Abstract
Although the dystopian and utopian academic literature on technology present either a pessimistic or optimistic picture of its societal impact, people's everyday uses of technology often counter such views. This paper examines the selective uses of technology, and particularly communications technology, in the everyday practices of homesteaders, or members of the ‘back to the land’ movement in Bloomington, Indiana, USA. Using an ethnographic approach, this study analyzes how homesteaders' ideology of voluntary simplicity informs their complex, everyday engagement with technology.
Notes
1. Homesteading is continually expanding. When Jacob Citation(1997) began his pilot homesteading study in 1981, he estimated that several million people nationwide had adopted homesteading. It waned during the 1980s, but the early 1990s' recession revived some people's search for rural ‘recessionary and psychological security’ (Jacob Citation1997, p. 3).
2. This study refers to respondents using pseudonyms.