Ecovillagers’ Assessment of Sustainability: Differing Perceptions of Technology as a Differing Account of Modernism

Abstract

There is great debate over how to measure progress towards ecological sustainability, and a number of approaches deployed by various groups to try and achieve it. One of these is the “ecovillage,” a form of communal living—the primary purpose of which is to enable a reduction in consumption through the collectivization of resources. This paper presents a case study of an ecovillage named Dancing Rabbit, which stands as an example counter to mainstream discourses on progress through the relatively successful approach to ecological sustainability. In the dwellings they have built, their resource consumption patterns, and the diverse attitudes towards technology use that they express, the ecovillagers in this study demonstrate narratives of progress which center an ecological motive over one of profitable innovation. Rather than rely on modernist assumptions of engineering our way to sustainable living through advanced technology or embrace primitivist notions of rejecting it all together, the case study of Dancing Rabbit presents an approach functioning as an alternative to that prevailing dichotomy.

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

“…The results related to what technologies are employed in the pursuit of self-sufficiency also confirm the conclusions of Rubin (2019) indicating that ecovillages are neither primitivist, nor modernist, as they make use of technologies they need to achieve their purposes, and that are easily available to them. The strength of ecovillages as grassroots experiments with sustainability transition lies therefore not in the development of new technologies as such (although there are some examples of that, too), but in the integration of technologies into communal practices that together can serve as a testing ground for how new socio-technical regimes of basic resources management could look like in the future.…”

“We Do This at Dancing Rabbit”: Recruitment and Collective Identity Processes in the Ecovillage

“…It is a place where the daily life and built environment embody a set of alternative values centered on ecological sustainability and egalitarian decision-making. There are a number of other existing studies of DR (for example, Jones 2014; Lockyer 2017; Rubin 2019; Sanford 2014; Schelly 2017) and this paper contributes to a longstanding tradition of Rabbits welcoming researchers to study the community. While I changed several of the names in the reporting at the request respondents, all of the Rabbits included in this paper readily agreed to have their perspectives shared for this project.…”

“…However, collective identities are not conterminous with individual identities, as individuals move between collectives in space and time, and groups change to recruit or expel members with certain characteristics. Rubin (2019) elaborates on the importance of seeing individual ecovillagers as having a wide variety of individual opinions about the right way to approach sustainable living, but that by joining the ecovillage they agree to submit some personal autonomy towards the collective mission. The individual, in each case, exists within the larger community.…”

“A Not-so-silent Form of Activism”: Intentional Community as Collective Action Reservoir

“…I collected data for this article as part of an 8-month ethnographic study of Dancing Rabbit, which is located in rural northeastern Missouri. It's a community that has been subject to some other academic study (see, e.g., Jones 2014;Lockyer 2017;Rubin 2019;Sanford 2014), though as far as I can tell there's been no serious ethnography on the scale done for this essay. The community was founded in 1997, making them an enduring group and fixture of their landscape.…”