Presentation short abstract

Communal bakehouses are real existing fragments of a (former) rural degrowth economy. I aim to understand how these, sometimes still operated, commons produce concrete utopias and if they point towards emancipatory or regressive ruralities. I explore this in an ethnographic triangulation.

Presentation long abstract

Just 70 years ago, communal bakehouses were the basic infrastructure for the daily supply of bread in Germany. In many villages, these historic commons are still used for various occasions throughout the year and are considered by the people as part of their rural traditions. In my research, I want to understand this potential fragment of a rural degrowth economy. The spatialization of degrowth policies points to rural areas, mainly due to the availability of resources and situational degrowth practices. At the same time, rural regions appear to be left-behind places, inhabited by people with often reactionary ideas. Through communal bakehouses, I want to understand how materials, practices, and imaginaries interact and produce ruralites. I ask what concrete utopias arise at the bakehouse and what emancipatory or regressive moments they exhibit. One challenge is how I can question and record hidden latencies in addition to more or less obvious tendencies. I attempt to address this in my field research through a triangulation of participant observation, interviews, and an art-based workshop. In my presentation I want to lay out the theoretical and methodological basis of my research and share some first insights from my fieldwork.