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Book Review: ‘Everything Gardens’ by Luigi Russi.

August 29, 2015

Book Review: ‘Everything Gardens’ by Luigi Russi.

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Academic work on Transition can often be infuriating rather than illuminating.  I was once asked to peer review a paper on Transition, a movement I was central in kickstarting and shaping, but I had to decline on the grounds that the paper was utterly incomprehensible.  While some research is excellent, and offers useful insights and meaningful data, there is also much that leaves me cold, or bewildered.  With this in mind, I picked up a copy of Luigi Russi’s ‘Everything Gardens and other stories: growing Transition Culture‘ with a certain trepidation.

Russi is a sociologist based at the University of Exeter, who set out to research Transition Town Totnes, not through a literature review or a few interviews, but by moving to the town, rolling his sleeves up, and getting involved.  In spite of my initial reticence, I actually loved ‘Everything Gardens’, and had a few ‘aha” moments as I went through.  Russi begins by questioning the usual approach that academic work on Transition tends to take, that of defining what it is (i.e. a response to peak oil and climate change etc), then to the model it proposes (still usually stuck on the 2008 model of ‘The 12 Steps’), which leads to an assessment of how well Transition is achieving its goals, how it is ‘performing’?  It’s an approach that treats Transition as though it were some sort of set of policies that can be evaluated.  As a result of this approach, much of the ensuing research bears little resemblance to what many Transitioners will be experiencing through their active participation in Transition.

 

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