Back-to-the-land movement
The back-to-the-land movement was a social movement based around the idea of living a self-sufficient life close to nature. It was characterized by the idea that everyday life is methodically practiced and based on a set of moral values or choices. For many people homesteading became a spiritual practice, giving meaning to daily life through adhering to values of simplicity and anti-consumerism.
Some of these choices include:
- How to build a home
- What type of energy to use
- How to subsist - this includes the decision whether to grow all of your food or to buy some, where to purchase what you need to buy
- Livelihood - whether to work at home or to work in the outside world, how to reconcile the desire to abandon consumerism and still make a living
These parameters were self-imposed; members of the back-to-the-land movement were limiting themselves at a time when it became clear that contemporary American culture put few limits on consumerism. Back-to-the-landers chose to be at nature's mercy and to live with the inconveniences that this may entail. By using solar or wind power and other environmentally benign forms of energy, for example, they were trading convenience for a life that fit their moral values. The trade-offs were self-sufficiency, simplicity, freedom and others that cannot be enumerated.
Although it traces its roots to Thomas Jefferson's agrarian vision and Henry David Thoreau's later practice in self-reliance, the back-to-the-land movement began in the mid-1960's as a counter to a growing urban/industrial culture. Its main purpose was to resurrect an agrarian way of life and to live within a self imposed set of guidelines that rejected many of the values of consumerism that were rampant in mainstream American culture. By the end of the 1970's the movement evolved into one in line with the growing environmental movement, as people became concerned with sustainable living and holistic living. The urban to rural migration that characterized the movement attempted to shed the materialism of the cities and replace it with self-sufficiency. One estimate says that by the end of the 1970s over 1 million people had moved to rural areas as part of the back-to-the-land movement. The widespread prosperity of the 1980's saw a decline in the number of people interested in leaving consumer culture for a simpler life, but the 1990's have seen a trend back to a more environmentally conscious lifestyle. Figure for a social movement such as this are hard to quantify, making it difficult to get a precise count of the number of people currently living back-to-the-land.
Perhaps the most well known back-to-the-landers are Helen and Scott Nearing who have written extensively about their experience living what they term "the good life".