ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines how an ecovillage, an ecological cohousing community, like the early environmental movement in the United States, has focused myopically on environmental sustainability for an upper-middle-class, predominantly white community. Creating ecovillages is not the most efficient way to address the ills of a growing consumer society. However, ecovillages present people with an opportunity to engage in a conversation to change, collectively reflect on the way a capitalist society has contributed to social and environmental degradation, and include space to critically explore the efforts to solve those ills. Too often the work and painful negotiations that go into ecovillage projects are glossed over-sometimes by those who are closest to their development-in an effort to show only the positive outcomes. The contribution of ecovillages to that search for the right way to live within an overbearing culture of capitalism is recognized.