Ecovillages and Permaculture: a Reference Model for Sustainable Consumption?

Home , Ecovillage, Environmental policy, Green consumption, Social sustainability, Sustainable consumption

Autoria: Paulo Ricardo Zilio Abdala, Gabriel de Macedo Pereyron Mocellin

Abstract

Ecovillages are intentional ecological communities based on the harmless integration of human activities into the environment (Van Schyndel Kasper, 2008). The inspiration for this lifestyle comes from a concept called Permaculture, a term coined in 1978 by Bill Mollison, an Australian ecologist, and one of his students, David Holmgren, as a contraction of "permanent agriculture" or "permanent culture” (Mollison & Holmgren, 1978). In this research, we approach the theme of permaculture and ecovillages, focusing on ecovillagers ideas regarding sustainable consumption. Our intention is to present how people immersed in sustainable communities lifestyle deal with consumption issues by using different strategies and behaviors that are less harmful for the environment and the future generations. To accomplish this research, the sample was constituted of two ecovillages located in the south of Brazil. Both places were visited for a weekend each, during which we participated in the communities activities. Hence, the research has a qualitative methodology, best described as a short participant observation. Data collection includes field notes of the researchers, institutions website contents, as well as 4 hours of filmed interviews with a total of 7 subjects. The complexity of the phenomenon presents itself in the richness of the raw data collected. We consider this article a kind of working paper in broad terms, in the sense that new studies with more triangulation and further data collection are needed to extend the comprehension of the topic and to answer the additional questions this study brought. So far, results indicate some key issues regarding the topic. In terms of permaculture and ecovillages, the multiple dimensions of the communitarian life emerged, with emphasis in the ecological, social and economic themes. Many examples and glimpses of this apparently simple and deeply utopian lifestyle are discussed. Regarding sustainable consumption, the presence of advanced knowledge, both in theory and practice is evident. In general, subject’s ideas about consumption and sustainability were based on the premise of individual responsibility for the future of the planet. Implied in this logic, it is a sense that personal choices can make a difference, and that human beings are beyond the acceptable limits of materialistic lifestyle, urging a process of rethinking life in a broad perspective, which according to the ecovillagers means: evaluating products based exclusively on their usage value; rejecting products and services that are supplied by huge international companies and/or companies that don´t have a public environmental and social friendly policy; preferring local products, since they spend less energy in transportation and create a monetary flow that benefits local economy; and last, but not least, reassessing the “need” concept, or rethinking consumption practices and life priorities. Finally, even though some advances occurred, the study leaves some new questions answered, like: what are the deep motivations behind Ecovillage movement? Is this a viable general model for sustainable consumption? Are we able to replicate this lifestyle in another context?

“Utopia is on the horizon: when I walk two steps, it takes two steps back. I walk ten steps and it is ten steps further away. What is utopia for? It is for this, for walking” Eduardo Galeano

INTRODUCTION

A series of critical natural events in recent history, like volcano eruptions and tsunamis, are indicating that we, as a mankind, need to discuss seriously the human role in the environment unbalance. This includes reflecting on how we can change our consumption (lifestyles) and production systems for a less environmentally aggressive model. This research has the main goal of addressing this question from the individual consumer point of view, by studying an intrinsically interesting phenomenon: the ecovillage movement and the permaculture perspective. Ecovillages are sustainable communities based on permaculture (permanent culture) principles. Since their main goal is to reach a perfect integration between men and nature, they form a rich context to study alternative sustainable consumption possibilities. Hence, it is our intention to present how people immersed in sustainable communities´ lifestyles deal with consumption issues. The sustainable consumption topic, and the discussion about consumer co- responsibility for environmental problems are important themes since the preoccupation for environmental issues started to grow (Halkier, 1999). The observation of facts indicates that many consumers are increasingly changing their behaviors towards more sustainable practices (Doane, 2002). They are the so called “green consumers”, a broad term used to represent the engagement in consumption behaviors that are seen as “environmentally friendly” (Connoly & Prothero, 2008), acting as recommended in the model of the “5 R´S” stated by United Nations: reduce, reuse, renew, recycle and rethink (Maclean, 2005). To accomplish this research, the sample was constituted of two ecovillages located in the south of Brazil. Both places were visited for a weekend each, during which researchers participated in the communities activities. Hence, the study has a qualitative methodology, best described as a short participant observation. Data collection includes field notes of the researchers, institutions website contents, as well as 4 hours of filmed interviews with a total of 7 subjects. The complexity of the phenomenon presents itself in the richness of the raw data collected. We consider this article a kind of working paper in broader terms, in the sense that new studies with more triangulation and further data collection are needed to extend the comprehension of the topic and to answer the additional questions this study brought. So far, results show different strategies and behaviors used by ecovillagers in order to be less harmful for the environment and the future generations. Many interesting issues emerged, both on consumption and on community lifestyle, indicating that permaculture has a lot to add to consumption behavior knowledge. In the end, the study allow us to presume that ecovillages are places where human life is lived in a way that causes almost no impact on the planet, however, a key question remains answered: is it possible to replicate this model in another context? This provocative doubt addresses the same problem as the one in the title of the article, and cannot be responded in a simple straight forward manner. Maybe one of our informants gave a hint on a possible answer, saying that “who wants to work for sustainability doesn´t have to live in an ecovillage. Everyone can take its steps and be on the way on the changing process, starting

