Faces of sustainability in Italian ecovillages: food as contact zone'

Ecovillages are intentional and experimental communities that embrace ecological values and green consumption practices which result in a sustainable lifestyle considered the best response to the global ecological crisis. The main ecovillages' goal is to regenerate social and natural environments through communal living, refounding a dimension of proximity with the land and the natural environment. Environmental ecology is primarily pursued focusing on self-sufficient food production and alternative farming methods, such as permaculture and organic farming practices. The use of these methods represents a way to criticize the economic logic of equivalent exchange, preferring instead a culture of gifting and the establishment of relations of reciprocity and solidarity on a small scale. In this way not just a particular and specific food style is put in practice, but an holistic view of living, characterized by a new political-aesthetics in which pleasure, conviviality and restoring relationships of trust and sharing become essential in the pursuit of personal satisfaction and in the construction of taste, following a process of individual and environmental renaturalization. The article is based on ethnographic data related to my ongoing doctoral research on the topics of sustainability and food self-sufficiency in Italian ecovillages. The research adopts a qualitative methodology, involving participant observation and a period of field work in the ecovillages located in Tuscany and in the South of Italy in Apulia region. These ecovillages are part of the Italian Ecovillage Network that interacts with the more broad international web called Global Ecovilaage Network.