ABSTRACT
Ecocultures show that, across diverse contexts, it is possible to build and maintain societies that value nature and community. Such communities demonstrate both resilience and high levels of well-being. It considers possibilities for scaling up ecocultures from communities to larger neighbourhoods, towns, cities and whole nations. Ecocultures are, working at a very local level, and in some ways could be said to exist at the margins of global capitalism. Ecocultures teach us that sustainability and resilience can only be achieved if there are strong connections to nature and the land, as well as to other people within communities. Yet the real struggle is to transform existing, high-consumption, unsustainable communities, towns, cities and nations into ecocultures, challenging dominant ways of life and discourses of development. The ecocultures discussed in this book do not provide all the answers by any means, but they may offer an impetus to change existing social and economic systems, whether at neighbourhood, city or national level.