with small actions in the city”. We hope this article is an inspiration for more studies and discussion on the theme.

PERMACULTURE AND ECOVILLAGES BACKGROUND

Permaculture is a term coined in 1978 by Bill Mollison, an Australian ecologist, and David Holmgren, one of his students, as a contraction of "permanent agriculture" or "permanent culture” (Mollison & Holmgren, 1978). Permaculture is the harmonious integration of landscape and people. The ethical basis of permaculture is to take care of the earth, the people, and to set limits on consumption and population (Mollison, 2002). For Miranda (2007):

Permaculture is about the execution of projects and the conscious maintenance of productive ecosystems using traditional techniques for the planning of socio environmental development of all complexity of agricultural practices in the ecodesign, in sustainable buying and selling, in product life cycle analysis, in solid waste management, among others; providing concepts, practices and working methodologies for medium and small rural producers, by interaction and innovation of the traditional productivity models; by discussing the knowledge and valuing of human and social dimensions; and by pushing the frontiers of the organization and sustainability of life on Earth (Miranda, 2007, p.7).

Essentially, permaculture deals with the problem of scarcity of energy in the world. Based on this fact, systems were designed in order to avoid from spending more energy than necessary, first in the agriculture, and after in the social realms of life. For Mollison (1981, p.145): “there are plenty of resources in the world for everybody. There is land, food, everything. The fact that some of the people are trying to accumulate these resources is the reason for the problems we have today. This centralization of resources has extended to the centralization of energy.” Since permacutlure is best known for its agricultural perspective, its social dimension has been widely ignored. However, it had already appeared in a series of pamphlets published back in 1981 based on a Bill Mollison´s permaculture course, in which he brought to the public the main ideas behind his and Holmgren´s thinking system. A great part of this material is dedicated on explaining how agriculture can benefit from a better integration between the elements (plants, trees, vegetables) within the many types of ecosystems. Nevertheless, in one of the last chapters he introduces the social idea saying that “by using the same methods that integrate the elements of a garden system, we can attain surprisingly similar benefits accruing to the whole social system” (Mollison,1981, p.143). Along the years, permaculture evolved its scope to a more general view of sustainability. In this renewed perspective, Holmgren (2007) stated a list of 12 permaculture system design principles, as follows: (1) observe and interact; (2) catch and store energy; (3) obtain a yield; (4) apply self-regulation and accept feedback; (5) use and value renewable resources and services; (6) produce no waste; (7) design from patterns to details; (8) integrate rather than segregate; (9) use small and slow solutions; (10) use and value diversity; (11) use edges and value the marginal; and (12) creatively use and respond to change. In its actual form, permaculture movement also officially extended its domains to seven areas considered important for maintaining humanity in periods of low energy availability. Figure 1 shows what is known as the permaculture flower, a scheme that presents all fields covered by permaculture thinking system: land and nature steward ship, building,

tools and technology, education and culture, health and spiritual well-being, finance and economics, land tenure and community governance.

