Table Of ContentEVERYTHING GARDENS AND OTHER STORIES E
V
E
GROWING TRANSITION CULTURE R
Y EVERYTHING
T EVERYTHING
H
Russi almost achieves the impossible in I
N
GARDENS
G
providing a rich and polyvalent description of
G
an idea on the wing A
. R ANGD AOTRHEDR SETONRIESS
Prof. Stephen Quilley, University of Waterloo D
E
N
The Transition movement is more than an instrumental strategy to address S
climate change and fossil fuel shortage. It is a collective form of life. Against A
N AND OTHER SGTROORWIIENGS
the tendency to reduce social movements to mission statements and policy
D
solutions, this book insists on de-strategising the development of Transition. It
O TRANSITION
argues that the flourishing of its distinctive culture is open to both uncertainty T
H
and paradox, and resistant to prediction and mapping.
E GRCOUWLTIUNRGE
Everything Gardens and Other Stories focuses instead on the body as R
the site where politics begins, engaging with the disquiets and anxieties that S
T
instigate the development of Transition practices: from Inner Transition, to O TRANSITION
R
food and currency activism, down to the REconomy project. Borne out of a
I
E
sociologist’s accompaniment of Transition in Totnes, Everything Gardens and S CULTURE
Other Stories inaugurates a new mode of accessing the everyday politics and
ethical dilemmas that surface in the process of cultural innovation.
‘Everything Gardens’ is enlightening because LUIGI RUSSI
it takes Transition seriously as a social, cultural
and economic phenomenon.
L
U
Prof. Steffen Böhm, University of Essex I
G
I
R
Luigi Russi is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at the University of Exeter. He is U
S
the author of Hungry Capital: The Financialization of Food (2013). S
I
LUIGI RUSSI
www.uppress.co.uk
EVERYTHING
GARDENS
AND OTHER STORIES
GROWING
TRANSITION
CULTURE
LUIGI RUSSI
Paperback edition first published in the United Kingdom in 2015
by University of Plymouth Press, Endsleigh Place, Drake Circus,
Plymouth, Devon, PL4 8AA, United Kingdom.
ISBN 978-1-84102-380-9
© University of Plymouth Press 2015
© Luigi Russi 2015
The rights of this work have been asserted by Luigi Russi and
R. C. Smith in accordance with the Crown Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British
Library.
Publisher: Paul Honeywill
Editor: Harriet McClure
All rights reserved. No part of Everything Gardens and other Stories
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted
in any form or by any means whether electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of UPP. Any person who carries out any unauthorised
act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal
prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Typeset by University of Plymouth Press in Janson 10/14pt
Printed and bound by Edwards Brothers Malloy.
MIX
Paper from
responsible sources
FSC® C014540
www.fsc.org
PRAISE FOR
Everything Gardens
and other stories
EVERTHING GARDENS AND OTHER STORIES: GROWING TRANSITION CULTURE
Russi almost achieves the impossible in providing a rich and
polyvalent description of an idea on the wing. Academics might
recognise a kind of phenomenology in his approach, which is more
akin to smelling and tasting, than weighing and measuring.
Everything Gardens explores from within, Transition as a process
of incubation or the deliberative unfolding of an alternative to
consumer capitalism – a pattern language for a more place-
generative, ecologically recursive form of local economy. Poetic and
optimistic, Russi’s book adds ‘participant permaculture’ to the social
science playbook. This is a new methodology that I am sure will
become part of the repertoire.
Stephen Quilley, Associate Professor of Environmental
and Social Innovation, University of Waterloo, Canada
What is Transition? That is the question that is at the core of this
book. How do we go about Transition? How is Transition defined?
At what point is Transition perceived as complete? The difficulty of
these questions is so wonderfully managed in Everything Gardens,
wherein we learn that, in a way that is perhaps similar to Theodor
W. Adorno’s (or Herbert Marcuse’s) notion of non-identity,
Transition is best understood only insofar as it is not reduced to
an instrumental process that can be absolutely captured in some
total concept or theory. […] If ever there was a book that was so
penetrative and that raises so many fascinating questions about the
phenomenon of Transition, it is Everything Gardens. As a study
of the utmost integrity, one can only hail this work by Russi as a
significant and important achievement in the field of social science.
