40

This paper aims to study the connection between deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation process in rural eco-cohousing projects. Their labels might vary, from “ecovillage” to “eco-community”, but we can reduce all of them to a group of people who choose to settle in a rural environment in order to achieve high ecological standards of living. We want to understand how this peculiar style of protest, that some has called “prefigurative”, changes their relation to territory. Both in the trajectories of the inhabitants and in their discourses, we observe that this style of protest emerges from ordinary urban lifestyles, which are perceived as impersonal and standardised. It also comes with criticisms of the existing dominant repertoire of oppositional collective action. The consequence is a mobilisation process that comes out of the housing space and targets the nearby local environment. Autochthony becomes a desirable goal, whereas the modern norm of mobility has depreciated it. This quest for autochthony might be condemned to be incomplete, but it will have long-lasting socialisation effects.