Figure 1. Permaculture Flower Source: Permaculture Principles (2010)

In the permaculture flower, ecovillages are inserted into the land tenure and community governance dimension, along with cooperatives, open space technology, native title and traditional use rights and consensus decision making. Ecovillages are defined as intentional communities with the goal of the harmless integration of human activities into the environment in a way that supports healthy human development in physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual ways (Van Schyndel Kasper, 2008). There are currently a total of 463 registered ecovillages worldwide, 209 in America, 197 in Europe and Africa and 57 in Oceania and Asia (GEN, 2010).

Another perspective on ecovillages is that they are:

urban or rural communities of people, who strive to integrate a supportive social environment with a low-impact way of life. To achieve this, they integrate various aspects of ecological design, permaculture, ecological building, green production, alternative energy, community building practices, and much more (GEN, 2010).

In 1991, Robert Gilman defined an ecovillage by its five major principles: human scale, full featured settlement, human activities harmlessly integrated into the natural world, support for healthy human development, and a place that can be successfully continued into the indefinite future. Ecovillages have existed since the 60´s, although in 1998 ecovillages were first officially named among the United Nations' top 100 listing of Best Practices, as excellent models of sustainable living. It is a growing movement in worldwide scale (Gen, 2010)

METHOD

In order to accomplish the objective of the research, two ecovillages from the south of Brazil, Arca Verde and Karaguatá, were visited during the month of March 2010. The researchers spent a weekend in each site, camping and participating in the communities´ activities. The method used in this study approaches the interpretative paradigm from a philosophical perspective, departing from the belief that meaning is, at least in part, subjectively constituted (Burrel & Morgan, 1979). In terms of research execution, a qualitative method was used, perhaps better described as a short participant observation, or a pseudo participant observation. The word pseudo was not chosen randomly. Our intention is to make clear that our restriction of time used for data collection take us far from the typical anthropological and ethnographical studies (like the ones discussed in Silva, 2006). In order to avoid any misinterpretation, we prefer to say that our work is merely inspired on the participant observation data collection and on the cultural text analysis of anthropology. The reason why we used them is because they are effective research tools capable of uncovering and translating subjective dimensions of the phenomenon, a very appropriate approach for our research context (for a broad perspective see Ikeda, Pereira, & Gil, 2006). Data collection included field notes of the researchers with observations about the community life, material from the institutions websites, as well as 4 hours of filmed interviews with a total of 7 subjects. The filmed material became a videography published in the film festival of the 2010 EACR congress (European association for Consumer Research), with the same title as this article (Pereyron & Abdala, in press). The interviews were conducted freely, without a written script, having as goals to understand the ecovillage phenomenon from a permaculture perspective, and to connect it to the sustainable consumption. We decided not to use a prior formal conceptual framework in order to make a natural data collection, as free as possible from researcher’s previous schemes interventions. In the analysis process we started by separating our data in subjects. After splitting the categories of analysis we started relating the data to a theoretical framework and to the researcher´s subjectivity, in a non linear process known as triangulation (Arnould & Wallendorf, 1994). We believe that this natural and flexible approach is aligned with the topic studied.

RESULTS

Ecovillages and research participants

To start with the results section, a brief introduction about the ecovillages studied and the informants profiles will be exposed with the objective to contextualize the data.

Arca Verde Ecovillage

Arca Verde is a well developed ecovillage where 14 people live. It is located in the south of Brazil in a nice mountain region, one of the highest in the country, privileged by nature and surrounded by exuberant atlantic forest. According to the informants, there are usually more people than only the permanent inhabitants, with visitors and volunteers coming and going all the time. The site where Arca Verde is situated was originally built for a “fish & 5

pay”. There are six small houses that were once used as a hostel, but now are inhabited by the community, all of them by the lake. In five houses there are ecovillage families living in, while one is shared by the visitors and volunteers. There is also a communitarian house where the ecovillage kitchen is located, and a big round wood hut where all the meals and social reunions take place. Although the community has about five years, they moved city one year ago. They said their decision was based on two motives: staying closer to a town, making trading activities possible and getting more accessible for the visitors and volunteers, and living in a less cold place.

