The Construction of Eco-Spiritual Corporealities in Ecological Villages

This article presents the results of a research study focused on the experience of inhabiting two ecovillages in central Colombia, based on the definition and characterization of a specific type of corporeality embodied by dwellers, visitors, and volunteers of two intentional communities—one of them of a religious nature—in the department of Cundinamarca, Colombia. As an ethnography, it aimed to present a dense description of the discourses and practices of the religious-spiritual axis, conscious consumptions, and experiences of work and education, constituents of eco-spiritual corporealities of the three types of actors that inhabit these neo-rural spaces seeking to unlearn the urban worlds and learn those of rurality. In theoretical terms, it sought an articulation between anthropology and phenomenology in a bet called phenomenological anthropology, in which bodies and corporealities do not appear abstract or devoid of a framework of power relations that defines and constrains them. The originality of this anthropological research lies in offering renewed and situated understandings of the work on oneself based on a trust in the collective, that is, a social body strengthened through networks and alliances; the transformation of everyday life through frequent and/or permanent and voluntary abandonment of the city to seek to emulate peasant and indigenous lifestyles; and the understanding of how notions and experiences of nature-environment, work, and education are constructed in ecovillage contexts from which the contemporary modality of eco-spiritual subject derives, in the integration of a being in the world that re-signifies itself in its re-learned relationship with the environment, the subject of devotion and imitation, and the religious-spiritual experience.