LIT_081: Lockyer (2017) — Community, Commons, and Degrowth at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage

LIT_081: Lockyer (2017) — Community, Commons, and Degrowth at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage

Source

doi:10.2458/v24i1.20890 — original publication (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)

Summary

Peer-reviewed political-ecology paper by anthropologist Joshua Lockyer (Arkansas Tech University), part of the Journal of Political Ecology’s 2017 “Degrowth, culture and power” Special Section. Using ongoing participatory action research (PAR, with graduate collaborator K. Brooke Jones, 2013–2015 field seasons), it documents Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage (DR) — ~65 people on 280 acres (113 ha) of former farmland in rural northeast Missouri, USA — as a working degrowth model. The paper’s contribution to Neobiome is its quantified per-capita resource-consumption dataset: electricity, propane, water (public + rainwater), solid waste/recycling, vehicles, travel miles, and fuel, each benchmarked against US per-capita averages, plus a happiness/quality-of-life survey. Across these key consumption areas DR members live on ~10% of the resources of the average American while maintaining high perceived quality of life — this is the PRIMARY source behind the “10% of US per-capita” figure that LIT_012 (Bluesmith) and LIT_020 (Skrzypczyński) previously carried second-hand, and behind the cases/dancing_rabbit.md case page. It also details the commons/land-trust governance model (collective landholding, cooperatives, vehicle co-op, ecological covenants, consensus→village-council decision-making) relevant to the thesis argument. Advocacy-framed (explicit activist-researcher / PAR stance) with self-reported and estimated field data — data_quality: medium.

Key claims

Site & population

• Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is ~65 people on 280 acres (113 ha) of recovering industrial farmland in rural northeast Missouri, USA, founded mid-1990s; ~35 of 40 full community members reside on the community’s land, plus ~30 exploring membership. (source_location: p.523–524 + fn.2) LIT_081

Electricity (D01)

• Average DR resident consumes 744 kWh per person per year, which is 18% of the average American’s 4,168 kWh per person per year (an 82% reduction), achieved while members largely self-supply via renewables and export more renewable energy to the grid than they draw. (source_location: p.532) LIT_081
• Electricity is provided through the Better Energy for Dancing Rabbit (BEDR) power cooperative, which operates 25 kilowatts of solar panels and is grid-connected; DR’s covenants allow grid connection only if the community exports twice as much renewable energy to the grid as it draws; in 2012 it put 3.5 times as much renewable energy back into the grid as it took out. (source_location: p.532 + fn.10) LIT_081

Water (D03)

• Total water use is 20 estimated gallons (91 litres) per person per day — public supply 7 gallons (32 L)/capita/day plus rainwater catchment 13 gallons (59 L)/capita/day — which is 23% of the average American’s 88 gallons (400 L). (source_location: p.533–534) LIT_081
• DR gets 35% of its water from public supply and 65% from self-supplied (rainwater) sources, versus the average American community’s 87% public / 13% self-supplied split. (source_location: p.534) LIT_081

Solid waste & recycling (D03)

• DR participants produce 0.2 pounds (0.09 kg) of solid waste and 0.6 pounds (0.27 kg) of recycling per person per day (0.8 lb total) — 18% of the average American’s total municipal solid waste — and recycle at 73% of total MSW versus the average American’s 34% (over double the national recycling rate). (source_location: p.528–529) LIT_081

Transport & fuel (D05)

• DR has 0.06 cars per capita (an average of 67 Dancing Rabbit Vehicle Coop users sharing 4 vehicles), which is 8% of the US rate of 0.8 cars per capita (92% less); community members may not keep personal motor vehicles on common land. (source_location: p.529) LIT_081
• Local vehicle travel averages 899 miles (1,447 km) per user per year versus the average American’s 9,455 miles (15,216 km) — under 10% of US usage (>90% reduction); total vehicle fuel is 28 gallons per person per year (18 petroleum gasoline + 10 biodiesel) versus the American 466 gallons — 6% of total fuel use, 4% of petroleum fuel use. (source_location: p.529–531) LIT_081

Propane / cooking gas (D01/D03)

• DR members use 22 therms of propane per person per year, equivalent to ~5% of the average American’s 417 therms of natural gas per year; propane (trucked-in) is the only fossil gas used, primarily for cooking, as covenants bar fossil fuels for space heating/cooling, refrigeration, and domestic hot water. (source_location: p.526 + p.532) LIT_081

Aggregate degrowth benchmark (I09)

• Across a number of key consumption areas, DR members live on approximately 10% of the resources used by the average American while remaining “as happy as or happier than many other segments of the public” — evidence that material degrowth is achievable without significantly sacrificing quality of life. (source_location: p.537–538) LIT_081

Quality of life (I07/I10)

• On a happiness survey, 81% of participants reported happiness with life at DR of 7 or above on a 1–10 scale, and 88% rated DR a 4 or 5 (“good” or “extremely good”) place to live — on par with mainstream Seattle-resident responses, despite the community arranging life around significantly decreased resource use. (source_location: p.535) LIT_081

Commons & governance model (I01/I05)

• DR is built on common-property arrangements: a land-trust model that takes land out of the speculative market (members lease small plots for a monthly fee and own only their on-plot improvements, making land “permanently affordable”); collective ownership of roads, paths and common buildings; smaller cooperatives owning showers, laundry, internet and utilities; a four-vehicle co-op; and a community currency (ELMs). Governance evolved from full-group consensus to a representative village council deciding by consensus, with annual community retreats. (source_location: p.524–526) LIT_081
• DR codifies six “ecological covenants” — no personal motor vehicles; no fossil fuels for vehicles, space heating/cooling, refrigeration, or domestic hot water; organic-only (OCIA-standard) agriculture with no petrochemical biocides; all on-site electricity from sustainable sources with any imported electricity offset by exported renewable generation; reused/reclaimed/locally-harvested or certified-sustainable lumber; and waste systems that reclaim organic and recyclable materials. (source_location: p.525–526, Fig.2) LIT_081

