Rural Europe on the move English_chap7_13 | Page 77

Civil Society against a hidden superpower
5a. Porto di Terra: transition includes traditional
knowledge transfer
5b. as well as experimentation : medicinal and
aromatic garden also used for cosmetics
We are left with those for and those much material, so many stories we human and non-human inhabitants,
against. Right and wrong. Moral and want to tell and hopes to share. We’ve lies not in replacing it with a fixed
immoral. Good and bad. written and rewritten, edited and cut other system, laden with its own set of
In these times more than ever we out, replaced and restructured. The problematic power dynamics. No, it lies
need to value complexity and nuance, text is a patchwork of memories and in experiments, in enacting alternative
understanding that there exists a aspirations, fears and worries and ways of living and producing from the
whole host of legitimate perspectives importantly those burning glimmers bottom up,” I argue. Federico nods
and we need to talk the issues out. of hope. next to me, as we sip the whisky
Let us ‘together’ tackle the question,
This writing process was an
Hannes and Oliver have picked up on
seeing our conversation companion experiment, a risk, like eating Mateja’s the way to Sicily. It makes sense that
not as friend or enemy, as Jenny wild asparagus back in Slovenia last Federico agrees with me because
unpicked for us in chapter 2, but with year. This was necessarily risky, but I part of the work of Porto di Terra is
the aim of ‘together’ understanding believe because of that opened up just that: a place for playing with
better, improving our collective space for the unexpected and gave ideas and putting into practice ways
knowledge of the issue at play. us permission to be creative, playful of co-existing with each other and
even. After all, the stories you read on other animals, producing food and
these pages are ones of people who stewarding the landscape.
The collective
writing challenge
“This is like doing a puzzle where
I don’t know what the final image is,”
Camille sighs in exasperation. Nine of
have done things differently, people
who have not waited to be saved but
who have taken rural sustainability
into their own hands and ‘tried things
out’.
us authors sat at one of the chapters
in a large, light-filled work room
overlooking the Mediterranean. I have
to agree. We’ve been working on the
Eight young people live at Porto di
Terra – botanists, educators, conflict
Experimenting
with alternatives
book now for almost a year and we “The alternative to the current
still lack a coherent idea of what we political-economic system, which
may be able to produce. We have so pillages the Earth and exploits its
“The alternative to
the current political-
economic system lies in
experiments, in enacting
alternative ways of
living and producing
from the bottom up.”
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