When the personal is political: dynamic intentions and the social phenomenology of teaching/inhabiting eco-communities of practice

This paper draws attention to the interpersonal skills to be learned from intentionally designed communities of practice that societies need to cultivate in future to tackle global climate change. I draw on participatory action research from ten years as a founding member of a core group struggling to develop an affordable, intergenerational, Passivhuis eco-community in the UK. Over the same time, I have applied intentional community ideals to my academic teaching practice at a UK university, cultivating active experiential learning on issues of social and environmental justice. I reflect on some of the real and perceived conflicts of interest straddling the insider-outsider status of an academic and cohousing community of practice. A social phenomenological framework highlights a social, directional, ‘skilful coping’ with a world which is understood and worked out in joint action, as an imperative to negotiate different values among peers (whether students or neighbours). This conscientious listening and learning contrasts with the shared understanding of environmentally responsible behaviour implied but not fully realised in classroom teaching and ordinary neighbourhoods. This analysis highlights the neglected and intangible ‘do-it-together’ characteristics of forming, finding, and maintaining eco-communities of practice. Attention is drawn to the group-processes required for students to consciously reflect on their own personal development and for residents to jointly participate in the design and management of their home environment. Similarities are drawn between these different forms of self-producing and self-organising ‘community of practice’ in the sense that each has created a social phenomenology in the social life they produce (Escobar 1992).