The reframing of labor and intentional communities
Work, intencional Communities, ecovillage
History has accumulated, over time, lasting relationships and inflections until it reaches the present moment. This trajectory created, at a given point in history, capitalism as a model of social production and reproduction, thus transforming it as social relations. By acquiring new productive forces, society also changes its mode of production and, by changing it, transforms the way of living and working. In this context, everything becomes a commodity (MARX; 1978), from nature to the human being. Now the human act is dominated by one of his creations: the commodity. This avoids control and age by automatically oppressing its creator (MARX; 1978). The consequences of this mode of production are visible, for example, in environmental disasters that become routine and precarious work and quality of life of the great mass of the population. Human associations based on cooperation, solidarity and self-management appear to enhance human development in its entirety (GILMAN; 1991) and, therefore, not measured solely by monetary gain to members. These practices can be observed in intentional communities and, due to a new phase of social exploitation and environmental degradation on a global scale, arise a specific type of community called ecovillage, which is motivated, mainly environmental and peaceful. In these communities the work may be oriented not exclusively to the market and the production of goods. To elucidate how work in these communities can be re-signified from the relationship between their inhabitants and the natural environment is the central objective of this thesis. To this end, immersion in the field took place through an ethnographic journey in four intentional communities, the National Meeting of Alternative Communities and the creation of an intentional community called Ants Community.