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[permaculture] Permaculture Review of _The Art of Not Being Governed_

From: narthex dreams <narthexdreams@yahoo.com>
To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [permaculture] Permaculture Review of _The Art of Not Being Governed_
Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2010 03:15:40 -0700 (PDT)

Please read my blog post reviewing (from a permaculture angle) the book The
Art of Not Being Governed, an Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. My
thoughts on Permaculture's relationship to social systems and alternative
society.

http://fireflower.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/the-art-of-not-being-governed/

The Art of Not Being Governed
By Eric

“Of course, the overall resistance of swiddening to state
appropriation lies both in its hilly location and dispersal and in the
very botanical diversity it represents. It is not uncommon for shifting
cultivators to plant, tend, and encourage as many as sixty or more
cultivars. Imagine the bewildering task facing even the most energetic
tax collector attempting to catalogue, let alone assess and collect
taxes, in such a setting. It is for this reason that J.G. Scott noted
that hill peoples were ‘of no account whatever in the state’ and that
‘it would be a sheer waste of energy in the eyes of an official to
attempt to number the houses or even the villages of these people.’ Add
to this the fact that nearly all swidden cultivators also hunt, fish,
and forage in nearby forests. By pursuing such a broad portfolio of
subsistence strategies they spread their risks, they ensure themselves a
diverse and nutritious diet, and they present a nearly intractable
hieroglyphic to any state that might want to corral them.”

“After a demographic collapse following a famine, epidemic, or war —
if one were lucky enough to have survived — swiddening might become the
norm, right there on the padi plain. State resistant space was therefore
not a place on the map but a position vis-a-vis power; it could be
created by successful acts of defiance, by shifts in farming
techniques, or by unanticipated acts of god.” (emphasis mine).

I’ve been reading The Art of Not Being Governed, An Anarchist
History of Upland Southeast Asia by James C. Scott. It is full of
fascinating food for thought. One of the most interesting topics it
raises is the relationship between socio-political forms and
agricultural strategies of certain peoples.

Scott makes the point that in Southeast Asia — and fairly generally
worldwide — the food system that has historically been part and parcel
of the state and state-making is sedentary agriculture, usually of a
grain monocrop. This allows for legible, taxable, storable food
surpluses and requires a dense peasant population close to the state
core, which feeds the state’s need for manpower. It is the foundation
for standing militaries, large building projects, vast solidified
hierarchies, dense populations, etc.

The food-system strategies used by non-state, often egalitarian
peoples are foraging, hunting and gathering, nomadic pastoralism, and
shifting agriculture (a.k.a swidden).

Scott really starts to get somewhere interesting with his discussion
of “escape agriculture” and “escape crops.”

The traits of escape crops being:

– crops that cannot be stored long post-harvest without spoiling

– crops that have low value per unit weight and volume

– root crops: easy to conceal and storable in-ground.

– crops that grow on marginal land

– crops that require less care

– diversity of crops: provide more health & nutrition and mature
unevenly.

Escape agriculture usually provides a higher return per unit labor —
it is consummately “lazy gardening,” and the reason so many marginal
groups have been seen as lazy by state-makers.

By being the opposite of sedentary grain monoculture produced by
peasant cultivators, escape agriculture becomes “a form of wealth
inaccessible to the state” (and one might widen that inaccessibility to
encompass capital as well. The “appropriation-resistance” of this form
of agriculture often also means resistance to commodification. )

I have been pondering the question of what food system, then, would
be part and parcel of a social form that was both egalitarian &
state-resistant and sedentary. Not because mobility is undesirable, but
because it is probably not possible for all of us to practice mobile
agriculture considering the present world population and the degraded
state of our ecosystems.

It would be good to know more about non-state societies that were
sedentary, or at least not primarily mobile — it was suggested to me
that Native Americans in the Northeast (pre-Columbus), and Hawaiians
(“pre-warlord take-over-and-enslavement-of-the-peaceful first
inhabitants”) may have fit this bill.

