The social construction of norms in an ecovillage setting : the talking circle

The purpose of the paper is to present a particular aspect of norm construction in an ecovillage setting. After a brief presentation of the ecovillage movement worldwide and the contextualization of the target, the analysis will focus on the practice of the talking circle, i.e. a consensus-reaching process that is used nowadays in many ecovillages and intentional communities. The hypothesis relies on the talking circle as a significant collective element, among others, towards the social construction of norms and, at the same time, as an important expression of the normative system in the context of analysis -and potentially in other similar settings. The empirical approach has been based on participant observation in the field and interviews to selected informants.