The power of perception: building a better world, one ecovillage at a time

The stories we tell ourselves about the world are very powerful things. Although these narratives are often invisible to us, cultural and personal worldviews influence perception and shape everything that people think, say, and do. Recognizing the transformative power of stories, my thesis explores the worldviews of ecovillagers. Proponents of ecovillages position these communities as healthier alternatives to mainstream Western settlements in terms of their physical impact on the environment, as well as the social, emotional and spiritual well-being of residents. My thesis explores these claims, as well as several related questions: • How do ecovillagers describe their perceptions and experiences of the world? • What aspects of their life experiences helped develop their worldviews? • To what extent do ecovillagers in different communities share worldviews? • How is spirituality experienced, described, and enacted by ecovillagers in their daily lives, and what takes its place (if anything) for non-spiritual residents? • To what extent do the worldviews, values, and actions of spiritual and non-spiritual ecovillagers overlap? To explore these questions, I use phenomenology with a mixed-methods approach combining participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and discourse analysis. My study sites included four ecovillages in North America where I lived and worked for a week at a time, engaging in many different aspects of community life. By doing this work, I seek to contribute to the growing literature on ecovillages, as well as to suggest several promising options for altering destructive cultural worldviews in socially just and environmentally sustainable ways.