In this sense the “permanence” referred to in the word Permaculture
has to signify permanence of place, in addition to sustainability or
permanence over time. One of permaculture’s original definitions was “a
perennial agriculture for sustainable human settlement.”
Indeed, Bill Mollison, the co-founder of the permaculture concept,
sources its genesis for him in the anger over the ecological devastation
that made a mobile, dream-like life now impossible. (“As a child I
lived in sort of a dream, and I didn’t really awaken until I was about
28 years old, I spent most of my early life working in the bush or the
sea, and it wasn’t until the 1950s that I noticed that large parts of
the system were disappearing. First fish stocks became extinct. Then I
noticed the seaweed around the shorelines had gone. Large patches of
forest began to die. I hadn’t realized until those things had gone that
I’d become very fond of them…Fury is what drives me; not love of people,
not love of the earth.”)

The escape agriculture described by Scott is mobile, indeed must be
mobile to escape the state’s grasp. But for most of us, there is nowhere
left to run. If we are to live in an egalitarian, free social form the
whole world must be turned upside down. Out of this we must design a
kind of permanent escape agriculture that incorporates state- and
capital- prevention into its core strategies. Permaculture could, and I
think, should, be seen as this set of strategies.

Permaculture is frustrating precisely because it does does not jive
with the routines and patterns of capitalism. Organic farmers attempting
to make a living by growing food for the market are rightly annoyed
with its prescriptions which mostly do not fit the geometry of commodity
food production. It is a food system more appropriately aligned
explicitly with a social form that is yet to be created. In its ideal
form it shares many traits with the “escape agriculture” outlined by
Scott: extreme crop diversity; patterning that is illegible to
state/capital; appropriation-resistant, non-commodifiable crops; crops
that require less care, that have a high productivity per unit labor. It
starts to resemble permanent foraging within an artificial, recombinant
ecology.

We should start thinking and talking more about what it means to have
a system of cultivation that is state-resistant, commodity-resistant,
that is suited for free and egalitarian social relations — because one
thing I have learned from Scott’s book is that the one is inextricably
tied up with the other.

Peasants of the world, self-abolish!

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Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2010 05:47:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: Rhonda <rk.baird@yahoo.com>
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Subject: Re: [permaculture] Cultural diversity in PDCs (was official cert)
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Kelly, and Cory, I agree with most of what you say.�
And I think there is plenty of room for everyone to learn permaculture. The
one thing that I would add is that just because a permaculture teacher looks
a certain way in a photo, doesn't mean he or she does not have an element of
cultural diversity to bring to the table--or that he only has a "white middle
class" perspective. I organized for ACORN in Chicago and Milwaukee black and
Latino neighborhoods over a decade ago. Consistently I was told by community
members to go home and organize my white, rural, (often poor) community--that
the urban communities would organize themselves.�
If you want to see the work of a former student/friend doing just that--see
Black Oaks Center for Sustainable Renewable Living.
(http://www.blackoakscenter.org) �
warmly,

Rhonda Baird
Sheltering Hills Design
Permaculture Designer & Teacher
Editorial Services
Fiber Artsshelteringhills.net

This message may contain confidential and/or proprietary information, and is
intended for the person/entity to whom it was originally addressed.�Any use
by others is strictly prohibited.

--- On Fri, 11/5/10, Cory Brennan <cory8570@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Cory Brennan <cory8570@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Cultural diversity in PDCs (was official cert)
To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Friday, November 5, 2010, 10:40 PM

You have of course Geoff Lawton, Darren Doherty and many others who go to
culturally diverse areas to teach. I create cultural diversity in PDCs, by
holding them in culturally diverse areas (Little Haiti in Miami, Pine Ridge,
etc), by offering scholarships to people to ensure there is a socio-economic
mix, and by ensuring the content of the course is culturally sensitive and
relevant. And by visiting minority communities and introducing permaculture
in a culturally relevant manner, understanding what problems are considered
important by observing and asking. And doing projects in minority areas,
which is very powerful because then they see for themselves how it works and
get their own creative ideas about it and expand on it. I know a number of
permaculturists focused on cultural diversity, they are definitely out there!
�There can always be more though! �C�

--- On Fri, 11/5/10, Kelly Simmons <kelly@bouldersustainability.org> wrote:

From: Kelly Simmons <kelly@bouldersustainability.org>
Subject: [permaculture] Cultural diversity in PDCs (was official cert)
To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Friday, November 5, 2010, 7:06 PM

There is one little nugget� for me in what Killian was saying, that I would
like to chew on with interested folks on this list and that is the
over-riding "white middleclass" nature of many state-side PDCs.

I think I hear clearly what Toby was saying and I largely agree with a lot of
it, but I confess that I am bothered by the lack of real diversity in our
courses and students and leaders and teachers.� Not entirely, of course, but
largely.

Is there a better way to energize more Latino or African American community
members to come learn permaculture?, Is there a way to "make relevant"
permaculture ideas to these communities?� [I admit up front that I haven't
been to every community or every PDC, so please don't flame me, if your
situation is a shining example, but I don't see much diversity reflected in
teachers, photos, or students and people I meet who are engaged in
permaculture].

Anyway, I see permaculture as a bottom up, empowerment tool and it bothers me
that, except for some development work overseas, at least in the States, it
is the more culturally privileged among us who are attending and teaching our
PDCs.

These are observations and ruminations, and I am interested in what people
think.� I agree that the hippie, flakey view hurts permaculture in some ways.
Perhaps its a big turnoff to communities of color....

I am excited to be attending a Bioneers conference, where there are some
presentations on indigenous ecological knowledge and I know there is great
work going on up at Pine Ridge.

But perhaps we need to start making cultural diversity a priority - because
missing a diversity of views impoverishes our thinking and our solutions.�
For example Cory's reflection on listening and speaking in circle up at Pine
Ridge.� Perhaps there is some "white middle class privilege" embedded or
woven throughout our teaching or how PDCs operate that we are blind to.� And
this blindness makes participation more wearing and difficult for people of
color.� I wonder.

Or perhaps I am somehow blind to all the cultural diversity in US PDCs......

Thoughts?

Kelly

On Oct 24, 2010, at 3:53 PM, paul wheaton wrote:

> I think, Killian, you should take on the task of getting the
> permaculture word to those folks that you see as unable to afford the
> work that others are providing.
>
> If everybody spreads the word according to the ways that they are
> comfortable with, it should reach a lot of people.
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On 11/6/2010 6:15 AM, narthex dreams wrote:
> Please read my blog post reviewing (from a permaculture angle) the book The
> Art of Not Being Governed, an Anarchist
> History of Upland Southeast Asia. My thoughts on Permaculture's
> relationship to social systems and alternative
> society.
>
> http://fireflower.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/the-art-of-not-being-governed/
>
> The Art of Not Being Governed By Eric

WONDERFUL! Thanks for posting this.

> Scott makes the point that in Southeast Asia — and fairly generally
> worldwide — the food system that has historically
> been part and parcel of the state and state-making is sedentary
> agriculture, usually of a grain monocrop. This allows
> for legible, taxable, storable food surpluses and requires a dense peasant
> population close to the state core, which
> feeds the state’s need for manpower. It is the foundation for standing
> militaries, large building projects, vast
> solidified hierarchies, dense populations, etc.

Exactamente!

> The food-system strategies used by non-state, often egalitarian peoples are
> foraging, hunting and gathering, nomadic
> pastoralism, and shifting agriculture (a.k.a swidden).

Much better!

See my earlier posts on terraced rice farming in the Phillipines,
good tie-in to your post/book review.

More discussion on this!

[permaculture] Permaculture Review of _The Art of Not Being Governed_, narthex dreams, 11/06/2010