Figure 2. Ecovillage Arca Verde Source: Arca Verde (2010)

In Arca Verde we recorded interviews with 4 different people, two male and two female. They were interviewed in pairs, first the two females, then the two males. The two females have young babies that they were carrying during the whole interview process, which took about 45 minutes. Their names are Bruna and Anita. Bruna is a journalist and used to work as a video producer before creating the Arca Verde ecovillage along with her husband Leandro. Anita is a theater teacher and was Bruna´s friend before she came to the ecovillage. She has lived in the Arca Verde for one year, and her baby child was born there in a natural old-fashioned childbirth, counting with the help of a local midwife. The two males are Leandro and Marcus. Leandro, who is graduated in advertising, is married to Bruna and is one of the founders of the ecovillage. He and her are very eloquent speakers and have strong political perspectives Marxian oriented, what is clear in Leandro´s speech about the alienation of the repetitive labor in the factories, and in Bruna´s explanation about the surplus division in the community. Our last subject in Arca Verde is Marcus, a Brazilian that lived for 10 years in Germany and moved recently back to Brazil, what is perceivable in his reminiscent German accent.

Karaguatá Ecovillage

Ecovillage Karaguatá is in the countryside of the very south state of Brazil, 120 kilometers far from the capital Porto Alegre. This ecovillage is new and small, with three houses, a communitarian space and three families living in - two couples, one with two kids, and a single guy that is helping with the bio construction of one of the couple´s unfinished sustainable house.

The social life is also different from Arca Verde; the meals are not always communitarian and the families live more independently, though their houses are constantly opened. In this ecovillage model, permaculture principles are all taken seriously, but with less emphasis in the economic and social dimensions. There are a few communitarian activities, like programmed visiting, open house on Saturdays, and some educational projects conducted along with the local schools, but they are more directed to make and sustain relations with the local community. In Karaguatá we interviewed three people in different moments. Aquiles was the first, he is the founder of the ecovillage and lives in the main house with his wife and two kids. He is a graduated doctor and attends patients in an office built inside the ecovillage. The other informant is Felipe, a biologist and university teacher who is about to finish the construction of his house. The last is Bira, who has been working with bio constructions for over ten years. He has a house in Karaguatá, but refers to himself as a wanderer. He travels all over the country helping people starting their own ecovillages, with his practical experience on green constructions. He is currently aiding Felipe on his house, which uses, for example, cartwheels as windows.

Ecovillages and Permaculture

Results help clarifying the permaculture and ecovillage concepts from a practical point of view. In this sense, permaculture is more than just an efficient system for managing forests and lands, extending the complexity of its structure to an economic, educational, and social perspective. As Bruna stated: “since permaculture was conceived to create conditions for permanent life on earth, it is naturally preoccupied with a social and an economic dimension, questioning production logic, human relations and consumption habits”. Still, according to Bruna:

Permaculture has an ethic that follows three principles: (1) taking care of the earth, treating her as it was our sister, in a sense that we are all her children, the earth is our mother, so instead of saying that the earth belongs to us, we belong to her; (2) taking care of the people, the social permaculture; and the last one, (3) sharing the surplus, so it also related to economic sustainability.

The perspective brought by Bruna has a lot of remarkable points, aligned to Holmgren (2007) central permacultural issues: people, their buildings, and the way they organize themselves. It also has something to do with the evolution of permaculture “from the search for a permanent or sustainable agriculture, to the vision of a permanent sustainable culture” (Holmgren, 2007, p. 2). We also note that the way she talks about Earth as a mother, as a living being, is much likely the perspective of many native tribes and the greek mythology of Gaia (Lovelock, 2006) Another interesting point is the notion of economic surplus, a clear reference to Marxian thoughts on socialism and communism. For Marx, when people work together for survival and share the results of their labor, they get free from being treated as goods that are bought and sold in the job marketplace, having free time to develop their talents (Eagleton, 1997). Another important issue in permaculture is the concept of energy. One of the premises behind the original work of Molison (2002, p.5) is that “the loss of agricultural soils is largely due to the excess application of energy - mechanical energy and also chemical energy”. This 7

idea was also expanded in the actual permaculture perspective, according to which, all of our actions imply in energy spending, therefore humans spend much more energy that necessary in almost any imaginable task, from gardening to shopping. For Aquiles, we as a society have been separated from the natural cycle of energy investing and harvesting, what has transformed our lives into a kind of illusion, something like the matrix metaphor, as follows:

