Eco-communities

Jenny Pickerill is a Professor of Environmental Geography at University of Sheffield, UK.

Jenny Pickerill's edited volume makes a critical contribution to the vibrant, interdisciplinary study of eco-communities, intentional communities, and real utopias. Bringing a feminist, decolonial, and intersectional perspective to these prefigurative initiatives is essential—not only for understanding their inescapable entanglement in the techno-patriarchal-racist dynamics of contemporary capitalism—but also for providing activists and practitioners with rigorous scholarly reflections that can spark politically honest (and sometimes uncomfortable) conversations on the ground. Eco-communities and other communal "real utopias" are often criticized for reproducing the same inequalities found in mainstream society. This volume serves as an essential starting point for engaging with this debate, offering nuance, insight, and, ultimately, a much-needed sense of hope and openness to the reader.

• DedicationWorld map of Eco-communitiesAcknowledgementsList of FiguresList of TablesChapter 1 - Collective dynamic environmental experimentsJenny PickerillLiving Ecologically: Generating socio-ecological transformationsTheme IntroductionJenny PickerillChapter 2 – Does living sustainably suck? Reduced consumption and quality of life at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage during the AnthropoceneJoshua Lockyer and Brooke JonesChapter 3 – Understanding consumption reduction through the social practices of an Australian Eco-communityMatthew DalyChapter 4 – Reconfiguring more-than-human relations in Eco-communities: skillsets, empowerment, and discomfortElisa SchrammChapter 5 – Peopled environments: Eco-communities and their reconfigurations of natureJenny PickerillChapter 6 – Eco-communities and outsiders: Opportunities and obstacles to transforming the worldJon AndersonNegotiating Questions of InclusionTheme IntroductionJenny PickerillChapter 7 – Towards Inclusive Eco-communities: socially and environmentally just sustainable futuresTendai ChitewereChapter 8 - Settling in colonial ways? Eco-communities’ uncomfortable settler colonial practicesAdam Barker and Jenny PickerillChapter 9 – Eco-communities and Feminism(s): Who cares? An ethnographic study of social practices in three French Eco-communitiesNadine GernerChapter 10 – Uneven equity and sustainability in intentional communities in the USA: A national-level exploratory analysisChristina Lopez and Russell WeaverChapter 11: Confronting Racial Privilege: Questioning whiteness in Eco-communitiesJenny PickerillChapter 12 – In defence of Eco-Collaborative housing communities: Porous boundaries and scaling outAnitra NelsonDoing it Together: Collective governanceTheme IntroductionJenny PickerillChapter 13 – Contingent, contested, political: learning from processes of environmental governance in the Global South to understand Eco-communitiesNatasha CorneaChapter 14 – Organising together: coexisting, time economies, money and scale in Barcelona Eco-communitiesMarc Gavaldà and Claudio CattaneoChapter 15 – How Eco-communities grow through social learning, social permaculture, and group transformationHelen JarvisChapter 16 – Prompting spiritually prefigurative political practice: Collective decision-making in Auroville, IndiaSuryamayi Aswini Clarence-SmithBuilding Diverse EconomiesTheme IntroductionJenny PickerillChapter 17 – Escaping capitalism? Time, quality of life and hybrid economiesKirsten Stevens-WoodChapter 18 – Workshops and liberation in Freetown Christiania: Tensions in a post-growth community economyThomas S.J. Smith and Nadia JohanisovaChapter 19 – Community economies in Eco-communities: spaces of collaboration, opportunities and dilemmasJan Malý BlažekConclusionsChapter 20 – Being collectively transformational?Jenny PickerillAuthor biographiesIndex