Becoming Part of an Eco-Community: Social and Environmental Activism or Livelihood Strategy?

Abstract

Abstract:Studying grassroots initiatives which aim to respond to environmental and social crisis is of renewed importance nowadays, in the aftermath of the 2008-9 financial crisis in southern Europe. This paper studies people's motivations for becoming part of an eco-community in Catalonia, Spain, through interviews with 29 informants. The research is part of a larger study, based on ethnographic data collected between 2013 and 2015 in 27 eco-communities. The paper shows the extent to which people who joined an eco-community were driven by ideological reasons, adopting a livelihood strategy, or by a combination of both factors in the years following the crisis. We argue that the social and economic crisis has had an impact on the factors motivating people to join these communities, with an increase in the number of people driven by materialistic motives, relative to those who joined for ideological reasons.

He is an Entrepreneur, but I am not; I am a Self-Employed Worker”: Self-Representation and Subsistence of Neo-Peasants in Catalonia

“…The second period, framed in a broader research project of the doctoral thesis of the first author 6 with the aim of analyzing the role played by intentional ecological communities in Catalonia (Escribano, Lubbers and Molina, 2017;Escribano, Molina and Lubbers, 2020), has 17 cases of communities that present themselves as models of global ecological change. These cases were selected by tracking active initiatives online and using the 'snowball' method.…”

Rural Experiments with the Management of Basic Resources. Key Characteristics of European Ecovillages Aiming at Partial Self-Sufficiency in Water, Food and Energy

“…The history of intentional communities stretches back as far as to antiquity (Metcalf, 2012), but only more recently explicitly ecological considerations have become a foremost concern among them (Lockyer, 2017). Correspondingly, the turn of the 21 st century saw a growing number of a particular sub-type of ecologically-oriented intentional communitiesecovillageswhose members attempt to live in line with the principles of sustainability in small, close-knit communities (Escribano, Lubbers and Molina, 2017).…”

“…Daly, 2017;Kunze and Avelino, 2015;Brombin, 2015;Escribano et al, 2017;Meijering, 2007;Van Schyndel Kasper, 2008). Striving for some level of selfsufficiency is linked to various goals such as: achieving low environmental footprint(Daly, 2017), creating virtuous cycles of resources in order to regenerate local environment in line with…”

“…the concept of permaculture(Litfin, 2012), seeking financial savings or resilience from global economic crises(Escribano et al 2017;Renau, 2018) or gaining independence from the supralocal infrastructure networks linked to the unsustainable practices of modern societies(Litfin, 2013). As Lockyer (2017) notes, in pursuing certain level of local autonomy, ecovillages try to internalize the externalities linked to the modus operandi of the contemporary global economy.…”

«Él es emprendedor, pero yo no; yo soy autónomo»: Autorrepresentación y subsistencia de los neocampesinos en Cataluña

“…El segundo período, enmarcado en un proyecto de investigación más amplia de la tesis doctoral de la primera autora con el objetivo de analizar el papel que juegan las comunidades ecológicas intencionales en Cataluña (Escribano, Lubbers y Molina, 2017; Lubbers, en prensa), cuenta con 17 casos de comunidades que se presentan a sí mismas como modelos de cambio ecológico global. Estos casos se seleccionaron rastreando por Internet las iniciativas activas y utilizando el método de «bola de nieve».…”