Permaculture has this sustainability dimension. It takes us to a logic which we interfere less and have more in return. There is a speed in nature and I have to wait. I plant the seed and I have to wait for it to sprout, to grow, to mature, and then to harvest. And my relation to the supermarket is different. In nature I have to invest energy, and it is very interesting because I invest energy and wait. I go there again, invest and wait. It works on cycles of expansion and contraction, action and rest, until comes the moment when I can have the fruit, I can harvest it, and in the supermarket is different. I go there, I get my money, I go to the supermarket, I get the mature banana, go home and eat. We live a speed illusion when we enter this process, because nature does not work like that. Nature is cyclic.

Aquiles told us that he always disliked the accelerated lifestyle of the city. One of his main motivations to found the Karaguatá ecovillage was exactly this “inner call”, in his own words, for a more peaceful and calm life. Actually, all the subjects studied have the same type of motivations as Aquiles, something they cannot express clearly, simply naming it “the calling”. It seems that the ecovillage motivational process is mainly subjective and hard to situate on time, not being associated to a singular event. Also, there is a spiritual dimension implied in this “calling”, a mystical and mysterious atmosphere that could be associated with the idea of life mission, or role in the universe. In fact, researching on the internet we perceive that many ecovillages have the spiritual dimension well developed. In Arca Verde, for instance, there is a group meditation every morning before breakfast. Permaculture is also directly linked to ecovillages, in the sense that these communities take the ecologic interactions and systems design proposed by permaculture as a main guideline. With almost no exception, ecovillages are directly related to permaculture thinking. In our sample we perceived special focus on three dimensions of permaculture: social (community and education), sustainable (harmless to the environment), and econonomic (solidarity and local living economies). Starting with the sustainability preoccupation, the bio or green constructions are a main concern in the Ecovillages. In both, there are a great number of solutions with low budget technology. Some of them were developed by the local ecovillagers and some were adapted. As Bira, the bio constructor specialist, said: “in permaculture sometimes is hard to copy what other people do, because since we use resources locally available, realities change, so ideas must also change… there is a lot of experimental research. We try, if it works, we keep it”. Felipe, who is building a sustainable house, also discussed this issue: “I have to build a wall. My project was to make it from rice straw, but there are no rice cultures around here, so I decided to use the eucalyptus straw, which is a material abundant in the surroundings.” As Aquiles exemplified, everything is designed trying to cause the less impact possible, like the multifunctional clay stove they built in the kitchen:

(in Karaguatá) We take the permaculture principles very seriously into consideration. We have dry a bathroom, so we don´t contaminate the water with stool. We recycle the gray water. We heat our shower with a solar water heater. The same heater that warms the water can also be used in the stove, and in the sauna which, by the way, is

not working now. So, the stove also dries food and heats the room in the winter season. It has many functions, saving energy.

In Arca Verde they also reuse gray water for watering plantations, use reforest wood to heat the water, have a rain cistern collector for washing, and keep a composter to make organic fertilizer with the organic trash. Arca Verde is a good example of how each ecovillage and permaculture design are unique. Before moving to the new city, the community had a history of 4 years in another place where they had a lot of green technologies well developed, like grass roofs, permanent food production, wind energy and houses fully built from recyclable materials. Even with all that previous experience, they are taking a long time to develop the new property, since conditions and characteristics change, making many projects not possible to be replicated. Moving to the social dimension of the ecovillages, we notice that sharing is a main feature of the permacuture way of living. For Felipe: “the concept of ecovillage has always been about living together, cohabiting with the people that are here, the people that comes and goes, and with the nature, the plants, the animals.” In Arca Verde we found intense community interaction, which is a premise of the place, as explained by Bruna:

Here we stretch this view of sustainability beyond ecological sustainability. We also pay great attention to the social sustainability because we understand think that life on earth won´t continue for the next generations if we, human beings, do not learn to live in peace. And this involves rebuilding communitarian relations.

