Finding Arcadia : ecological agriculture and the art of being in community

Abstract

Humanity’s future is dismal as long as it continues to exist devoid of community with each other and with Nature as a whole. To better observe being-in-community, this study analyzed ecological agriculture, a practice in which the well-being of the farmer is reciprocally tied to that of the land, as analogous to the more comprehensive relationship between humans and Nature. This study used photo elicitation, a method which integrates photographs by and interviews of the five participating ecological farmers, and a phenomenological lens to discern the convivially physiological art of being-in-community: listening to all voices as equal and possessing value and contribution; making room for chaos, the unexpected; learning, from a place of not-knowing; where the inevitability of impermanence is embraced, incorporated, reconstituted as a simultaneity of what was, what is, and what will be; where the quintessence, self, reconciles paradox, crystallizing diversity into the unity of community.