Disconnecting from Technology on Hare Krishna Farms

Abstract

This paper is part of a comprehensive study made on three Hare Krishna farms in the context of climate change and sustainability transitions. The overall purpose was to identify enabling and disabling factors for the wider diffusion of sustainable Krishna practices. This work reports only on one aspect of the research, namely de-technologizing tendencies, and their reasons, in Hare Krishna communities. Ethnographic research was carried out on three Hare Krishna eco-farms — Scotland, England and Hungary. Apart from observations and participatory action, twenty-nine interviews were conducted to tease out details of Hare Krishna practices such as land cultivation, cow protection, eating and food sharing. The tenets of a ‘New Economics’ or ‘postgrowth’ literature were applied to analyse the community's de-technologizing practices. Findings reveal that first: a radical de-technologizing characterises the lived experience of community members on Hare Krishna eco-farms. Second: Krishna practices harmonise with a New Economics concept which promotes simplification and demand-side resource reduction as a precondition for transitioning to a sustainable future. Academic publications studying the Hare Krishna community have largely focused on the group's religiosity, but this paper positions it as an environmental movement. To date, the connection between Hare Krishna lifestyle practices and sustainability transitions has not been presented. Connecting the believers’ lived experience to the tenets of the New Economics notion is a unique contribution to the sustainability transitions literature and related fields.