Concret illusion, possible utopia: spatial counterculture and permaculture (a glance from the Southern Cone)

Author(s)

Luis Fernando de Matheus e Silva

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2013-07-02

Examining board members

Marta Inez Medeiros Marques; João Cleps Junior; Carlos Walter Porto Goncalves; Valeria de Marcos; Margarida Maria Moura

• Advisor: Marta Inez Medeiros Marques

Abstract

The present investigation aims to critically understand and analyze the speech of sustainability and the constitutive practices of the permaculture, debating the potential that they offer to the construction of a dialectical utopianism orientated by a new environmental praxis; as well as the contradictions produced from its insertion in a capitalist society geared to profit and to the general tendency in turning all the things into goods. Originally thought in the decade of 1970 by the Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, the permaculture concerns the creation of sustainable and resilient human settlements, based on specific principles and techniques. From the decade of 1990 in parallel with the consolidation of neoliberalism a new boom in the outbreak and dissemination of alternative and sustainable communal experiences has been observed, many of them based on permaculture, which turns out to be symptomatic of the current state of the historical geography of the capitalism. This concept points, on the one hand, to the structural and multifaceted crisis experienced nowadays; and, on the other hand, to the urgency of searching for different forms of socialize and interact with nature. It has been argued that these experiences constitute the most recent stage of a phenomenon whose origins can be traced to the second half of the nineteenth century. Here they are referred to as spatial countercultures, or, in other words, micro-experiments of socio-spatial organization and production generally of communal character. Such micro-experiments are usually born as attempts to subvert the dominant order, where the private and everyday life spheres acquire primacy and become a privileged locus where they are experienced and developed techniques, practices and solidarities; different from those that conform the homogenizing, individualistic and alienating logic represented by the capitalism production of space. Notably, these alternatives are essentially modern and urban expressions that usually arise with more strength and visibility at moments where the system faces crisis in its reproduction. Based on a combination between literature and documentary research, interviews with their developers, and fieldworks to permaculture experiences located in Argentina, Brazil and Chile; this investigation aims to critically address the permaculture system of production, discussing the possibilities and limitations that this type of spatial contemporary countercultures offer for the construction of a more egalitarian and ecological society. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 09/17061-7 - Permaculture: feasible utopia or concrete illusion? (A critical analysis of some actual experiences in permaculture in the Latin America's "South Cone")
• Grantee: Luis Fernando de Matheus e Silva
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate