On the alternative modernity in permacultural ethos: Back to the land as a progress of a different kind

This paper focuses on the permaculture movement and its ethos, as expressed in various permacultural books. It aims to reconstruct this ethos and assess its relation to the significatory dimension of modernity. We analyse the ethos vis-à-vis the works of Wagner, Castoriadis, Boltanski and Thévenot. Based on the empirical material we analysed through multi-stage thematic analysis, we argue that while permaculture certainly is a back-to-the-land movement, it advocates for a rationalising reorganisation rather than reversal of contemporary social organisation. As we show, permaculturists present the permanent sustainability they advocate for as necessary progress achieved through the rationalisation of the society-nature relationship with adherence to ideals of individual autonomy and rational mastery over the environmental impacts of human-made productive systems. In permaculture's self-portrait, the failures of contemporary agriculture do not stem from an excessive adherence to the core principles of modernity but from a lack of such adherence. We show that the permaculturists’ critique of industrial mass agriculture as wasteful and irrational and their call for a more holistic and permanently sustainable alternative does not present only a concrete utopia but also a call for modernising offensive made with adherence to these principles. Our paper thus contributes to the discussion of modernity and its alternatives, as well as to the more general question of the legitimacy of the latter: what makes alternative environmental movements legitimate, and what makes them appear modern or anti-modern? What are the mechanisms through which alternative environmental movements, such as permaculture, legitimise themselves?