Peoplecare and contextuality

Whats the most fashionable thing about permaculture where you are? Forest gardens? Herb spirals? Raised beds?

Here in France its the latter. Now people are getting very exited about "la permaculture humaine". Human permaculture, yes a tautology but "peoplecare" works out as "prendre soin de l'être humain". And that looks less good on a T shirt or book cover.

Peoplecare is widely talked about in different countries and unfortunately has taken the same fashionista path as the gardening/agricultural aspects of permaculture.

So what are the problems?

Lack of understanding. People love herb spirals but don't understand what they are for nor where they would best be installed. I have a 7 ha farm, I don't need a herb spiral. Where I work in Tunisia anything raised up, like a herb spiral or potato tower simply dries out.

Here is an example,  a "potato tower I saw in Tunisia

Whilst this is a strategy that I have frequently used in urban areas, what we see here is a technique unadapted to the climatic context in which it is found. Th summer temperatures go up to the low 40° c so we have enormous levels of evaporation and the towers simply dry out.

Techniques need to be understood, when this is the case they can be adapted to the different contexts in which they will be used/installed. It also means that inappropriate techniques will not be used in contexts to which they cannot be adapted.

During my 30 year career as a designer in numerous different countries I have all too frequently come across techniques and strategies being used in areas for which they are not adapted. In Albania a school had been equiped with PV panels, they were on the east facing roof, they were insufficient in numbers for the needs of the school. In several hot and dry countries .. raised bed gardens, surrounded by the traditional sunken bed gardens which work very well, the raised beds simply dry out. 

Context, context, context!

People care is going the same way. Non-violent communication, consensus, sociocracy have become a sort of mono-cultural norm for PmC peoplcare and social permaculture.

Lack of contextuality. This is probably worst sin that can be committed by a permaculture designer. Everything depends on the context, from farming techniques to social organisation strategies. What works here won't work there. People in general and especially permaculture designers most really take this on board. I work in several different countries and that means I work in several different cultures. It beholds me to really observe the people that I work with and how their culture operates. This is a fascinating part of our work and sometimes/often tiny differences emerge that, like that famous butterfly, can have huge consequences on the development of a project.

Binary thinking. Years of research in neuropsychology, social biology, anthropology have shown that only very special cases show any binarity. For the vast majority we have to think in terms of continuums. Men/women, conservative/liberal, north/south ..... The woman/man dichotomy is a particularly good example of how not to analyse a group. For the vast majority of abilities most human beings group around an average competence with some individuals either very good or very poor at accomplishing certain tasks. (In this context a special case is that most women (XX) can give birth, we haven't yet found a man (XY) who can. The continuum kicks in again though as one person in 1,666 are neither  XX nor XY, (plus Klinefelter (XXY) one in 1,000, births Androgen insensitivity syndrome one in 13,000 births, Partial androgen insensitivity syndrome one in 130,000 births ... etc)

So where does this lead us? The knowledge sets needed to be a competent permaculture designer working with growing systems is wide and various, the same is true with social permaculture and peoplecare. As a designer with 30 years of experience my social permaculture skill set includes neuropsychology, social anthroplogy, history, nutrition and social biology. These branches of science give us important information about the nature(s) of human beings that are essential if we want to create viable and durable human societies. These knowledge sets then need to be complemented with knowledge about human systems. Economics, architecture, energy production and more.

Too often people are presented with solutions that are non-contextual, overly simplistic, based on out-dated science (or research paid for by Industry) or just downright lies. As permaculture designers we are faced with a cunundrum, we work to design and build complex and durable systems. The difficulty is that faced with a choice between simplistic explanations/solutions and complex explanations/solutions it is much easier for people to accept the former. (This is one of the reasons for the lack of massive adoption of permaculture by people. We have made enormous strides but as the world starts to burn there is much left to do.)

When I run permaculture courses my most frequent response to a question is "it depends on the context". I will then go on to give examples of different approaches but always with the same caveat, "this worked here, it might work there but will probably need to be adapted". Not a message that is easy for people to absorb. Luckily we have the principles elucidated by Mollison and then re-interpreted by Homgren. I continually bring everything back to them. Clear guiding principals well explained help people absorb the art and science of permaculture. It also encourages them to understand before acting. 

So back to social permaculture, there is no "one size fits all". People from countries based on rice cultivation engage automatically with the context within "something" is to be found. The opposite is true of wheat cultivating people who fix on the "something" itself and much less on the context. And of course thats binary, in truth its a continuum and depends on the indivduals, at the same time it is generally true. People in China have a different way of looking at the world as compared to people in say Sweden. A social permaculture approach that works in China may well be the opposite of what can be accepted by a Swede. Its a good thing that we in the permaculture world love diversity so much.

Peoplecare is also about our bodies, and of course those of others. Its no good me running an amazing farm that "earthcares" if at the same time it reduces me to a groaning mass of aches and pains. Ergonomy can help us design production systems that look after our bodies and neuropsychology when applied to (people centered) architecture can help us design buildings that encourage good health.

Complexity, contextuality, non-linearity, non-binarity key concepts at the heart of many scientific researchers and many permaculteurs. Which is a good thing.