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Neo-Liberal Thinking in Eco-Villages:-Need for Concern?

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Neo-Liberal Thinking in Eco-Villages:-Need for Concern? Neo-liberal thinking in Eco- villages:-need for concern? Cultural Sociology Project University of Southern Denmark Esbjerg Cultural Sociology- Social Transformation Processes Gunnar Lind Haase Svendsen 13th of June 2016 Cultural Sociology project 2016 Table of Contents Neo- liberal Thinking in Eco-villages: -Need for concern? ........................................................................................2 Introduction and Research Question ...................................................................................................................2 Theoretical Approach ...........................................................................................................................................3 Actor Network Theory .........................................................................................................................4 Neo-liberal thinking .............................................................................................................................5 Operationalization of the theory .........................................................................................................5 Methodology ........................................................................................................................................................6 Interview, observation and participant observation ...........................................................................6 Presenting the Organisation, the Eco-villages, the Informants and Cases of Study ...........................6 Short presentation of LØS – Organisation of Eco-villages in Denmark ...............................................6 Short presentation of `Village 1´ -and the informants and “The Shelter” project ..............................7 Short presentation of `Village 2´ -and the informants and the Café .................................................8 Analysis .................................................................................................................................................................8 Map of the network .............................................................................................................................8 The Shelter Case in `Village 1´ .............................................................................................................9 The case of the Café in `Village 2´ .................................................................................................... 12 The Nature of Facts – natural science in dispute with the rest of society ....................................... 12 The types of studies done – in which sense can social science be empirical ................................... 13 Production and Reproduction of Neo-liberal Mentality .................................................................. 14 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................... 14 Three questions for the oral exam .................................................................................................................... 15 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................................................... 16 1 Cultural Sociology project 2016 Neo- liberal Thinking in Eco-villages: -Need for concern? Introduction and Research Question Being part of a global trend, the Danish journalist Jørgen Steen Nielsen argues for transformation and circular economy focusing on sustainability as an alternative to the focus on growth in the Western capitalistic societies. New attempt and alternative lifestyles; slow-food, perma-culture and ecological footprints are advocated as answers when issues around the economic and ecological crisis are addressed. This trend has created an increased interest in alternative communities, like eco-villages, which have received huge attention and there are new eco-villages popping up all over the country in these years, reflecting an increased interest in assimilating a more green and sustainable lifestyle, and move into an alternative community (Nyheder, 2016) In the established eco-village this interest has increased the focus on their communities when people are searching for inspiration. The idea of structuring the communication with these new increased masses of people showing interest in their lifestyle has developed a focus among the communities on how to communicate their concepts. Alongside there is a focus on how to create possibilities for business opportunities inside the eco villages and I discovered a workshop opportunity on Facebook called `Ecovillages and Business opportunities´ on the Facebook page of the organisation LØS (Community of Eco-villages in Denmark). The workshop was going to be on xxx …, and I attended this workshop as an observer. The agenda of the workshop had three points, and especially one of the items on this agenda had caught my attention, namely part C saying; “How are we getting costumers for the Eco-villages as a learning environment? Who are the customers? Which needs do the customers´ have? What kind of developing possibilities do we see in the Eco-villages? Dilemmas in using the community as a learning environment?” (Økosamfund og Erhvervsmuligheder , 2016) This interest to incorporate business strategies into a community based on shared facilities and an alternative lifestyle must create dilemmas, which is address in the presentation, and I have set my-self up to do a research on the topic. My prejudice was, that people who wants to live in eco-villages, building their own sustainable house, having communal eating arrangements, growing vegetables together and putting a lot of effort into the fellowship of their communities, did all this because they have chosen an alternative to a more individualistic lifestyle, and actually wanted to escape the agenda of business, competition, consumerism and growth. I am curious about whether it is possible to combine this alternative lifestyle in Eco-villages with a more neo-liberal thinking. The research question is; 2 Cultural Sociology project 2016 What kinds of conflict occur when `business opportunities´ are being introduced to the eco-village community? How do the community handle these conflicts? Will new hybrid solutions occur? The theoretical approach in this research will be taken from Bruno Latour´s Agent-Network Theory, where he argues to redefine associations by deploying networks which I will unfold in the theoretical part and this will guide my research alongside an issue addressed by Julia Guthman, who has been studying neo-liberal thinking inside food activism in California. The analysis will be based on two different projects being discussed in the two eco-villages I have visited for this project. The empirical research has taken place in `Village 1´ and `Village 2´; both communities are members of LØS. Names of places and sites are changed to anonymise the people involved in the study. Attending the workshop in March I talked with two of the workshop facilitators and found out they had a project in process, which could be an interesting topic for this research. Two people from `Village 2´ attended the workshop and I chose to follow that track since `Village 2´ is the most alternative community in Denmark. `Village 2´ could be used as a critical case; if neo-liberal thinking influences this community it is likely that it can influence all alternative communities. A critical case is an extreme or atypical case used to increase generalisability by a strategical selection to provide the biggest amount of data on a specific topic. A critical case can activate basic mechanism on the subject. (Flyvbjerg, 2001) When I visited the two workshop participants in `Village 2´ they had not at all had any attention towards starting up any individual business in shared facilities, neo-liberal thinking only occurred in the hash market, which already was very well established and not at all my interest. Instead I was introduced to a new café being created to fill out a gap in the community for a non- alcoholic meeting point. Some interesting dynamic of the community occurs around this topic, and I have chosen to examine the hybrid initiative in the analysis. Theoretical Approach First I will make an introduction to Bruno Latours theoretical concept Actor-Network-Theory (ANT). Latour is interested in the dynamic relations between all phenomena. The theory is that all relations and connections create hybrids, and as a scientist we must focus on these dynamic networks, in order to understand the hybrids. (Blok & Jensen, 2009) ANT can be seen as an alternative to the more dominant approach in sociology namely the tendency to dichotomize into either of micro- and macrostructures when studying social phenomena. Instead of this dichotomization ANT wants to study the formation of heterogenic network, figured by all kinds of actors making alliances to create results they can benefit from. It is the construction of these networks that are at interest. (Olesen & Kroustrup, 2007) 3 Cultural Sociology project 2016 After introducing ANT I will introduce an article by Julie Guthman addressing neo-liberal influence in the agro- food area in California, because this neo-liberal influence is what I want to examine in the Eco-village context. Actor Network Theory Blok & Jensen (2009) explains that the nucleus in ANT is that no unit
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