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My research focuses on ecovillages and other sustainability-oriented intentional communities. This is a growing, global movement composed of groups of people who have deliberately come together to live in particular places with the aim of creating a more sustainable society. These communities are reducing their social and ecological impact through cooperative action, economic communalism and relocalization, personal behavioral change, and cultural transformation. As such, these communities serve as living laboratories for sustainability.
My doctoral research was a comparative study of two sustainability-oriented intentional communities in western North Carolina. While constructing a broad ethnographic portrait of life in these communities, I focused primarily on people’s motivations for choosing to live an ecovillage lifestyle and on the larger social and cultural forces within which this most recent wave of intentional communities has arisen. My current research takes a more extensive view of the global ecovillage movement, revealing the various networks through which communities that are by nature local maintain global links of communication, shared experience and assistance. I am also involved in research that aims to measure sustainability in ecovillages. As an applied, environmental anthropologist, I aim to use my knowledge of these communities to help shape policy, make the transition toward sustainability in existing communities more effective, and educate tomorrow’s environmental leaders.
For more information see the overview of the department's research in sociocultural anthropology.
Introduction to Environmental Studies - Social Sciences; Sustainable Intentional Communities
Lockyer, Joshua
Forthcoming. “From Developmental Communalism to Transformative Utopianism: An Imagined Conversation with Donald Pitzer.” Invited Contribution. Communal Societies 29(1).
2008. From Earthships to Strawbales: Sustainable Housing in Ecovillages.” Photo essay. Anthropology News 49(9):20.
2007. Sustainability and Utopianism: An Ethnography of Cultural Critique in Contemporary Intentional Communities. Ph.D. Dissertation. Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia.
Lockyer, Joshua and James Vetetoe
2008 “Environmental Anthropology Engaging Permaculture: Moving Theory and Practice Toward Sustainability.” Culture and Agriculture 30(1):47-58.
