Journal of Public Policy and Administration

| Peer-Reviewed |

Sustainability and Resilience in the Collaborative Economy: An Introduction to the Cloughjordan Ecovillage

Received: 30 October 2018    Accepted: 15 November 2018    Published: 17 December 2018
Views:       Downloads:

Share This Article

Abstract

The background of this work reflects the global emergence of an economic anti-paradigm on the model of the Collaborative Commons, alarmed by climate change and the gaping economic inequalities. The Commons intend to address the devastating consequences of a predatory capitalism for nature and society by introducing new and radical forms of ownership, governance, entrepreneurship, and financialisation on a mission to promote sustainability, decentralisation, democratic self-governance and equitable distribution of value. In this framework, this paper aims to offer an introduction to the Cloughjordan ecovillage, which represents a notable case of the collaborative economy in Ireland. Its objective is to examine the Cloughjordan ecovillage through the prism of sustainability and resilience. To this end, I conducted a three-month fieldwork on a mission to explore the normative and empirical aspects of the Cloughjordan ecovillage, focusing on sustainability and resilience issues. The results of this research show that, despite the financial and operational difficulties the ecovillage has faced due to the economic downturn of the last decade, it has proved resilient enough to sustain a community living in terms of a collaborative economy.

DOI 10.11648/j.jppa.20180204.12
Published in Journal of Public Policy and Administration (Volume 2, Issue 4, December 2018)
Page(s) 49-60
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Cloughjordan Ecovillage, Collaborative Economy, Sustainability and Resilience, Commons-based Peer Production

