Foreword to Internet Version

The Original Dissertation
This dissertation was completed for submission in August 1999. It formed part of a Master's degree entitled MA Environmental Law and Policy, at Keele University in the UK. My supervisors were Philip Gay (Environmental Social Sciences) and Dr Peter Thomas (Biological Sciences).

Why Publish?
While doing the research I realised that I was gathering a lot of new data, more than I could use in the time available to write the document. Now the data is available here, I hope that it will be of use to other researchers. I also feel that I have raised some important issues and, given the relative lack of academic writing on permaculture, I hope that I can stimulate debate by making the document publicly available. This is certainly not intended to be a definitive guide to permaculture, but I hope it will influence debate and provide a starting point for those wishing to look at permaculture from an academic perspective. I also hope that much of it, particularly the experiences shared in Appendix C, will be of practical use to those involved with permaculture.

I have included on the Web site a facility for readers to leave comments. I will endeavour to respond to all of these, and to post the comment and my reply on the site.

Annotations
It has been over a year since submitting the original academic text, and in preparing the Internet version of the document I felt it appropriate to make a few changes. However, the fact that it has been through the assessment procedure for an MA affords it some validity, rather like being refereed for a journal. So it has been my intention not to distort the original text except in the case of grammar or spelling errors. Where I have wanted to augment my arguments by, for example, adding information that was not available to me in 1999, I have written a footnote and marked it with an asterisk.

Acknowledgements
I would like to extend my gratitude for the support given to me by my supervisors, to the permaculturists who filled in my (admittedly rather long!) questionnaire, and to those who took the time to show me around their sites. Thanks also to Adam, Bronwin, Clare, Graham, Joanne, Rupert and Steve, for reading sections and giving me their comments, to Chris for being my native guide in the West Country, and to Jenni for being very supportive, very good at spelling, and fairly good at putting up tents.