From the preface by R.C. Smith, Director, Heathwood
Institute and Press
4
PRAISE FOR EVERYTHING GARDENS AND OTHER STORIES
Will the Transition movement succeed in bringing about a transition
towards a more sustainable, equitable and more resilient world?
Luigi Russi doesn’t answer this question in this very important
and readable new book, precisely because it is impossible to provide
an answer. Rather than defining Transition and evaluating its
chances of success, he delves right into the culture of Transition,
providing us with rich stories of its daily ‘doings’ and ‘workings’
on the ground – in Totnes and elsewhere. He urges us to try to
understand Transition not as something that can be dissected and
critiqued from the distance but as an ongoing process that is full of
contestations, surprises, changes and crises. Transition, he argues, is
a true movement; it is everywhere but not necessarily nowhere. It
is in the details of the social and material world, and what he has
precisely done is give us snippets and glimpses of that Transition
world. Everything Gardens is enlightening because it takes
Transition seriously as a social, cultural and economic phenomenon
that will change, potentially, all of our lives.
Steffen Böhm, Professor in Management and
Sustainability, University of Essex and editor of Ecocultures:
Blueprints for Sustainable Communities
5
EVERTHING GARDENS AND OTHER STORIES: GROWING TRANSITION CULTURE
Summary
Preface by R.C. Smith ........................................................ i
Acknowledgments ................................................................. xi
1. Introduction: Travelling Without Moving .............. 24
My moving in Totnes ...................................................... 32
Transition, Totnes and comparison ................................... 38
2. Transition: A Publishing History .............................. 42
Beginnings and instruction manuals ................................ 44
Recipe books and collections of short stories ........................ 51
How this book differs from previous work ......................... 59
.....An invitation to the phenomenology of Transition .................. 66
Part I: The Moving of Transition
3. ‘Everything Gardens’, Gardens Everywhere .......... 82
Gardening in Transition ................................................. 90
Food and the experience of ‘community’ ........................... 94
Critical food cultures ....................................................... 99
4. Inner Transition .......................................................... 108
What does Inner Transition do? ...................................... 113
‘Inner work’: implicit and explicit ................................... 117
Conclusion ...................................................................... 128
5. Transition Money ........................................................ 132
LETS and local currencies ............................................... 134
Alternative currencies and Transition .............................. 138
The Totnes Pound ........................................................... 142
6
LUIGI RUSSI
6. REconomy .................................................................... 154
Deeper into the REconomy project .................................... 157
And back into Transition ................................................. 161
The Local Entrepreneur Forum ...................................... 165
REconomy-type projects ................................................... 171
Part II: The Unfolding of a Form of Life
7. Exemplars and Experimentation ............................... 180
Exemplars and relating differences .................................. 182
Exemplars and circulation ............................................... 189
Exemplars as incubation ................................................. 193
Exemplars as skilled performances ................................... 195
Conclusion ...................................................................... 200
8. Insiders/Outsiders ...................................................... 204
The changing face of Inner Transition .............................. 206
The ‘No to Costa’ campaign ............................................ 213
Transition and inclusivity ................................................ 220
9. The Politics of Unfolding Experience ..................... 228
Peak oil as shared sensory topic ........................................ 230
Transition as a search for orientation ............................... 236
Transition as ‘imaginative universal’ and living tradition 238
.....Harmonising drift and novelty inside Transition ..................... 243
The politics of everyday experience in Transition ............... 247
Conclusion ...................................................................... 254
10. Conclusion ................................................................. 258
A glimpse of Transition practices ...................................... 260
The moving of Transition ................................................ 265
Growing Transition culture ............................................ 270
Notes ............................................................................. 274
Bibliography .................................................................... 332
Select index .................................................................... 350
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EVERTHING GARDENS AND OTHER STORIES: GROWING TRANSITION CULTURE
8
For Putli
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