6.2 | Building a common vision among assentados can support the maintenance of cooperative collective dynamics
Evidence from ecovillages indicates that sustaining a community throughout time can be facilitated by the presence of a common vision, as it can aid in the resolution of interpersonal conflicts and in the creation of a common background that facilitates common agreements [7:86, 45:01].
As an ecovillager said,
This is a lesson brought not only by ecovillages but also by assentamentos. In the pre-establishment phase, during encampment, there is a strong common vision of fighting to obtain their own piece of land, which contributes to stronger cooperative collective dynamics [7:32]. However, once the land is obtained, this common vision disappears and is usually not replaced by another. This lack of shared vision seems to be correlated with a progressive decrease in cooperative collective dynamics; in those assentamentos where a common vision apparently remained present, cooperation seems to be higher—like in Terra Vista or COPAVA. As an interviewee stated, the shorter the encampment phase, the more fragile is the "community"; the longer the period of encampment, the higher the chances of having people that will later become MST leaders [11:52].“first you have to create a vision [...] you have to know what the community is for. And only then you can decide if something is really against the vision, and only [these] objections are accepted. The emotional 'no, I don't want it because I'm afraid of something', this doesn't count anymore” [51:27].
Therefore, in order to endure, assentados in the encampment phase could determine a common vision that can persist after an assentamento’s establishment—a vision other than “conquering land”. As an interviewee said,
This vision, however, should be broad enough to be consistent with a wide diversity of individual views and to allow for adaptation [49:14]. It also needs to be specific enough to serve as an anchor for identity and an end-of-line criterion in collective decision-making. To obtain that, assentados could engage in activities—facilitated by professional group moderators—where they could collectively deal with conflicts, discuss the present and future, and arrive at a decision supported by consensus.“if people come together to occupy a land, and from the very beginning they have this vision of having their own plot, their own house, and their own garden, then I actually think it's a challenge to switch to this communal idea later on” [41:86].
In order to maintain a common vision across time, assentados need spaces and tools to effectively deliberate and evaluate the vision’s consistency with their initiatives and plans. As expressed by an interviewee in Sieben Linden, keeping a common vision that does not become futile in time implies the organization of periodic plenary meetings in which the vision is brought to the fore:
“Why are we doing this? Why are we trying so hard? What is the effect we want to cause in the world?" [45:03].
Ecovillages’ experiences indicate that a successful process of common-vision creation and maintenance is far from being intuitive, and that new experiences could profit from accumulated know-how about its facilitation. This includes not only helping assentados define and keep a common vision, but also empowering them to better deal with interpersonal conflicts—an essential skill given that isolating themselves from others implies critical opportunity costs (i.e., losing out on the potential benefits of cooperative collective initiatives, as argued in the analysis above).
>>> 6.3 | More room for experimentation can strengthen sustainability know-how