Yuwei Lu
A Comparative Study of Permaculture as a Socio-Ecological Model for Wellbeing in New Zealand and China
This research investigates permaculture as a socio-ecological model for wellbeing through a comparative study of New Zealand and China. Against the global backdrop of accelerating urbanisation, industrialised agriculture, and ecological degradation, the study conceptualises human-land disconnection as a systemic socio-cultural condition shaped by governance structures, labour regimes, and cultural values rather than as an individual behavioural problem. While permaculture offers principles for sustainable living, it’s application and impact are profoundly shaped by local context, they exhibit sharply contrasting institutional arrangements and cultural foundations, resulting in divergent pathways through which ecological practices are organised and translated into lived wellbeing. This research moves beyond a technical comparison of permaculture practices to analyse two distinct socio-ecological models: a culturally-embedded, community-led model in New Zealand and an institutionally-driven, performance-oriented model in China.
The study adopts a culturally anchored “double spin” framework to examine the reciprocal relationship between culture and wellbeing. The forward spin traces how cultural values, governance arrangements, scale, and labour structures shape the design, participation norms, and everyday practices of permaculture. The backward spin examines how wellbeing outcomes, such as physical health, stress reduction, social connection, and sense of belonging, feed back to stabilise, reinforce, or reshape cultural practices and governance routines over time. Permaculture functions as the empirical medium through which these mechanisms become observable, as it integrates ecological design, labour organisation, and participation into everyday life.
Methodologically, the research is grounded in critical realism and employs a retroductive logic, combining comparative case studies, participatory practice-based inquiry, and mixed methods. By comparing the model in New Zealand and in China, the research clarifies how cultural context, participation depth, and labour organisation condition the capacity of ecological practice to generate sustained wellbeing outcomes. Analysis is conducted across macro (governance and labour), meso (culture and participation), and micro (individual wellbeing) levels to trace causal pathways and feedback loops.
The research contributes an empirically testable framework and evaluation agenda for explaining why similar permaculture ethics yield distinct wellbeing trajectories across contrasting socio-cultural systems.
Supervisors
Dr Bruno Marques & Jacqueline McIntosh