Eco-communities - by Jenny Pickerill (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book critically explores the aims and practices of worldwide eco-communities.

Book Synopsis

This book critically explores the aims and practices of eco-communities worldwide.

Eco-communities can inspire, provoke, and challenge us to live more environmentally harmonious and collective lives. They are practical, ongoing experimentations in how we might survive well together - humans and all living beings on this planet. Eco-communities are examples of grassroot efforts at socio-ecological transformation - self-organised practices, infrastructures and spaces that seek to transform ways of being, living and working. This book answers four critical questions: Can eco-communities generate socio-ecological transformations, and if so how and in what form?; Who lives in eco-communities and what are the implications of this demographic composition?; What does it entail to organise via collective governance practices?; and how do eco-communities operate financially and generate money and livelihoods? While many eco-communities attempt to transform all elements of their daily lives (a holistic and interconnected reworking of how we dwell, eat, work, educate, reproduce, age, etc.) these processes as always incomplete, in-the-making, unfinished and messy. This book explores the ongoing processes of navigating these tensions and contradictions that none-the-less create hope that we might be able to live otherwise and be involved in world-making projects.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.

Review Quotes

Based on transdisciplinary empirical research, this important book offers detailed insights into the living realities of eco-communities. Discussing the realization of their utopian approaches, including major critical issues such as power dynamics, exclusivity, and resource management, the authors offer an extraordinary nuanced perspective on the complexity of these socio-ecological experiments for societal transformation.
Iris Kunze, PhD.

Eco-communities are not just a nice addition - they are essential parts of safe future. In this edited collection, Jenny Pickerill skillfully and joyfully takes us on a journey through an abundance of exciting experiments that challenge us all to live more fulfilling community lives.
Paul Chatterton, University of Leeds, 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.
Lara Monticelli, University College London, UK

About the Author

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