Ecovillages as Incubators for Sustainability Transitions (EVIST)

2018-2023

Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Netherlands, Norway, Senegal, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, Ukraine, USA, Argentina, Costa Rica, Mexico, China, Thailand, Italy, Israel, Spain, New Zealand

This project studied how ecovillages contribute to local sustainability transitions in different settings by drawing upon a boundary-work perspective. Scholarship on sustainability transitions regards grassroots initiatives as important sources of innovation towards more sustainable societies. Ecovillages are grassroots initiatives that operate as testing grounds for sustainable practices and often diffuse these practices into their local social environment. To diffuse sustainability innovations, ecovillages have to interact with their local social environment. However, creating successful exchanges is challenging, as ecovillage communities are likely to differ in their values and worldviews from their social environment, organise their activities along dissimilar structures, and develop substantially different lifestyles. These differences create boundaries between ecovillages and their local social environment and risk deterring the required collaboration. The boundary-work perspective suggests that boundary-bridging arrangements create the needed interfaces between ecovillages and their local social environment. Boundary-bridging arrangements are social arrangements that facilitate communication between actors from different social worlds without endangering their boundaries. The types of boundary-bridging arrangements (e.g. boundary objects, boundary organisations) vary according to the specific context (e.g. entrance points for sustainable innovations, extent of differences between ecovillage and local social environment). The EVIST project addressed the following research question: What boundary-bridging arrangements facilitate the local diffusion of ecovillages’ innovations in different settings? To address this question, it employed a mixed-method approach involving four empirical research phases: (1) explorative context studies, (2) quantitative survey of ecovillages in different countries, (3) qualitative in-depth case studies, (4) triangulation and comparative analysis. The project substantially enriches the research on ecovillages and grassroots innovation with empirical insights into their innovation capacities. It presents a new boundary-work perspective on the diffusion of grassroots innovations and generates knowledge about boundary-bridging arrangements that facilitate the diffusion of sustainability innovations under varying contextual conditions.

Analysis in process, to be published/updated. See project website for overview of publications: https://ecovillages.theologie.unibas.ch/en/publications/