The international community of permaculture practice with Simin Fadaee

Edge Dwellers Café

In this episode, Ben Habib is joined by Dr Simin Fadaee, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester in the UK. We discuss our recent co-authored article “Permaculture: A Global Community of Practice”, published in the journal Environmental Values, where we tease out how we can understand permaculture as a transnational movement. We explore the relationship between the permaculture movement and global inequality, First Nations sovereignty movements, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. We also reflect on the process of our research collaboration and offer some advice for early career researchers on pursuing collaborative projects.

00:00:00 Introduction.

00:04:48 How Simin found Permaculture through researching environmental activism in Iran.

00:07:21 Permaculture ethics and design principles can be applied to all aspects of life.

00:09:08 How can we understand the Permaculture movement at transnational scale.

00:13:47 Defining a "community of practice": Shared domain, communality, and shared practices.

00:15:28 Shared domain of the global permaculture movement.

00:17:42 Communality, diversity and horizontal diffusion of the permaculture movement.

00:23:31 Socio-economic divisions within the global permaculture movement.

00:26:06 Shared practices of the permaculture movement.

00:27:20 Challenges and opportunities of collective permaculture action at international scale.

00:31:15 Permaculture and traditional farming practices in the Global South.

00:35:15 Permaculture and First Nations land sovereignty movements.

00:37:01 Evaluating the responses of the permaculture movement to the COVID-19 pandemic.

00:41:37 Permaculture in relation to climate adaptation and the IPCC 6th Assessment Report.

00:44:49 Importance of social movements in creating visions for a new world.

00:48:20 A resilient society is a just society.

00:49:49 Simin and Ben compare notes on the joys and challenges of fieldwork.

00:54:29 Simin and Ben reflect on the process of their research collaboration.

00:56:45 Advice on research collaborations for early career researchers.

Show links

• The Art of Being a Mum Podcast with Alison Newman.
• Habib, B and Fadaee, S. (2021) ‘Permaculture: A global community of practice‘. Environmental Values. Pre-print.
• Habib, B. and Fadaee, S. (2019). “Responding to the biodiversity crisis: Permaculture and sustainability transition.” Discover Society. 07 August 2019.
• Ingram, J., D. Maye, J. Kirwan, N. Curry and K. Kubinakova (2014). "Learning in the Permaculture Community of Practice in England: An Analysis of the Relationship between Core Practices and Boundary Processes." The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension. 20(3): 275-290.
• Wenger, E., R. McDermott and W. M. Snyder (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

About Simin Fadaee

Simin Fadaee received her PhD from Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg in Germany (2009) where she also completed a Master's (2006). During her master's programme she spent semesters at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, and Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, India and prior to that obtained a BA from the University of Tehran, Iran. She worked at Humboldt University of Berlin for several years and held a research fellowship at the University of Sheffield before joining the University of Manchester in January 2018. She is the author of Social Movements in Iran: Environmentalism and Civil Society (Routledge 2012) and the editor of Understanding Southern Social Movements (Routledge 2016). She serves as a board member of the Research Committee on Social Classes and Social Movements (RC47) of the International Sociological Association (ISA) and is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Sociology. In Manchester she works with the research group Movements@Manchester and the Sustainable Consumption Institute and is a member of the Manchester University Press Editorial Committee.

About Ben Habib, host of Edge Dwellers Cafe

Ben@Earth | LTU staff profile | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | ORCiD

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This podcast is broadcast from Naarm/Melbourne on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people. Edge Dwellers Cafe pays respect to their elders past, present and emerging.