References
[1] Castoriadis, C., 1991. Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, edited by David Ames Curtis, New York: Oxford University Press.
[2] Papadimitropoulos, E., 2016. The rational mastery in the work of Cornelius Castoriadis. Cap. Nat. Soc., http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2016.1267784.
[3] Hulme, M., 2014. Can Science Fix Climate Change? Cambridge: Polity Press.
[4] Habermas, J., 1996. Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity: Critical Essays on The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, edited by Maurizio Passerin d'Entrèves and Seyla Benhabib. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
[5] Wright, R. T., 2007. Environmental Science, Toward a Sustainable Future, Pearson Educa­tion International, p. 24.
[6] Dedeurwaerdere, T., 2013. Sustainability Science for Strong Sustainability. Report prepared in the context of the public tender on a Scientific Report on the Organisation of Scientific Research, with the support of the Minister for Sustainable Development and Public Administration of the Walloon Government of Belgium, pp. 6-61.
[7] Jerneck, A., Olsson, L., Ness, B., Anderberg, S., Baier, M., Clark, E., Hickler, T., Hornborg, A., Kronsell, A., Lövbrand, E., Persson, J., 2010. Structuring sustainability science. Sustainability Science, 6: pp. 69-82.
[8] Kirby, P, O’ Mahony, T., 2018. The Political Economy of the Low-Carbon Transition Pathways Beyond Techno-Optimism. UK: Palgrave MacMillan.
[9] IPCC., 2014. Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R. K. Pachauri and L. A. Meyer (eds)]. Geneva: IPCC.
[10] World Bank, 2012. Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4° Warmer World Must be Avoided. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
[11] World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), 1987. Our Common Future, New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press.
[12] Lankao, P. R., Gnatz, D. M., Wilhelmi, O., Hayden, M., 2016. Urban sustainability and resilience: from theory to practice. Sust. 8, 1224; doi:10.3390/su8121224, p. 3-4.
[13] Markard, J., Raven, R., Truffera, B., 2012. Sustainability transitions: An emerging field of research and its prospects, Res. Pol. 41: pp. 955– 967.
[14] Vos, R. O., 2007. Defining sustainability: a conceptual orientation. J. Chem. Tech. Biotech. 82: pp. 334-339.
[15] Fisher-Kowalski, M., Swilling, M., 2011. Decoupling: natural resource use and environmental impacts from economic growth, United Nation Environment Programme: Paris, France, 2011.
[16] Solow, R. M., 1974. Intergenerational equity and exhaustible resources. Rev. Econ. Stud., vol. 41, issue 5, pp. 29-45.
[17] Dasgupta, P. S., Heal, G. M., 1974. The optimal depletion of exhaustible resources. Review of Economic Studies: Symposium on the Economics of Exhaustible Resources, Edinburgh: Longman. pp. 3-28.
[18] Daly, H. E., Farley, J., 2011. Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications. Washington, Island Press.
[19] Kostakis, V, Niaros V., Dafermos, G., Bauwens, M., 2015. Design global manufacture local: exploring the contours of an emerging productive model. Fut. 73: pp. 126-135.
[20] Kalis, G., Demaria, F., Alisa, G., 2014. Degrowth, in: D’Alisa, D., Demaria, F., Kallis, g. (Eds.), Degrowth: a Vocabulary for a New Era, New York: Routledge, pp. 1-17.
[21] Latouche, S., 2009. Farewell to Growth. Cambridge, MA: Polity.
[22] Daly, H. E., Cobb, J. B., Cobb, C. W., 1994. For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future, USA: Beacon Press.
[23] Ostrom, E., 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY.
[24] Hess, C., Ostrom E., 2007. Understanding Knowledge as a Commons. From Theory to Practice. Massachusetts: The M. I. T. Press.
[25] Benkler, Y., 2006. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.
[26] Bollier, D., Burns H. W., 2012. Green governance: ecological survival, human rights and the law of the commons, in: Bollier, D., Helfrich S. (Eds.), The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market & State, Amherst: Levellers Press, pp.342-352.
[27] Kostakis, V., Bauwens, M., 2014. Network society and future scenarios for a collaborative economy. Palgrave Macmillan.
[28] Metcalf, B., 2004. The Findhorn Book of Community Living. Findhorn: Findhorn Press.
[29] Keen, S., 2001. Debunking economics. The naked emperor of the social sciences. Australia: Pluto Press.
[30] Vatn. A., 2005. Institutions and the Environment. USA: Edward Elgar, p. 212.
[31] Baland, J. M., Bardhan, P., Bowles, S., 2006. Inequality, Cooperation and Environmental Sustainability, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
[32] Funtowicz, S., Ravetz, J., 1993. Science for the post-normal age. Fut. 25: pp. 739‐755.
[33] Arrow. K., 1962. Economic welfare and the allocation of resources for invention, in: Nelson R. (Eds.) The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 609–625.
[34] Berkes, F., and Turner, N. J. 2006. Knowledge, learning and the evolution of conservation practice for social-ecological system resilience. Hum. Ecol. 34(4), pp. 479-494.
[35] Benkler, Y., 2002. Intellectual property and the organization of information production. Int. Rev. L. Econ. 22, pp. 81–107.
[36] Rifkin, J., 2014. The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, The Collaborative Commons, and The Eclipse of Capitalism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[37] Pazaitis, A., De Filippi P., Kostakis, V., 2017. Blockchain and value systems in the sharing economy: The illustrative case of Backfeed. Tech. For. Soc. Ch., http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2017.05.025
[38] Giotitsas, C., Ramos, J., 2017. A New Model of Production for a New Economy, Two Cases of Agricultural Communities. New Economics Foundation.
[39] Papadimitropoulos, E., 2017. From the crisis of democracy to the commons, Soc. Dem., Vol. 31, No. 3, p. 110-122.
[40] Foucault, M., 1969. The Archaeology of Knowledge, London: Routledge.
[41] Glaser, B., Strauss, A., 2006. The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Strategies for Qualitative Research. USA: Aldine Transaction.
[42] SPIL, 2007. The Village Ecological Charter, version 5, Cloughjordan: SPIL.
[43] Kirby, P., 2017. Cloughjordan ecovillage: modelling the transition to a low-carbon society, in: Garcia, E., Martinez-Iglesias, M, Kirby, P. (Eds.) Transitioning to a Post-Carbon Society: Degrowth, Austerity and Wellbeing, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 183–205.
[44] Bauwens, M., 2005. The political economy of peer production. C-Theory: 1000 Days of Theory. http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499 (accessed 16 May 2016).
[45] Goodland, R., Daly, H., 1996. Environmental sustainability: Universal and non-negotiable. Ecol. Appl. 6 (4): pp. 100-1013.
[46] Kostakis, V., Latoufis, K., Liarokapis, M., Bauwens, M., 2016. The convergence of digital commons with local manufacturing from a degrowth perspective: two illustrative cases. J. Cl. Prod., http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.09.077.
[47] Holling, C. S., 1973. Resilience and stability of ecological systems. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 4: pp. 1-23.
[48] Carpenter, S. R., Westley, F., Turner, M. G., 2005. Surrogates for resilience of social-ecological systems. Ecos., 8, pp. 941-944.
[49] Connolly, J., 2007. The village in Tipperary: Ireland’s first large-scale ecovillage. Com. No. 135, pp. 24-75.
[50] Cunningham, A. P. 2014. Exploring the efficacy of consensus-based decision-making. Intern. J. of Hous. Mar. and Anal., 7(2), 233–253. doi:10.1108/ijhma-06-2013-0040.
[51] Espinoza, A., Walker, J., 2013. Complexity management in practice: a viable system model intervention in an Irish eco-community. Eur. J. Op. Res. 225, pp.118-129.
[52] Winston, N., 2012. Sustainable housing: a case study of the Cloughjordan Ecovillage, Ireland. Adv. in Ecop., Volume 9, pp. 85–103.
[53] De Filippi, P., Hassan, S., 2016. Blockchain technology as a regulatory technology: from code is law to law is code. Fir. Mon. 21(12) #7113-5657.
[54] De Filippi, P., 2015. Translating commons-based peer production values into metrics: towards commons-based cryptocurrencies’, in: David L. K. C. (eds.), Handbook of Digital Currency. Elsevier, pp. 463-483.
[55] GEN website: http://gen.ecovillage.org/en/what_is_an_ecovillage (accessed 8 February 2018).
Author Information
  • Department of Anthropology, Free University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Vangelis Papadimitropoulos. (2018). Sustainability and Resilience in the Collaborative Economy: An Introduction to the Cloughjordan Ecovillage. Journal of Public Policy and Administration, 2(4), 49-60. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jppa.20180204.12

