LIFESTYLES OF THE DOWN AND PROSPEROUS: NATURE/CULTURE, COUNTERCULTURE, AND THE CULTURE OF SUSTAINABILITY By MICHAEL VAN PATRICK LEMONS A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2012 1 © 2012 Michael Van Patrick Lemons 2 Dedicated to the coyotes and the faeries, to the dragons and dryads and pixies, to the street mongrels I have met, to the feral dogs and stray cats, who hide within the shadows of and sneak between the pillars of the city, who roam and rule the edge of the city, and who run free in the fields and forests outside the city, where the fearful humans dare not go. 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like foremost to thank my mother and father. Both came from unprivileged backgrounds and highly encouraged my pursuit of academics; they never steered me wrong. I began my freshman college year as an anthropology major but soon wandered down other paths, so thank you to Dr. Sarah Meltzoff of the University of Miami for steering me back to where I belong. Some years later, I entered the Peace Corps in Micronesia; each Sunday for six months I would hitch to the Peace Corps office and add a bit more to the statement of interest which I eventually sent to the University of Florida as part of my graduate application package. I could always write well—given enough time. Here I have Rick Stepp and Bron Taylor to thank for struggling to bring me into their respective departments with matching 4-year Alumni fellowship offers. The fellowship which I eventually accepted from the UF anthropology department made my life. Here I humbly give yet another nod to both Rick Stepp and Bron Taylor for their tolerance and patience during the first few years as it became evident that the hooligan in their midst might not have been the best investment ever made with UF fellowship funds. A final acknowledgement of tolerance goes to Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo, whose unwavering support has seen me through to the end of a long dissertation process carried out at my own meandering pace, which seems to be the pace at which I perform best. For this I am extremely grateful, and extremely lucky. One last academic thank you: another great fortune I experienced at the University of Florida was to have caught an extraordinary man on his way out, Dr. Anthony Oliver Smith. His classes proved crucial to my development as an anthropologist with a critical social focus. Finally, I would like to thank the punatics, who made this dissertation possible, and Hayward Coleman in particular, who kept me coming back to Puna after my first visit. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................. 5 LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ 9 LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ 10 LIST OF OBJECTS ....................................................................................................... 11 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... 12 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION PART ONE ................................................................................. 14 Introducing the Question ......................................................................................... 14 Nature Girls and the Nature/Culture Paradox ................................................... 14 So, is Nature/Culture Good to Think? De-essentializing Postmodernism’s Outcast Dyad ................................................................................................ 17 Reflexive Anthropology and the Culture of Sustainability, Or, How I Stopped Worrying About and Learned to Love the Nature/Culture Dichotomy ............ 22 Introducing the Arguments by Explaining the Title .................................................. 30 Alternate Titles—“Sustainability: Scientific and Utopian”, or, “The Trouble with Permaculture” ........................................................................................ 30 The Actual Title—“Lifestyles of the Down and Prosperous” ............................. 36 2 INTRODUCTION PART TWO ................................................................................ 40 Furthering the Arguments by Explaining the Subtitles ............................................ 40 Nature/Culture—Another Look at the Role of Postmodernism’s Outcast Dyad .............................................................................................................. 40 The Culture of Sustainability—Sustainability as a Question of Consumption and Why the Intentional Pursuit of Sustainability is an Anthropological Topic ............................................................................................................. 44 Counterculture—Why the Culture of Sustainability Has a Countercultural Flavor, and Why Anthropologists Should Study Western Counterculture ..... 48 Permaculture—Anti-Capitalist Culture and Ecological Simulacra ..................... 58 Synopsis ................................................................................................................. 65 In a Nutshell: The Trajectory of Community Permaculture in Puna .................. 65 In a Nutshell: The Main Questions and Their Answers ..................................... 67 In A Nutshell: The Resulting Propositions ........................................................ 69 5 3 THE STAGE: RESEARCH SITE AND SOCIAL SYSTEM ...................................... 72 Site: Lower Puna District, Big Island, Hawaii ......................................................... 72 A Short History of the Lower Puna District ....................................................... 72 Rise of the Puna Counterculture ...................................................................... 78 Utopian Ideology in Puna ................................................................................. 85 System: The Permaculture Approach to Human/Environmental Relations ............. 89 Overview of Permaculture: The Countercultural Implications of an Ethical Imperative for Sustainable Design ................................................................ 89 Permaculture as a Utopian, Millenarian Form of Nature Spirituality ................. 95 Permaculture: Lived Nature Spirituality as a Radical Political Praxis ............ 104 4 THE ACTORS: WHO PARTICIPATES IN PUNA'S PERMACULTURE SCENE? 118 Postmaterialism and Egalitarianism as Drivers of Permaculture Participation ...... 119 Postmaterialist Ideals in a Materialist Pursuit ................................................. 119 Grid/group Theory and its Relation to Nature/Culture Dualism ....................... 125 The Schwartz Values Survey and its Relation to Grid/Group Theory ............. 133 Mysticism and its Relation to Environmentalism ................................................... 140 Hood's Mysticism Survey ............................................................................... 140 Connectedness-To-Nature Survey ................................................................. 146 Jacob's Back-To-The-Land Survey ................................................................ 149 Measuring the New Ecological Paradigm ....................................................... 154 5 THE PERFORMANCE, ACT ONE: NATURE/CULTURE PROCESSES IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF ECOTOPIA ....................................................................... 160 From Nature/Culture to Sacred/Profane ............................................................... 160 Nature/Culture Dualism as a Fast and Frugal Heuristic ................................. 160 Flight from the Profane: Cultic Milieu as Anti-Capitalist and Counterhegemonic ...................................................................................... 166 Sacred Union: Nature as Antistructure .......................................................... 168 Nature/Culture Narratives in the Construction of Ecotopia .................................... 173 Call of the Cultic Milieu: Secular Pilgrimage to an Axis Mundi ........................ 173 Secular Religion and Egalitarian Ritual in Permaculture ................................ 177 Millenarianism, Revitalization, and Reverse Cargo Cultism ........................... 179 Glorifying the Other: Landdancing, Value Rationality, and the DMP .............. 185 6 THE PERFORMANCE, ACT TWO: NATURE/CULTURE PROCESSES IN THE COMMODITIZATION OF ECOTOPIA .................................................................. 191 Nature/Culture Dystopias and Disillusions ............................................................ 191 Trickster Geography: How Kilauea Monkeywrenches Visions of Ecotopia ..... 191 Reverse Cargo Cultism and its Consequences .............................................. 196 Problems with Permanent Liminality and the Maintenance of Communitas ... 200 Commoditization of Ecotopia ................................................................................ 206 6 A Marxist Perspective on Work-Trade: Using Nature Religion to Mystify Exploitation .................................................................................................. 208 Ecotopia as Spectacle