This book is an effort to engage in a conversation about one kind of sustainable community effort. Specifically, it examines how an ecovillage, an ecological cohousing community, like the early environmental movement in the United States, has focused myopically on environmental sustainability for an upper-middle-class, predominantly white community. This narrow focus makes confronting the myriad social and ecological problems difficult to integrate and easy to neglect. While the focus of this research is on one particular community culture, it is also about the way we as individuals and communities make decisions about how we live with each other and with nature, how the larger social and environmental structures where we live influence decisions we might take for granted, and how ultimately, if we are to effect the kind of change we desire, we need to critically examine the lifestyles we live. According to one of the founders of the EcoVillage at Ithaca cohousing project, âEcoVillage is answering what is perhaps the greatest challenge to the environmental movement today. It addresses the pressing need for people from wealthy countries to consume less: less land and fewer resources.â This was further expanded by one of the residents, who remarked that the first of our goals for EcoVillage at Ithaca should be âbeyond upper class white ghettoâdiverse class and people. The second is that weâre really doing something for the planetâ (interview with Wilma 2001).
When we study another culture, we are not only interested in how others live; we are also curious about our own existence. What follows is a story about how a group of residents struggle to find the best way to live with each other and with the natural environment, while being deeply embedded in a capitalist culture, one that prioritizes the market over the needs of communities and the earth. Those of us with a commitment to reconcile our lifestyle with a finite planet struggle with how to do so. We struggle with confronting structural racism, inequality that manifests itself in homelessness, illness, crime, and other forms of neighborhood and environmental degradation. It is not easy. Decisions of whether to use paper or plastic can easily be answered by bringing our own bags to the grocery store. But what of the killing of unarmed black and brown men, women, and youth by police who go with impunity? Or the Spare the Air1 days fueled by our increased air pollution? The effort and benefits to eating locally are well meaning but deeply complicated by the globalized nature of food production and labor in the United States. Is eating a local tomato grown by workers who have migrated great distances and earn little to no income while being exposed to poisons that will harm them for generations better than consuming fair trade organic tomatoes that are grown 3,000 miles away? An obvious answer might be to not eat tomatoes out of season, but many of us in the environmental movement still do, and this does not address the unfair labor practices that occur during the tomato season. There are no easy answers.
Creating ecovillages is not the most efficient way to address the ills of a growing consumer society. However, ecovillages present us with an opportunity to engage in a conversation to change, collectively reflect on the way a capitalist society has contributed to social and environmental degradation, and include space to critically explore our efforts to solve those ills. This book is a story of one community that is deeply engaged in such a dialogue. The EcoVillage at Ithaca project is unique in its architecture and social design of creating several cohousing neighborhoods within a village. Far from perfect, by the residentsâ own admission, it offers a unique opportunity to consider the reach of capitalism in our efforts to address social and environmental degradation.
This story of EcoVillage at Ithaca (EVI) also offers a unique opportunity to critically examine the growing ecovillage movement. The story presents a perspective of sustainable communities from inside a village where people are actively trying to create a way of life that is both socially and environmentally sustainable. Environmental sustainability and social justice are intricately linked, not just in places where pollution or polluting industries are visible, but in our experience of everyday life. In response, we need to engage in a deep conversation about what is right and just for the health and well-being of our communities and the ability of the earth to sustain the resources we need to thrive. We, especially in the United States, need to critically examine our lifestyle, be cautious of greenwashing,2 and be committed to broadening the circle of who benefits from sustainability efforts to include the most vulnerable among us.
This research attempts to describe the ways residents in an ecovillage understand and respond to the growing concern for misguided suburban sprawl and the social and environmental disconnection that accompanies it in the United States. I explore how residents and participants in the EcoVillage at Ithaca project construct nature and community, and how ideas of nature and community are incorporated and negotiated in the everyday life of residents. A focus on the struggles, tensions, and contradictions that go into envisioning a lifestyle that is sustainable opens the door for constructive reflection. Unlike the other stories about ecovillages (Lockyer and Veteto 2013; Litfin 2014; Walker 2005), this work is critical of the exclusion of equity and justice from the discourse on sustainable communities, but optimistic that these projects can contribute to the ongoing debate on creating sustainable ways to live.
