Everyday political geographies of community‐building: Exploring the practices of three Zimbabwean permaculture communities

Abstract

Permaculture is an approach to sustainable design thinking, agriculture, and community, as well as a globalized movement. This article explores how different practices and processes of permaculture have generated different political registers of “community,” at three permaculture sites in Zimbabwe. Speaking to recent online media that asks “Is permaculture political?,” as well as to the academic literature critiquing localized environmental initiatives as “postpolitical,” the article adopts a feminist political ecology (FPE) framework to discuss two modalities in which the geographies of community‐building can be registered as political. First, I look at how subjectivities and intracommunity power relations have been reshaped through participatory practices of governance, taking on entrenched gender‐ and age‐based power relations in particular. Second, comes the idea of community as a more‐than‐human ontology. An FPE analysis offers an original perspective on how permaculture has become actualized in the Zimbabwean context. The research approach built on Gibson‐Graham's calls to engage performatively with examples of diverse economies and aimed to serve the efforts of these communities in a small way, by celebrating and documenting their activities and creating public media outputs. Contributing to the literature on permaculture, as well as to debates around community‐based environmental movements, an FPE perspective frames these community‐building efforts in terms of everyday political practices and performances. I conclude that while FPE draws attention to these everyday politics, permaculture practitioners actualize them and in doing so, make a much‐needed contribution to cultivating, or “worlding” diverse, more‐than‐human economies.

International humanitarian narratives of disasters, crises, and Indigeneity

“…Fundamentally, communitarianism, collectivism, and relationality are critical to many Indigenous groups (Chávez Ixcaquic, 2014 ; Banerjee, 2016 ; Karides, 2016 ). These relations extend beyond humans, as non‐humans and more‐than‐humans are viewed as sentient (Lozano, 2016 ; Yazzie and Baldy, 2018 ; Richardson–Ngwenya, 2021 ). Drawing on the work of Lorena Cabnal (2015)—an Indigenous communitarian Maya‐Xinka feminist—on Cuerpo‐territorio (body‐territory), community and territory are viewed as a single subject of political agency that resists and identifies violations against women's bodies and territories as a part of the same process (Mollett, 2021 ).…”

Rethinking the sustainable development goals: Learning with and from community‐led initiatives

“…They also established new mechanisms for peer learning (SDG4), conflict resolution and collective decision-making and action (SDG16), paying special attention to empowerment of women (SDG5). Outcomes include improved overall standards of general well-being (SDG3), creation of new economic opportunities (SDG8), maintaining and strengthening low-carbon lifestyles and livelihoods largely rooted in sustainable management and use of local resources (SDG12, 13) and safeguarding the future of the villages as viable communities (SDG11), as well as linking to wider national and international networks in permaculture and related areas of community action (SDG17) (Didarali & Gambiza, 2019;Richardson-Ngwenya, 2021).…”

Hopefulness for transformative grassroots change

“…This approach not only creates a space in which to be experimental, learning from actions and then trying something different, but as Veron argues, this openness creates a space in which politics are “built on the way ” (Veron, 2020). By focusing on being open practical initiatives, which might be born out of necessity, they might not start from a particular radical politics, but instead through the process of becoming and making a radical politics emerge (also see Richardson‐Ngwenga, n.d.). In addition, while this unfinished nature always leaves open possibilities of social change, there remains a need to carefully examine when and why some initiatives fail.…”