The German Permaculture Community from a Community of Practice Perspective

Abstract

The permaculture community is a grassroots initiative that challenges current mainstream practices. Such grassroots initiatives are seen as promising incubators of learning processes that can guide transformations. However, there is ambivalence between the wish of grassroots initiatives to reach people and reoccurring claims of insularity. We use the concept of Communities of Practice to answer important questions concerning community dynamics and learning processes: How are individual perspectives turned into a joint endeavour? How do the community and its respective relation to its members affect the interactions with external actors? Drawing on qualitative data from twelve semi-structured interviews with teachers from Germany’s biggest education body on permaculture, the Permakultur Akademie, our goal was to gain insights into the community’s self-organisation and learning interfaces. Findings suggest that the German permaculture community displays key characteristics of a Community of Practice with developed shared values as well as education and organisational structures, while being embedded in an international community. At the time of the research, internal challenges were the absence of a common strategy that effectively linked individuals to coordinated activities. The results led to implications for a more diverse use of the concept to inform actions and several questions for future research.

Intragenerational deliberation and intergenerational sustainability dilemma

“…With these realities, we believe that the difference in how people interact with others affects social preferences and behaviors (Charness and Rabin, 2002, Engelmann and Strobel, 2004, Shahrier et al, 2017. Therefore, practices of shared values through education and social interactions shall be one possible approach to enhance intergeneration sustainability through creating a close-knit society such as permaculture movement in some parts of the world (Akhtar et al, 2016, Maye, 2016, Ulbrich and Pahl-Wostl, 2019.…”

Exploring innovation for sustainable agriculture: A systematic case study of permaculture in Nepal

“…Permaculture is a term formed from the words “permanent” and “agriculture”, coined by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970s and 1980s [ [6] , [7] , [8] , [9] , [10] ], is acquiring ubiquity as a natural resource management strategy [ 6 , 11 ]. Permaculture is the product of an innovative amalgamation of frameworks thinking and planning based on a knowledge of natural ecosystem processes, conventional small-scale mixed agriculture, low-influence innovation, and redistributive civil rights into a versatile, interlinked dynamic design system for designing and implementing a self-sustaining human network [ 6 , 10 , 12 ]. Its ideas and strategies are fundamentally casual, different, and unregulated, and they are disseminated through networks of practitioners [ 9 ].…”

(Re-)Defining Permaculture: Perspectives of Permaculture Teachers and Practitioners across the United States

“…Permaculture design is a framework converging on notions of (1) using nature as a guide, (2) thinking holistically, (3) being a solutions-based cooperative design system, and (4) creating abundance and harmony [8]. Practitioners and scholars have described it as a catalyst toward promoting transformative pedagogy for education [9], fostering learning communities of grassroots practitioners [10], and offering a holistic integration of the natural world and its relationships into modern ways of life and thought [11,12]. Especially in contexts beyond the United States (US), permaculture thought and practice contribute to the development of alternative agri-food networks [6,[13][14][15], enabled by its emphasis on community knowledge, inclusion of Indigenous practices, and avoidance of one-size-fits-all approaches.…”

“…In this paper, we build upon prior work that unpacks the ways in which permaculture is defined [7,10] with an eye to exploring diversity and tension in participant conceptualizations of permaculture. To this end, we interviewed prominent permaculture teachers and practitioners who are actively engaged with permaculture across the US regarding how they (1) define permaculture as a concept and (2) perceive the term's current and future utility.…”