Too often the work and painful negotiations that go into ecovillage projects are glossed overâsometimes by those who are closest to their developmentâin an effort to show only the positive outcomes. In a conversation with Bryson, a resident at EVI, he expressed frustration at the lack of self-reflection within the project.
TENDAI: What do you think needs to change in order for you to think this is a place you could live for the rest of your life?
BRYSON: Well, um ⌠Iâve also said, I also include the term âself-critique.â
TENDAI: Mmâhmm
BRYSON: âCause one of the things that I think and that Iâm hoping we can sort of get to, maybe if we do start some of these more deep discussions in the future, you know, just looking at what weâre doing, what weâre not doing, what we could be doing better. Um, and I get the impression from some people up here that they donât really talk about negative things, they donât like to get into negative things. Um, and you know, I can remember [a resident] always saying, âOh, you know, if we try to do something like an accountability system in SONG for our work system, to make sure everybodyâs doing at least their two hours, you know, then thatâs judging and shaming and blaming people and they donât feel they should do that.â But I have always maintained that, well, unless you take an honest look at yourself, how are you going to improve yourself? Um, and unless we figure out a way to improve ourselves, what hope is there for the world? Um, so to me, just um, just, you know, figuring out, you know, sometimes people say things that hurt other peopleâs feelings, you figure out a way to deal with that and work through it. But I think avoiding, just avoiding any critiques because youâre afraid of hurting somebody or making them angry is not how I want to live my life long term.
Bryson was not alone in this thought about wanting to stay in the community but disappointed that there was little or no self-reflection in the project and that this desire to only focus on what was positive hurt the project.
In doing so, these uncritical perspectives mask the very strength of the projects they attempt to celebrate. What I mean by this is that the successes that are often celebrated in EVI seem simplistic, privileged, and unrealistic at best: homes with small footprints because they include imported double- or triplepane windows or easy access to several acres of fallow land. The benefits of living close to each other, sharing resources, and taking long walks on beautiful trails is appealing to those who live there, but other participants have left the project feeling irreconcilable tensions between trying to improve communities yet moving away from them, or the contradiction of being a model of sustainable living yet owning and using more resources than necessary. Indeed, the EVI project is complex; it presents discomfort as we face the entrapment of a capitalist society which prioritizes consumption, even if it is green, over human wellbeing. While we can appreciate the efforts to do something at a time when it is hard to know what to do, there is value in pushing ourselves to be inclusive in environmentalism. This book is a critical examination of the ecovillage model in order to identify realistic possibilities for sustainable futures for everyone. Growing research has emphasized the successes or the positive aspects of ecovillages by focusing narrowly on reduced consumption, increased social belonging amongst residents, and innovative uses of green technology. However, outside of those communities, we are seeing a growing gap between social classes, we continue to see environmental injustices amongst the most vulnerable, and we have made little structural progress towards improving the lives of those who are negatively affected by capitalist expansion. For ecovillages to be relevant, they need to be more than green gated communities for those who can afford them. The problems we face in 2017 cannot be solved by only celebrating what works for a small group and is out of reach for others. The energies that go into creating these eco-havens can be spent addressing structural and collective wellbeing that offers many people the benefits of social and environmental sustainability efforts.
To explore how to effect structural change, it is necessary to question the assumption that green consumerism and green technology are the appropriate mechanisms to address environmental and social degradation (Zehner 2012), rather than focusing on changing human behavior. Anthropological exploration is well suited to address these concerns as âcultural critiqueâ because it places everyday practices within the context of larger social and cultural worlds (Marcus and Fischer 1986). By moving beyond simply describing the successes of EVI to analyzing green consumption and its relevance to lifestyles, this work examines the challenges of creating a sustainable lifestyle in the United States and why these challenges can be informative to the goal of creating a more ecologically sustainable and socially equitable community.
