A Model of Sustainable Living: Collective Identity in an Urban Ecovillage

Abstract

Ecovillages are burgeoning communitarian phenomena in postindustrialized countries whose members push for ecologically sustainable change. The author situated a case study of an urban ecovillage in the social movement literatures on political opportunity structures and collective identity construction in an endeavor to bridge macro-structural movement and micro-identity construction theories. Using participant observation and interview data from ecovillagers, she answers three research questions to investigate how ecovillagers’ collective goals for sustainability are negotiated in the context of regulations and dominant consumer ideologies. Informed by literatures on collective identity, the author asked, “What are ecovillagers’ goals? What work do they do in their everyday lives to achieve these goals?” Additionally, to understand villagers’ interactions with political opportunity structures, she asked, “How do members negotiate actions within a larger political environment that both facilitates and constrains them?” From her data, she determined how ecovillagers conceptualize their collective identity and actions within the context of constraining institutions.