    Copy | Download

    ACS Style

    Vangelis Papadimitropoulos. Sustainability and Resilience in the Collaborative Economy: An Introduction to the Cloughjordan Ecovillage. J. Public Policy Adm. 2018, 2(4), 49-60. doi: 10.11648/j.jppa.20180204.12

    Copy | Download

    AMA Style

    Vangelis Papadimitropoulos. Sustainability and Resilience in the Collaborative Economy: An Introduction to the Cloughjordan Ecovillage. J Public Policy Adm. 2018;2(4):49-60. doi: 10.11648/j.jppa.20180204.12

    Copy | Download

  • @article{10.11648/j.jppa.20180204.12,
      author = {Vangelis Papadimitropoulos},
      title = {Sustainability and Resilience in the Collaborative Economy: An Introduction to the Cloughjordan Ecovillage},
      journal = {Journal of Public Policy and Administration},
      volume = {2},
      number = {4},
      pages = {49-60},
      doi = {10.11648/j.jppa.20180204.12},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jppa.20180204.12},
      eprint = {https://download.sciencepg.com/pdf/10.11648.j.jppa.20180204.12},
      abstract = {The background of this work reflects the global emergence of an economic anti-paradigm on the model of the Collaborative Commons, alarmed by climate change and the gaping economic inequalities. The Commons intend to address the devastating consequences of a predatory capitalism for nature and society by introducing new and radical forms of ownership, governance, entrepreneurship, and financialisation on a mission to promote sustainability, decentralisation, democratic self-governance and equitable distribution of value. In this framework, this paper aims to offer an introduction to the Cloughjordan ecovillage, which represents a notable case of the collaborative economy in Ireland. Its objective is to examine the Cloughjordan ecovillage through the prism of sustainability and resilience. To this end, I conducted a three-month fieldwork on a mission to explore the normative and empirical aspects of the Cloughjordan ecovillage, focusing on sustainability and resilience issues. The results of this research show that, despite the financial and operational difficulties the ecovillage has faced due to the economic downturn of the last decade, it has proved resilient enough to sustain a community living in terms of a collaborative economy.},
     year = {2018}
    }
    

    Copy | Download

  • TY  - JOUR
    T1  - Sustainability and Resilience in the Collaborative Economy: An Introduction to the Cloughjordan Ecovillage
    AU  - Vangelis Papadimitropoulos
    Y1  - 2018/12/17
    PY  - 2018
    N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jppa.20180204.12
    DO  - 10.11648/j.jppa.20180204.12
    T2  - Journal of Public Policy and Administration
    JF  - Journal of Public Policy and Administration
    JO  - Journal of Public Policy and Administration
    SP  - 49
    EP  - 60
    PB  - Science Publishing Group
    SN  - 2640-2696
    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jppa.20180204.12
    AB  - The background of this work reflects the global emergence of an economic anti-paradigm on the model of the Collaborative Commons, alarmed by climate change and the gaping economic inequalities. The Commons intend to address the devastating consequences of a predatory capitalism for nature and society by introducing new and radical forms of ownership, governance, entrepreneurship, and financialisation on a mission to promote sustainability, decentralisation, democratic self-governance and equitable distribution of value. In this framework, this paper aims to offer an introduction to the Cloughjordan ecovillage, which represents a notable case of the collaborative economy in Ireland. Its objective is to examine the Cloughjordan ecovillage through the prism of sustainability and resilience. To this end, I conducted a three-month fieldwork on a mission to explore the normative and empirical aspects of the Cloughjordan ecovillage, focusing on sustainability and resilience issues. The results of this research show that, despite the financial and operational difficulties the ecovillage has faced due to the economic downturn of the last decade, it has proved resilient enough to sustain a community living in terms of a collaborative economy.
    VL  - 2
    IS  - 4
    ER  - 

    Copy | Download

  • Sections