Undergrad Permaculture Research Interview Subject Inquiry

Hello Permies!!

My name's Joseph VanHorn. I'm a non-traditional freshman at Georgia Southern University in SE Georgia. My major is in writing and linguistics. The composition class that I'm currently taking has allowed me an opportunity to invest time and energy researching a community of my choosing in order to present a mini-ethnography at the end of the semester, and I've chosen Permaculture! I was introduced to the ideas of permaculture a few years ago while living in Utah. I moved back home to Georgia, US at the beginning of this year and eventually hope to be able to implement permaculture principles and practices for myself and family here one day. Sustainable, healthy living are passions of mine and seeing the ideas of permaculture gain wider recognition is very appealing. I'm posting this here because part of this semester long project is to conduct an interview of someone within the chosen community. I wanted to post this here in hopes that anyone with interest might be able to assist in such an endeavor. Given the nature of this as research, before an interview can be conducted we will have to establish a letter of informed consent (basically saying that you'll agree to the contents of the interview to be used in this academic setting). I'd be happy to engage with anyone interested in this. I thank you all for your time and consideration, and for this space where permies can gather and talk.. I'll be spending a lot of time with this forum in the future. I look forward to engaging with you all!

Joseph

Joseph, sounds like a great idea. Feel free to purple mooseage me if I sound like a good candidate. I have a background in anthropology, linguistics, and library science so research is something i'm very familiar with in an academic sense. I've been practicing permaculture for only six years now so there are definitely those on permies with much  more experience than I. Feel free to look at my profile and check out some of my posts. Let me know if I sound interesting enough for providing you with some research for your ethnography. My experience in permaculture is geared towards natural building, forest gardens, and rocket stoves mostly, but I love it all.

welcome, Joseph. Glad to have you here.
It will probably help if you could give an idea about how long the interview would be, over how many sessions, modality... as well as any limits on your sample, in terms of where people are or what they are doing (US only? Only rural? Only urban? Level 10 permie or anywhere on the spectrum?). That way everyone saves some time and you have a better shot at getting the info you need for your project.

(saying this because today someone asked me to do the same thing for her thesis, on another topic entirely, and I like to know exactly what I'm getting into)

Daniel Ray wrote:Joseph, sounds like a great idea. Feel free to purple mooseage me if I sound like a good candidate. I have a background in anthropology, linguistics, and library science so research is something i'm very familiar with in an academic sense. I've been practicing permaculture for only six years now so there are definitely those on permies with much  more experience than I. Feel free to look at my profile and check out some of my posts. Let me know if I sound interesting enough for providing you with some research for your ethnography. My experience in permaculture is geared towards natural building, forest gardens, and rocket stoves mostly, but I love it all.

Thank you, I will send you a pm!

Tereza Okava wrote:welcome, Joseph. Glad to have you here.
It will probably help if you could give an idea about how long the interview would be, over how many sessions, modality... as well as any limits on your sample, in terms of where people are or what they are doing (US only? Only rural? Only urban? Level 10 permie or anywhere on the spectrum?). That way everyone saves some time and you have a better shot at getting the info you need for your project.

(saying this because today someone asked me to do the same thing for her thesis, on another topic entirely, and I like to know exactly what I'm getting into)

Thank you for this Tereza!

To clarify -- this will be a one time interview and will probably take only about an hour (no more than two.) I've constructed 15 questions that will be posed relating to one's experiences with and within the permaculture community. I don't mind what degree of expertise is had, involvement with the discipline and the community is enough for an individual to fit the bill! I'm going to take Daniel up on his offer, and if I am able to secure one other interviewee, I think I can make a really strong final production of this project. I do have one particular permaculture designer in mind who did work on a project here in Georgia and am reaching out there as well, and depending on the response I receive from that organization will determine whether I go through with the project with 2 or 3 interview subjects.

Thanks again!!
Joseph