ABSTRACT

Living in an ecovillage requires that people reinvent everyday practices. It involves new forms of production, consumption, social organization, and subjective constitution, aiming toward the normative goal of achieving greater “sustainability.” Based on ethnographic research in Western Switzerland, this paper focuses on uncovering the nexus of power relations, social practices, and empowerment in daily life in an ecovillage. We find that power relations and social practices are intertwined, leading to different outcomes regarding empowerment. Procedures, understandings, and forms of engagement constitute social practices; however, power relations can either cause or constrain the rearrangement of practices toward different forms of individual and community empowerment, whereby some practices “orchestrate” others.

摘要

生活在生态村需要人们重新改造日常实践。它涉及新的生产形式、消费形式、社会组织形式和主体构成，旨在实现更大的“可持续性”这一规范目标。本文基于瑞士西部的民族志研究，重点揭示生态村日常生活中的权力关系、社会实践和赋权之间的关系。我们发现权力关系和社会实践相互交织，导致关于赋权的不同结果。程序、理解和参与形式构成社会实践；然而，权力关系可以导致或限制实践的重新安排，以实现不同形式的个人和社区赋权，从而一些实践“协调”其他实践。