Utopian Intentions: Critical Theory, Intentional Communities, and a Politics of Limits

Projektinformationen

Utop\Intent

ID Finanzhilfevereinbarung: 101031071

DOI

10.3030/101031071

Projekt abgeschlossen

EK-Unterschriftsdatum 23 April 2021

Startdatum 1 September 2021

Enddatum 31 August 2023

Finanziert unter

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Gesamtkosten

€ 187 572,48

EU-Beitrag

€ 187 572,48

Koordiniert durch

UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Utop\Intent (Utopian Intentions: Critical Theory, Intentional Communities, and a Politics of Limits)

Berichtszeitraum: 2021-09-01 bis 2023-08-31

Zusammenfassung vom Kontext und den Gesamtzielen des Projekts

This project explores the relationship between grassroots, land-based community projects and social activism across several intentional communities in North America and Europe. The tendency in social movements scholarship has been to ignore intentional communities as sites of social activism, seeing them instead as small, apolitical/insignificant, and largely escapist compared to conventional social movements. Similarly, in critical and social theory scholarship, the tendency has been to ignore intentional communities as idealist and naïve. At the same time, in communal studies where intentional communities are often studied and valued as a phenomenon, their relationship to social activism has not been a topic of research. This project seeks to bridge this gap, explicitly exploring the relationship between intentional communities and larger social activism. It begins with the premise that social change in our contemporary globalized and digital world cannot be reduced to the traditional actors of earlier decades. Instead it looks at how land-based communal projects are involved in and effect societal transformation.

The scientific consensus is nearly unanimous that contemporary Western society and its globalized modes of production and exploitation urgently need to be transformed if we are to lessen significant ecological, economic, and social crisis. Averting these crises is no longer possible. Swaths of the planet now burn during the summer months clogging even the metropoles with smoke, the sixth mass extinction visible in the fossil record rages unabated with ecocidal fever, global weather patterns that have held stable for all of civilizational history and beyond now fluctuate rapidly and their collapses are now expected, disinformation campaigns course the globe fracturing collective action, and nationalist rhetoric grips the old liberal democracies of the Global North enticing them to see the problem as always elsewhere. This project is important because it ethnographically explores alternative visions and practices of social transformation that are already active in the Global North. Understanding how social transformation occurs--especially when traditional actors of social change have stalled or do not work as they once did--is important for society if we are to explicitly address some of the most pressing crises of our time. Furthermore, bringing attention to these alternative projects as legitimate "prefigurative political projects" as well as critically thinking about how they fail in certain aspects is important to thaw contemporary society's political malaise and sense that there is no alternative.

The overall objectives of the project include: To understand how social transformation happens. To understand how and the extent to which grassroots, land-based communal projects engage and contribute to social activism and transformation. To bridge the scholarly gap between Critical Theory, Communal Studies, and Utopian Studies. To develop ethnographic research skills for the study of prefigurative political projects, intentional communities, land-based communal projects and their engagement with wider societal transformation as well as their own internal cultures and practices. To publicize and raise general awareness of alternative visions of human-ecological relationships, dwelling, and modes of production. To develop a methodology that combines ethnographic data gathering with critical theory argumentation and which is public-facing.

Arbeit, die ab Beginn des Projekts bis zum Ende des durch den Bericht erfassten Berichtszeitraums geleistet wurde, und die wichtigsten bis dahin erzielten Ergebnisse

1. Fieldwork
-interactive online course with Tamera (Introduction, developed relationship Dara, April 2020) 3 weeks
-field visits (total three weeks) to Mooncat in western Illinois. Developed relationships with Jerome, Miranda, Tanner, and Devon. Built a cobb hut; processed firewood; feed animals
-1 week visit to Bear Creek Land Trust (US) (Nov 2020)
-2 week visit to The Garden (US) and travelled with them to Hidden Springs and forming community consultation near North Carolina (with Tanner) (April 2021)
-4 week visit to Ionia (US) (June 2021)
-interactive online course with Tamera (A Global Revolution in Love; 3 weeks; July 2021)
-2 week visit to Tamera partly for Olive Harvest with members from Ionia community too (Oct 2021)
-interactive online course with Tamera (What is Systems Change; 3 weeks; Jan 2022)
-Findhorn Experience Week (March 2022)
-Visit to Glen Affric Trees for Life Rewilding project (April 2022)
-Embercombe Spring Break week (April 2022)
-Findhorn Erraid Community Beltane week visit (May 2022)
-Embercombe The Journey (1 week; Oct 2022)
-Findhorn 60th Anniversary Week (Nov 2022)
-Ionia visit (6 weeks, Jan-Feb 2023)
-interactive online course with Tamera (What is Systems Change; 3 weeks; February 2023)
-Bear Creek and Emberfield Project visit (July 2023)
Ongoing:
-Online Terra Nova Network weekly meetings (Tamera)
-Gene Keys online education (Findhorn, started Nov 2021)
-One Commune online education platform for meditation, rewilding, breathwork, etc.
-Lorian online education (Findhorn, started May 2022; Journey into Fire begun August 2023)
-Resurgence Trust Earth festivals (8 per year; Devon, connection with Embercombe)
-Foundation for Intentional Community podcast: Into Community
-regular calls and followup meetings with community members (Dara, Emily, Tanner, Miranda, Judy) and those exploring community (Joanne)


2. Knowledge Exchange/Professionalization
-monthly meetings with supervisor to discuss research, analysis, and professionalization
-frequent meetings with Arlinda Rustemi (Political Sciecne, Leiden) about ethnographic methods
-regular monthly involvement with Centre for Political Philosophy, Leiden University
-monthly Writing Politics? research group (hosted by the University of Edinburg, Richard Freeman) meetings and presentation of research (since April 2022)
-ECPR Writing Politics Workshop and extended collaboration (beginning April 2022)
-Presentation at Leiden Institute of Political Science (December 2022)
-Teaching of Ethnography Research Skills from personal experience (2 lectures: Fall 2021 and Fall 2022)
-Advanced undergraduate course on content of research (Fall 2022)
-International Communal Studies Association Conference (July 2022)
-Deep Commons Conference: "Stories for the Earthbound" (October 2022)
-Arendt conferences with Matt Longo (spring 2022 and 2023)
-Earthbound Prefigurative Politics, Workshop with Davina Cooper (King's College London) in collaboration with Leiden University, Development Sociology, Prototyping Welfare in Europe (financed with a Vici grant) and Social Work and the Art of Crafting Resilient Societies (financed with a NWA grant), Anouk de Koning

Fortschritte, die über den aktuellen Stand der Technik hinausgehen und voraussichtliche potenzielle Auswirkungen (einschließlich der bis dato erzielten sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen und weiter gefassten gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen des Projekts)

Dissemination including knowledge exchange between my research sites.

For final report period:
-collaboration with Eliza at Ionia on academic tutoring for youth residents (since Nov 2021)
-collaboration with Eliza at Ionia on Ionia's Great Turning (since August 2022)
-advanced undergraduate course at Leiden University (Utopian Political Thought and Practice Fall 2022)
-Presentation at Leiden University Institute of Political Science (Dec 2022)
-collaboration with Becky Burchell at Embercombe and Bowden House on Bowden Pillars community project (since March 2023)
-collaboration with Trees for Life (Findhorn) Wild Seed Collection Project (starting August 2023)
-gathering at Tamera? (October 2023)
-launch of interactive wiki website of notes, stories, and policy briefs (Oct 2023)

Photo taken during fieldwork November 2021