Striving Intentionalities: Vision and Practice in Cloughjordan Eco-village

Abstract: Eco-villages are intentional communities whose ultimate purpose is to provide alternative ways of living that are locally rooted, self-reliant, socially supportive, and ecologically sustainable. The issues that hinder these communities from realizing their vision and aspirations are the main draw of this study. Grounded in a six-month fieldwork, the present inquiry focuses on a particular intentional community project which is still at an early stage of implementation—Cloughjordan Eco-village (CEV). Accordingly, the forthcoming analysis and discussion endeavours, on the one, to grasp and interpret CEV’s vision in the light of the intentional communalism canon and different currents of green thinking and, on the other, to identify and comprehend some of the issues that have been challenging the translation of the enterprise’s aspirations into practice.