With only rare exceptions, all the meals take place in the hut, and are shared by everybody. Weekly tasks are assigned, some are routines, like cooking, gardening, collecting woods and turning on the fire of the water heater, others are contingences like designing, building and fixing the houses and eco technologies. There are also some communitarian activities and gathering that function like social tools, with the objective of improving life in community (governance) and creating a social sense. One of these moments is the “sharing”, a reunion that happens every week in which people “share what emotionally is happening to them, so it helps creating empathy. This way I understand and connect to what the other is feeling” (Anita). In another passage of the same interview, Bruna reinforces the notion of group and community in Arca Verde by stressing out the importance of uniting the cultural differences, and how they are used by the group, again reminding of a Marxian type of thinking.

Our basic cohabiting pacts are to consider the talent of one, the talent of all because we are a group, so if you know permaculture design, bio construction, and she knows about theater and education, and another one knows how to carve wood, the whole group has all this knowledge. I don´t have to know it all because I know I can count on your talent as well. This way we also avoid envy and jealousy because we salute what is best in the other. We don´t have to be greedy about each other, because what the others know, you know too. There is also a notion of cycle and movement always present in the discourses. It seems that the ecovillages are in constant change, always transforming, receiving people, new ideas, and new activities. It never stops, and there seems to be no strong attachment to property, as Aquiles shows: “for me ecovillage is this space where we share something with

people that comes. We offer what was built by everyone that has passed here for the ones that arrive. And those who arrive use our structure and help building more for the next.”

Sustainable Consumption

In general, subject’s ideas about consumption and sustainability are based on the premise of individual responsibility for the future of the planet. Implied in this logic it is a sense that personal choices can make a difference, and that human being is beyond the acceptable limits of materialistic life. Felipe clearly expressed this concern referring it as a suicidal logic:

I think that is in the consumption dimension that we make our biggest mistakes as a society. The market ends up influencing people in the consumption direction. They say you have to buy it, because you have to help the economy, create more jobs, create development, so people won´t starve. This is a suicidal logic.

Furthermore, careful observation on the communities consumption practices, created the perception that the “5 R´s” of sustainability (reduce, reuse, renew, recycle and rethink) are fully integrated in their lifestyle. The first principle, to reduce, seems to be naturally seen as a deep commitment to reassessing which consumption habits are essential. This is exemplified in the following speech: “…after I was producing almost all my food I began going to the supermarket once a month. This made me stop buying a lot of things I used to, and now I don´t miss them at all. So I ask myself if they were real needs. I don´t think so”. This attitude approaches the voluntary simplicity concept, already described in the consumer behavior literature as “choosing to limit material consumption in order to free one’s resources, primarily money and time, to seek satisfaction through nonmaterial aspects of life” (Huneke, 2005, p.528). Another sentence reinforces this idea: “the big change in my life is based on rethinking and reducing my needs, thus, reducing my consumption.” The second principle, to reuse, has direct application in the bio constructions sphere. In one of the houses, the rooftop thermal isolation is made of used milk boxes. In another, the windows were once cartwheels. These sorts of examples are typical to the permacultural ecologic way of life. The third principle, to renew, is seen on furniture refurbishing. The fourth, to recycle, is all over the ecovillages. For instance, in both of them, the water drained from the taps and showers, known as “gray water”, is recycled for watering the gardens. They also turn all the organic food leftovers in a compost used as organic fertilizer. The fifth and last principle, to rethink, seems to be related to the impact of conscious consumer choices on the world. According to the ecovillagers it implies: changing perception of products value based exclusively on their usage; rejecting products and services that are supplied by huge international companies and/or companies that don´t have a public environmental and social friendly policy; preferring local products, since they spend less energy in transportation and create a monetary flow that benefits local economy; and last, but not least, reassessing the “need” concept, or rethinking consumption practices from a broader framework of life priorities.

