Progressive Summary # Structured Notes ## Definitions ## Chapter Summaries ### Chapter 1 - What is Permaculture? Three Perspectives When Bill Mollison and Dave Holmgren first introduced permaculture in their book Permaculture One, published in 1978, they focused on a switch from annual to perenial farming practices as a more sustainable approach, inspired by pre-colonial cultures. Perenials don't require soil disturbance, thus protecting the water and microbes in the soil. The term "permaculture" is a combination of "permanent" and "agriculture". Later, after encountering the work of Fukukoa, *One Straw Revolution* (1978), they realized that annuals could be incorporated into a permaculture system. They also added an ethics of care and design principles as important features of permaculture. In 1988, Mollison wrote *Permaculture: A Designers' Manual*, and his students developed the Permaculture Design Certificate. > It is something of a puzzle that permaculture as a movement has been able to maintain two concurrent fictions. One is that permaculture is a design system for every element of a sustainable society. In other words, its scope is as wide as the environmental movement itself. The other fiction is that permaculture is not primarily focused on agriculture. ### Chapter 2 - Permaculture as a Social Movement Permaculture is: - A social movement - A discourse - A cult > Permaculture can be conceived in a variety of ways. As a social movement, permaculture is a body of activists who are networked together, joining in both digital and face to face social space, and sharing some key ideas. Alberto Melucci’s foundational text in the study of the new social movements characterises their first defining feature as ‘a form of collective action which involves solidarity, that is, actors’ mutual recognition that they are part of a single social unit’. > > A second way to conceive permaculture is as a discourse – a way of thinking and acting connected to a set of writings and media. Those who identify as ‘permaculturists’ are loosely linked by practices which draw on the ideas in the canonical texts discussed in Chapter 1. > > Finally, permaculture may be seen as a social movement that shares some features with cults, such as following the charismatic leadership of permaculture’s founders, and formal initiation through the Permaculture Design Certificate. # Quotes # References