Movement scale (thesis context)

• The Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC), of which DR is a hub, maintains a database of over 2,500 intentional communities worldwide; a DR nationwide speaking tour based on this research reached ~2,700 people in thirty communities, organisations, and institutions. (source_location: p.523, p.538) LIT_081

Neobiome Intelligence relevance

This is a primary, whole-community consumption dataset for a long-running degrowth ecovillage — the empirical anchor behind the “10% of US per-capita” benchmark the wiki already cites second-hand (LIT_012, LIT_020) and the primary that upgrades cases/dancing_rabbit.md from a stub. Its value to NI is as an international demand-side comparator / low-consumption lifestyle envelope and a community-scale renewable-sizing datapoint (25 kW PV serving ~65 people, net-export covenant), not as an NZ model-input cell — the figures are US-based, self-reported/estimated, and the author flags several as overstatements (water and electricity include business and agricultural use). No NI token is claimed.

SSI connections

• I09 Environmental sustainability — the headline ~10% per-capita resource footprint and the domain-by-domain consumption reductions (electricity 18%, waste 18%, water 23%, fuel 6%, propane 5%, vehicles 8%) as a demand-minimisation benchmark.
• I07 Fulfilment of basic needs — energy, water, and mobility needs met at ~10% of mainstream consumption while sustaining high measured quality of life; concrete demand-side evidence that low-throughput living satisfies needs.
• I05 Good governance & transparency — commons/land-trust governance, cooperatives, consensus→village-council decision-making, and codified ecological covenants as a working self-governance model.
• I01 Financial/economic sufficiency — qualitative model only (no cost figures in this paper): the land-trust mechanism de-commodifies land (permanently affordable leaseholds) and cooperatives share infrastructure cost; DR cost-of-living figures (rent $150–450/mo) come from LIT_012, not here.

EDT connections

• D01 Renewable energy & storage — 25 kW community solar PV via the BEDR cooperative, grid-connected net-exporter operating under a 2×-export covenant.
• D03 Water, waste & circular — rainwater catchment supplying 65% of water demand (13 gal/cap/day), low total water draw, 0.2 lb/cap/day solid waste, 73% recycling rate, and waste-reclamation covenant.
• D05 Smart mobility & transport — a four-vehicle co-op (0.06 cars/capita, >90% travel-mile reduction) with biodiesel conversion and a no-personal-vehicle covenant.

Research targets

Documents to retrieve

• RT_052 (still open — separate paper) — Boyer, Robert H. (2016) “Achieving One-Planet Living through Transitions in Social Practice: A Case Study of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage,” Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy 12(1):47–59, doi:10.1080/15487733.2016.11908153 — the ecological-footprint methodology study for DR; distinct from this Lockyer paper and not superseded by it (this paper explicitly does not compute an ecological footprint, p.527 fn.6).

Research gaps

• The Jones (2014a) master’s thesis (“Toward sustainability: assessing progress at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage,” University of North Texas) is the fuller write-up of the same field dataset — only pursue if per-indicator method detail is needed for calibration; not raised as a new RT (low incremental value; the headline figures are captured here).
• No new RT raised for the Lancaster Cohousing solar+biomass+micro-hydro infrastructure that RT_062’s row erroneously expected from this paper — that residual stays on LIT_014 (Pickerill 2023), re-pointed there (see package CROSS_EDITS), not re-minted.

Notes

• Advocacy / PAR framing → data_quality: medium. Peer-reviewed, but explicitly activist-researcher participatory action research; consumption data is self-reported or estimated (propane covers ~80% of the community; rainwater is estimated with a 50–80% correction factor, not metered) and the author repeatedly notes the DR figures likely overstate consumption relative to the US comparators (DR numbers include business, agricultural and outdoor use; the US baselines are residential-only). Numbers all trace to the raw, but the methodology is soft and US-based — treat as a comparator, not a precise input.
• Unit typo in the raw: the solid-waste total is printed as “0.8 pounds (3.6kg)” (p.528) — 0.8 lb = 0.36 kg, not 3.6 kg (the component figures 0.09 kg + 0.27 kg confirm 0.36 kg). Key-claim above quotes the unambiguous pound figures.
• DOI omitted deliberately. The paper prints no DOI in the raw. RT_062’s DOI 10.5751/ES-09840-220403 is a mis-attribution (that DOI belongs to Ecology & Society). Do not reuse it. Cite by journal/volume/pages (J. Political Ecology 24: 519–542).
• Resolves RT_062 AND RT_075 — both research-target rows are this one paper (RT_075, raised from LIT_020, is the accurate row; RT_062, raised from LIT_014, is the erroneous one). See package RT_ROW.
• Primary-source upgrade for cases/dancing_rabbit.md — the case page was a stub citing only LIT_012 (secondary) and awaiting Boyer/RT_052; this paper is the primary that adds the granular per-capita dataset. See package CROSS_EDITS.

Connections

Referenced by

SSI indicators (4): I01: Financial & Economic Self-Sufficiency · I05: Good Governance & Transparency · I07: Fulfilment of Basic Needs · I09: Environmental Sustainability

EDT domains (3): D01: Renewable Energy & Storage Systems · D03: Water, Waste & Circular Systems · D05: Smart Mobility & Electrified Transport

Sources (2): LIT_014 · LIT_020

Cases (1): Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage