‘Staying with the Trouble’ in a self-managed agricultural collective

Abstract

The relationship people have with the future shapes emotional states and affects social practices. In this regard, it has a fundamental heuristic value for anthropology to understand political imaginaries. Based on long-term participant observation in self-managed neo-peasant collectives in the Massif Central (France), this account aims to approach the imaginary of one of the protagonists of the ‘back to the land’ movement. Inspired by ethnographic notes and excerpts from interviews, this ethnographic fiction deals with different temporal arrangements created by people who decided to live and work collectively. Refusing to seek certainty, or a coherent political strategy, they embrace multiple and sometimes antagonistic relationships to the future and social struggle. They create a daily life that allows them to inhabit the disorder and the uncertainty: they ‘stay with the trouble.’

Keywords: Neoruralism, Future, Anarchy, Rural