Transition Towns, Intentional Communities, and Eco-Settlements: Ethical Frameworks as Everyday Radicalism

• In Event: 2251 - Section on Environmental Sociology Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 12. Sustainability

Abstract

This research consider whether the ethical parameters identified in specific Transition Towns, Intentional Communities, and Eco-settlements represent an “everyday radicalism” (Silver 2018, p.161) that constitutes radical democracy (Laclau et al.1985/2014) and prefigurative politics (Yates 2015). Through in-depth interviews with founders of several eco-settlement communities on the East and West coasts of the United States, examples explore how explicit ethical codes represent a rupture with the everyday and create alternative, democratic realities. Examples explore how and why some communities endure and others disband. This study examines how these eco-settlement communities diverge from the larger US society and culture in tangible and practical ways focused on interaction with the economy and daily living, as well as in intangible, symbolic dimensions represented by values and goals for the future. Respondents frequently identified assumptions about social interaction and human nature that underwrite capitalist economic systems as key obstacles to the construction and maintenance of ethical communities.

Author

• Mary Godwyn, BABSON COLLEGE