Home


NEW PODCAST SERIES 

System Change copy

A phrase often used at climate actions is ‘system change not climate change’. This podcastexplores that idea. What kind of system are we living with now? How do systems of exploitation come about? What options for a new system make sense? How could we make system change happen? Join me as I explore these questions. Get excited as we work out how we might make a fresh start.

 

The url to the podcast website is:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2014361

The series is also available through Spotify and Google podcasts.


THE POLITICS OF PERMACULTURE

Terry Leahy

Screen Shot 2021-12-15 at 11.20.24 am

July 2021 Pluto Press

‘This is permaculture revealed in all its splendour. An invaluable approach for exploring future strategic pathways.’ — Noel Blencowe, CERES Environmental Park, Melbourne

Through innovative agriculture and settlement design, the permaculture movement creates new communities regenerating nature. Originating in 1970s Australia it has flourished into a worldwide movement confronting industrial capitalism. The Politics of Permaculture is one of the first books to unpack the political theory and practice of this social movement that challenges the status quo. Renowned writer and practitioner in the movement, Terry Leahy draws on rich print and online sources as well as extensive interviews with permaculture practitioners and organisations to explains ways permaculture is understood and practiced in different contexts.

CONTENTS 1 What Is Permaculture? Three Perspectives 2 Permaculture as a Social Movement 3 Strategies and Visions 4 Permaculture Practice: Prefiguring System Change 5 Gender and Colonialism Conclusion: Permaculture Politics

‘Some declare that permaculture is the biggest and fastest moving people’s movement in the world. Terry Leahy gives us what is possibly the first permaculture book to examine permaculture thoroughly from a sociological point of view and its potential to undermine the systems driving Earth to degradation and immoral social inequity.’ — Rosemary Morrow, founder of Blue Mountains Permaculture Institute, author of Permaculture Teaching Matters (2010)

‘Inspiring. Crammed with lively interviews and grounded examples showing the relevance of the approach to the Global South, this volume is an invaluable contribution to the growing material on how we can still show ourselves to be truly sapiens, by being responsible stewards of a wonderful, life-celebrating world.’ — Ashish Kothari, founder Kalpavriksh (Environmental Action Group), co-editor Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary (2019)

‘Permaculture has been described as “a revolution disguised as organic gardening”. That may be so, but vision without political strategy can be empty. Terry Leahy explores the political significance and latent potential of permaculture, which is terrain that has been sorely neglected.’ — Samuel Alexander, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne, author of Wild Democracy: Degrowth, Permaculture, and the Simpler Way (2017)

Purchase in your local bookstore or in paperback, eBook or hardcover online at Pluto Press:

https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745342740/the-politics-of-permaculture/

Now available as open access free download from Pluto Press:

https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/51078


FOOD SECURITY FOR RURAL AFRICA
Feeding the Farmers First

Screen Shot 2022-11-17 at 2.58.42 pm

Terry Leahy

Routledge 2019

Why is food security so hard to achieve in rural Africa? More than fifty years of projects have had little impact. This book tackles this question from every angle. What frameworks guide international advisors and donors? What are local governments trying to do? Why do projects rarely work? What do the people working at the grass roots think? What is the viewpoint of the beneficiaries? Participatory project design was heralded as a revolutionary new idea that would change everything. And yet forty years down the track, the problems persist. This book shows why. Most projects aim to turn smallholders into successful commercial farmers. Such projects rarely work. Some projects aim to start up community-owned commercially successful cooperatives. These are even less successful.

This book explains an alternative strategy — ‘feeding the farmers first’. The way to ensure food security is to start with household food provision. In most of Africa the rural poor have enough land to feed their families. Projects must promote low input agriculture — because the poor cannot afford inputs. Projects must work with households to improve production on their own household land.

The book presents case studies that show how projects like this work. Detailed nuts and bolts plans explain what has to be done.

These problems can be solved. It is high time that they were.

Hb: 978-0-815-35406-2 | £96.00 | $128.00
Pb: 978-0-367-66575-3 | £29.59 | $39.16
eBook: 978-1-351-13415-6 | £29.59 | $39.16

Now available in paperback as well as electronic version:

https://www.routledge.com/Food-Security-for-Rural-Africa-Feeding-the-Farmers-First/Leahy/p/book/9780367665753


Humanist Realism for Sociologists

Terry Leahy, 2017

Screen Shot 2022-11-17 at 3.01.02 pm

A new book on radical social theory. A metatheory for social science that can work with an ultra left politics and provide an accessible framework for promoting that position. Some topics:

  • How utopian visions of a classless society relate to theories of human nature.
  • Why has social class been such a successful social invention and how does it operate today?
  • What was the nature and operation of classless societies?
  • Is the egalitarian vision premised on an unrealistic view of human beings as ‘perfectible’?
  • What is the relation between the structure of the family, patriarchy and class formation?

Other central concerns of the book are ontology and epistemology, agency and the subject, humanist ethics and eco-centric ethics. This is a book on theory that is engaging and accessible. It explains and challenges theoretical positions that have become accepted as mainstream in the social sciences.

Routledge site – buy hard copy, paperback or  eBook.

Kindle site – download the kindle version for $45!

Print ISBN: 9781138644960
eBook ISBN: 9781315628431
Adobe ISBN: 9781317241027


The Chikukwa Project – Documentary

Gillian Leahy and Terry Leahy, 2013

Ceres Presentation flyer September 2013 POSTER

THE CHIKUKWA PROJECT is a feel good story out of Africa. For the last 20 years an incredible permaculture project has been growing in Zimbabwe. Where once the people of the Chikukwa villages suffered hunger, malnutrition and high rates of disease, this community has turned its fortunes around using permaculture farming techniques. Complementing these strategies for food security, they have built their community strength through locally controlled and initiated programs for permaculture training, conflict resolution, women’s empowerment, primary education and HIV management. Now they have a surplus of food and the people in these villages are healthy and proud of their achievements. Their degraded landscape has been turned into a lush paradise. A brother and sister team travelled to Zimbabwe and made this film which shows why this project has been so successful.

Download from Vimeo
Also available through your University Library from Kanopy


Permaculture Strategy for the South African Villages:
Towards MDG 7 – Environmental Sustainability

Terry Leahy, 2009

Terry Three 197 2

 

Written in accessible language and with a clear structure of chapters, the book explains a set of tactical approaches to environmental sustainability in regard to land care, local agriculture and food security in the South African villages. The tone throughout is optimistic and upbeat. People and their meaningful interaction with land is the starting point for strategies and planning principles that address sustainable food and fuel production in villages, to enhance the quality of life for the rural poor. Permaculture design principles inform the tactical approach offered in the book that works at both policy and practice levels.

Permaculture Strategy for South African Villages is available for free download in PDF form. Please click here.