Unveiling Everyday Reflexivity Tactics in a Sustainable Community

Abstract

Approaches to enhancing sustainability have largely focused on altering individual consumption behaviors. However, this focus on the individual consumer has been recently critiqued because the behavior of individuals is situated within wider socio-cultural contexts. Thus, the sustainability research agenda is shifting away from individual consumers towards understanding consumption practices, social networks, material infrastructures and organisations of various forms in which consumption is problematized and consumption choices are reflected upon and negotiated. These social spaces need to be understood if change is to be truly achieved. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in an Irish ecovillage, we examine how ecovillage members negotiate sustainable consumption at the everyday level. Analysis reveals how members of the ecovillage employ tactics that encourage reflexivity in the everyday. Specifically, these reflexive tactics work together to confront routine consumption, create alternative infrastructures that support sustainability, and foster critical engagement.