It is not my intention to disparage individual behavior or subject the EVI community to ill feelings amongst their neighbors. Like many of the people I have met in and outside of EVI, we all live with contradictions to our values and struggle to find balance. To the contrary, the contribution of ecovillages to that search for the right way to live within an overbearing culture of capitalism is recognized. What former and current residents have embarked on is public, brave, and challenging. All the EVI participants consistently opened their homes and their lives to anthropological inquiry and data collection for this book, knowing they were exposing themselves to the critical eye of an ethnographer. Over 80 percent of residents have a college degree, 66 percent had a graduate degree, making them well aware of the value of scientific research. This research offers an opportunity to âstudy upâ (Nader 1969), a growing trend in anthropology to turn its gaze upon middle-class white communities in Western countries in general, and the United States in particular, especially with regards to environmentalism (Brosius 2001; Erickson 1997).
My âcoming of ageâ in academia was at a time when non-US citizens were expected to study in their home country, in my case Zimbabwe, while my white US-born colleagues were encouraged to go abroad and study the âother.â My inside knowledge was seen as an advantage to gaining access, while for my white classmates, their outsider status meant objectivity. I became aware of how race matters in the kind of questions we ask and the data we collect. A diverse research populace means we access varied research lenses, we can ask a diverse set of questions, and thus we contribute to new ways of thinking and innovative solutions that might otherwise be missed with homogeneous research teams. Why was there so little critique of ecovillages by social scientists while the communities themselves struggled with diversity and inclusion? residents themselves were curious to know what their neighbors really thought about the project. Several residents read an earlier version of this book and participated in a fruitful and open discussion about some of the findings. A small handful of residents are writing their own books in an effort to shed light on the complexity that is EVI.
The book is organized in six chapters. Chapter 2 outlines the multilayered ways community, environmentalism, and consumption have merged to create what I call a green lifestyle which at once provides an opportunity for residents to make social and ecological change and, at the same time, contribute to the very crisis that manifests itself in suburban sprawl and social isolation. The current US lifestyle is enshrined in a culture of consumption, while green capitalism, as a vehicle for environmentalism, is seldom scrutinized as problematic (Hawken et al. 1999; Miller 1997; OâConnor 1994; Smith 1998). This combination of consumption, community, and environmentalism has created a logical commodityâa green lifestyle, and an ecological cohousing one of its homes. This chapter sets the stage for the making of a green lifestyle. It also examines the trend of constructing new communities and the parallel efforts to respond to a global environmental crisis (Lee 1995). In Chapter 3, a typical day is described to illustrate how residents interact with each other, creating a sense of community in the process. This chapter also presents the history and structure of this unique ecovillage. Chapter 4, Making Community Green, continues to describe the EVI project by highlighting new neighborhoods, the growing village network, and the shifting demographics of the project. new data collected in 2014â2015 is also presented. Chapter 5, Emerging Green Lifestyles, is a discussion of green lifestyles, an explanation of how communities are spaces that symbolize our expressions of social and environmental relationships, increasingly ones that focus on individual environmentalism rather than community, national, or global efforts. I argue that communities embody the spaces through idealized or physical boundaries that represent how our lives are enmeshed within larger social processes, specifically, a capitalist world economy. Thus Chapter 5 explores how the EcoVillage at Ithaca project merges the goals of creating a sense of community and environmentalism through the choice, design, and designation of particular places and spaces for specific functions. It discusses how EVI attempts to create intentional spaces that foster community and that protect the environment through the consumption of green commodities, but also by the consumption of place, through purchasing homes that provide access to nature and construct a sense of community. I examine the meaning of consuming green, how constructions of nature influence what is conserved (James 1993), and how a green identity is created through a green lifestyle. Chapter 5 continues with a discussion of social and environmental justice as it relates to ecological cohousing communities and how a gr...
