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How ecovillages work: more-than-human understandings of rentabilidad in Mexican ecovillages

This article highlights the emergence of intentional communities known as ecovillages (ecoaldeas) in Mexico, exploring how humans seek to design sustainable futures in part by re-making rural livelihoods. Ecovillages are inherently speculative ventures, or as Burke and Arjona (2013) note, laboratori...

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Autor principal: Morris, Olea
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Japan 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9207435/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35757284
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01162-7
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author Morris, Olea
author_facet Morris, Olea
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description This article highlights the emergence of intentional communities known as ecovillages (ecoaldeas) in Mexico, exploring how humans seek to design sustainable futures in part by re-making rural livelihoods. Ecovillages are inherently speculative ventures, or as Burke and Arjona (2013) note, laboratories for alternative political ecologies, inviting—and indeed, necessitating—the reimagination of human lives with greater consideration for the natural world. In this sense, such communities might be understood as “exilic spaces” (O’Hearn and Grubačić 2016), in that they seek to build autonomous and self-sustaining agricultural, social, and economic systems while also reflecting a stance of resistance to neoliberal capitalist structures. At the same time, communities may also remain dependent on connections to broader regional or global markets in diverse and interconnected ways. Understanding ecovillages as diverse and emergent “worldings” (de la Cadena and Blaser 2018), I ask how these experimental social ventures reckon with their connections to the very systems they are positioned against. To trace out how communities negotiate this fragile space, this article is concerned with how ecovillagers spend their time at work—particularly when it comes to managing relationships with and between more-than-human beings. Drawing on participant observation with ecovillagers and more-than-human others they work with, I explore how the concept of “rentabilidad” (profitability) is differently constructed. To this end, I highlight ethnographic examples where rentabilidad is purposefully reconceptualized with more-than-human lives in mind; such a shift, I suggest, hinges on ecovillagers’ individualized relations with the beings they (imagine themselves) to care for.
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spelling pubmed-92074352022-06-21 How ecovillages work: more-than-human understandings of rentabilidad in Mexican ecovillages Morris, Olea Sustain Sci Special Feature: Original Article This article highlights the emergence of intentional communities known as ecovillages (ecoaldeas) in Mexico, exploring how humans seek to design sustainable futures in part by re-making rural livelihoods. Ecovillages are inherently speculative ventures, or as Burke and Arjona (2013) note, laboratories for alternative political ecologies, inviting—and indeed, necessitating—the reimagination of human lives with greater consideration for the natural world. In this sense, such communities might be understood as “exilic spaces” (O’Hearn and Grubačić 2016), in that they seek to build autonomous and self-sustaining agricultural, social, and economic systems while also reflecting a stance of resistance to neoliberal capitalist structures. At the same time, communities may also remain dependent on connections to broader regional or global markets in diverse and interconnected ways. Understanding ecovillages as diverse and emergent “worldings” (de la Cadena and Blaser 2018), I ask how these experimental social ventures reckon with their connections to the very systems they are positioned against. To trace out how communities negotiate this fragile space, this article is concerned with how ecovillagers spend their time at work—particularly when it comes to managing relationships with and between more-than-human beings. Drawing on participant observation with ecovillagers and more-than-human others they work with, I explore how the concept of “rentabilidad” (profitability) is differently constructed. To this end, I highlight ethnographic examples where rentabilidad is purposefully reconceptualized with more-than-human lives in mind; such a shift, I suggest, hinges on ecovillagers’ individualized relations with the beings they (imagine themselves) to care for. Springer Japan 2022-06-20 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC9207435/ /pubmed/35757284 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01162-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Special Feature: Original Article
Morris, Olea
How ecovillages work: more-than-human understandings of rentabilidad in Mexican ecovillages
title How ecovillages work: more-than-human understandings of rentabilidad in Mexican ecovillages
title_full How ecovillages work: more-than-human understandings of rentabilidad in Mexican ecovillages
title_fullStr How ecovillages work: more-than-human understandings of rentabilidad in Mexican ecovillages
title_full_unstemmed How ecovillages work: more-than-human understandings of rentabilidad in Mexican ecovillages
title_short How ecovillages work: more-than-human understandings of rentabilidad in Mexican ecovillages
title_sort how ecovillages work: more-than-human understandings of rentabilidad in mexican ecovillages
topic Special Feature: Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9207435/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35757284
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01162-7
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