Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how French back-to-the-landers combine feral walks, meditation, shamanistic rituals and other practices aimed at overcoming nature-culture distinction with their desire to create environmentally sustainable societies.

Paper long abstract:

Willingly and unwillingly, anthropological writing has contributed to common knowledge and imagination about other social worlds that are radically different from ours, which could be leveraged in the context of imminent ecological disaster and political impotence. As the shadow of climate change looms ever greater, French ecologists find inspiration in the post-dualist approaches developed by such scholars as Phillippe Descola, Bruno Latour and eco-feminists. This paper explores how French back-to-the-landers combine feral walks, meditation, shamanistic rituals and other practices aimed at overcoming nature-culture distinction with their desire to create environmentally sustainable societies. It shows how the long history of Western yearning for radical alterity, particularly that which resonates with utopian imageries, confers anthropology to a particular place in Western thought, and how it is prone to romanticize alterity without effectively challenging the tenants of Western modernity.