Ecovillages in Spain: Searching an emancipatory social transformation?

Abstract

Today the second most important country after the United States, in the number of ecovillages, and by far, the most prominent in Europe, is Spain. The question to be addressed here is whether this revival or boom of ecovillages in Spain is an incipient social transformation and cultural change, following Erik Olin Wright theory of emancipatory social transformation. This work is divided into five main sections. The first one introduces three different approaches that remark the importance of ecovillages for radical cultural and social studies. The second part explains the methodology performed for the study of 29 ecovillages in Spain, using six critical variables on material interests and ideology, following Wright’s concepts. The third section explored the set of arguments that are mobilized to support and create an ecovillage project in Spain, and its relationship with the neo-rural movement and grouped in two categories: ideology and material interests. The two final sections present some results on the analysis performed for 29 cases, and a discussion on social reproduction practices performed by ecovillages, dividing it between conventional and interstitial strategies, to contrast the discourse of ecovillages with Wright’s theory.

Keywords

• ecovillages
• neo-rural
• spain
• social transformation
• anarchism