Leandro from Arca Verde summarized their social and political engagement in changing the consumerist logic:

We believe that the change happens from bottom up. If people start changing consumption habits we create a shift in demand, a shift in the market. People say “the market demands the perfect fruit”, like it was a superior entity, however, we are the market. All we consume is an investment in what we are buying, not just an individual act. Ask yourself what is the social, economical and ecological impact of what you are consuming. With that notion in mind we buy organic food, for example, and this money, this energy, goes to the organically agriculture that has a different consciousness, that has different habits, that buys in the local market. This way we redirect the economic flows. If we buy a highly industrialized product from a multinational it goes to the big cities, the big industries and the money never comes back to us.

It does not mean that they are denying or refusing the technological advances. At least is what Bruna says:

Technology itself is a good thing, we are not here to live without internet, without using computer, without watching a movie in a big screen, but we have to think of technologies and things in general by their usage value, and not for intangible concepts like status. So that is basically it, we try to know the face of the people that supply us with the things we don´t have, and produce all goods we can in here. Yes, like dental powder to brush our teeth, shampoo, soap for washing dishes, for washing clothes.

FINAL DISCUSSION

As expected, the ecovillage and permaculture research context turned out to be rich and complex, “an intrinsically very interesting phenomenon”, in the words of the reviewer of the homonymous videography. Like in any new research theme, this study brought some contributions and a lot of new questions. Observing the communitarian lifestyle, we perceive that ecovillages are built upon seriously altruistic values. The permaculture principles behind it are multidimensional, with emphasis given to the ecologic, social and economic themes. There seems to be a general feeling of well being in the simple life of the communities’ inhabitants. There is no luxury, no excess, not many material goods, but everyone who is there is doing it consciously, not because they need it, but because they believe it. Here we faced a limitation in our data collection. We could not extract from the informants clear statements about their motivations to live in an ecovillage, perhaps because they do not have a clear notion of their reasons. We think this doubt could be solved with a longer and more extensive participant observation, which would allow more insights into the general subjectivity of the community. In the sustainable consumption area, ecovillages seem to have a lot to teach, especially on bringing to discussion the need to rethink our habits and reassess our lifestyles. Fundamental issues in marketing practice and research were questioned by the informants, such as inflating product value based on intangible characteristics, like perceived obsolescence. In a voluntary simplicity logic, the fast pace of innovation does not make much sense. The big corporations hegemony was also questioned by Leandro when he said that consumers should “reject products and services that are supplied by huge international 11

companies and/or companies that don´t have a public environmental and social friendly policy”. Behind this thought we notice an orientation based on the Marxian confrontation philosophy. This attitude was studied in broader contexts like in Klein, Smith and John (2004) consumer boycott phenomenon research. Another perspective that emerged from the data is the economic solidarity. According to Miller (2004, p.7) “solidarity economics is a tool that can work to encourage collective processes of building diverse, locally-rooted and globally-connected, ecologically sound, and directly democratic economies outside the control of either the capitalist Market or the State”. This was exemplified in the preference for local products, since they spend less energy in transportation and create a monetary flow that benefits local economy, and also in the image of knowing the “face of your supplier” created by one of the informants. Since the subject it is out of the scope of this research we decided not to explore it. Further developments on this issue should be made in other studies. Last, but not least, the concept of human material needs was openly criticized. To live a simpler life requires a reduction on the market dependence based on rethinking consumption practices from a broader framework of life priorities. Finally, it seems safe to state that the ecovillagers have advanced knowledge on sustainable consumption, both in practice and in philosophical dimension. During the data collection, more than one informant referred to the ecovillages as “a reference in terms of diversity and alternatives, another way of living and facing life”. As far as sustainable consumption is concerned, they seem to be standing up for their goals. In terms of consumer behavior theory, this research stream still needs development, but the ecovillages seem to be integrated in the new consumption communities (NCCs) phenomenon, described as groups of localized people questioning the supremacy of marketing and business, more generally represented by large brands and multinational corporations (Szmigin & Carrigan, 2003). This study is only a first effort in the project of understanding the sustainable communities in the consumption perspective. Many opportunities for further researches unfold, including their not so clear motivations to exist, and the more subtle dimensions of daily communitarian life. Eventually, in the future, we hope to comprehend better what permaculture and ecovillages have to teach us about a lifestyle that can help maintaining life on Earth.

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