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ECOVILLAGES 267
other by kinship; they meet and organize themselves into a community along
ideological lines. They want to create a settlement that fits into its natural
environment as efficiently as possible and without harming it. To this end, they
use nature-friendly technigues and adopt an ecological lifestyle in all aspects of
their lives (architecture, waste management, wastewater treatment, farming,
housekeeping, transport, low consumption, voluntary simplicity, recycling). They
consider all this to be locally feasible, based on the idea of localisation — a local,
self-sufficient, autonomous community. This is a reflection on the so-called new
opacity of modern societies: the aim of simplifying the system is to increase security.
They believe that the means of counteracting undesirable ecological, economic,
and social processes are small-scale, autonomous, and community-based settlement
and living which are sustainable in the long term, with the potential to protect the
natural environment and provide meaningful human life and well-being. It also
provides independence from the dominant systems and survival in the event of
collapse. As the ecovillagers put it, the goal is to ‘cut the umbilical cord’, i.e. the
infrastructural and social networks that create dependency. A key element of their
way of life is the quest for self-sufficiency, which has several motives, all of which
are closely linked to the issue of security and risk: In the case of food, producing
one’s own food is seen as a way of becoming independent from industrial agriculture,
the food industry and trade, which, if they were to collapse, would make it
impossible to feed people, besides ensuring a ‘clean’, risk-free supply of food that
is considered safe from a health point of view.
In addition to loving, protecting and living in harmony with nature, living in
a community is at least as important a motivation for them; the movement has a
strong emphasis on community, a strong desire for community, a kind of
community-based vision of everyday life (Halfacree 2007: 132).
The concept of the ecovillage is based on scientific findings such as theories of
sustainability, systems theory, applied ecology, human ecology, etc.’ In addition,
the ecovillage movement draws on a variety of ideological and spiritual worldviews
(environmental philosophy, eco-spirituality, green religion, etc.)", all of which have
an important role in redefining the relationship between humans and nature, and
emphasizing human responsibility.
There is probably no single ecovillage that fully corresponds to these definitions,
so most definitions are not a synthesis of existing ecovillages, but rather a set of
objectives and directions. They themselves are aware that their current way of life
cannot yet be considered self-sufficient or independent, so it is more accurate to
say they are experimenting with self-sufficiency, independence and autonomy.
They are well aware (especially those who have tried or are trying it) that this idea
and aspiration is rather utopian. They therefore emphasize its experimental nature
and also the importance of this experiment.’
Hungarian ecovillages have been created in a variety of ways and places. The
ecovillage Gyürüfü was built on the site of an extinct settlement and the Visnyeszéplak
7 In ecovillages, one can also find several residents engaged in scientific work, who themselves
contribute to the scientific discourse on agricultural science, ecology, sustainability, etc. through
lectures and writings.
See the chapters on Environmental Philosophy, Religion and Ecology.
That is what the title of a study by an ecovillage founder, Imre Kilian, alludes to: Sustainability
locked in a test-tube (Kilian 2007).