Community Ecopsychology: Widening Connections to Catalyze Change

Community Defined

As a species, humans are social beings, having evolved by closely living in kinship groups. Pinker (2014) identifies the profound impact of severing from this social evolution. “Feeling lonely is as painful as being wildly hungry or thirsty … human brains evolved at a time when social cohesion meant survival while social isolation meant starvation, predation, and certain death” (p. 12). Although networked technologies can do many wonderful things, they cannot make a person feel less existentially alone. Humans inherently need to be in some sort of community.

In simple terms, “community” generally refers to a group of people with something in common. The word community comes from the Latin communis, which means shared in common. According to the Collins dictionary (2021), the two general characteristics of a community include a group of people living in the same place, or a group of people sharing certain attitudes and interests.

From a historical perspective, the classic Western concept of community was first articulated by Ferdinand Tönnies in 1887 (translation by Loomis 2021). He observed the loss of community due to the disintegrating influences of commercialization and industrialization. Tönnies constructed the concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, which, respectively, translate to community and society. These concepts represent a historical spectrum of the Western ways of social living. Tönnies observes that every community could be more Gemeinschaft-like or more Gesellschaft-like.

The Gemeinschaft community is modeled on the historic village or small town. Characterized by strong inclusive social ties among members, holistic views of individuals and families, trust, and familiarity support core relationships in the community. There is an intangible feeling, or invisible spirit, of community.

Gesellschaft appears in the form of the urban or industrial city and the modern suburb. Residents in these settings have weaker social ties and are often interpersonally alienated. This alienation occurs because people are primarily linked to their community by their roles or careers. Their contribution to society is mechanistic and the majority of relationships are transactional. An absence of community feeling and a lack of strong place-based social ties contribute to promoting individualism over community. Bradshaw (2008) rightly observes that something is lost in groups that are not place-based communities. A local vacuum occurs through a lack of collective social–ecological action and bonding social capital.

The processes of modernization that created community change, and Gesellschaft, continue in new forms. In a highly mobile society where people are linked by various interests rather than traditional hometowns, communities are tied to the world of high technology. Bradshaw (2008) refers to these as post-place communities. Communities of interest, professional organizations, and virtual groups, such as the Canadian Ecopsychology Network, are all examples of post-place communities. Conflating computer-driven networks with face-to-face contact reflects a social trend. This technological evolution of community generates many social–ecological problems and paradoxes: 1.

The fluid and weak social ties contribute to high levels of individual alienation and an overall decrease in community feeling.

As ecopsychologists dedicated to healing relationships with the natural world and dissolving the illusory human–nature divide, we intuitively know that the concept of community must naturally extend beyond the human world. The field of community ecology continually reminds us of all the interconnected ecosystems that comprise life on earth. And, research in this field is burgeoning. Bradshaw's identification of trans-species psychology (2010) and the recent study of Simard (2021) about communication with and between trees are just a couple of examples.

Also, we would like to propose that the concept of community may well include the spiritual world of invisible ones. Spiritual beings exist across the globe in all countries, geographies, and cultures. Pogačnik (2009) describes how nature spirits and elemental beings dwell in natural places such as old forests, running brooks, deep oceans, high mountains, as well as in plants, flowers, and trees. Simply acknowledging nature spirits, elemental beings, angels, ancestors, and all other energies that lie beyond our awareness contributes to a more profound meaning to communities of life.

Finally, we cannot forget about all the future generations, both human and more than human. What we do today will have immediate and long-term impacts socially, ecologically, and culturally on current and future generations of all communities of life on earth. What does community mean to you? How can we shift our work to ensure that ecopsychology embraces all communities of life?

Ecopsychological Sense of Community

From this broader perspective of diverse and complex communities of life, we need to address McKibben's (2006) technology observation that we must [re]learn how to [re]build community. Perhaps the starting point may simply be remembering what community “feels like.” This brings up the concept of Gemeinschaftsgefühl, which is related to the Gemeinschaft community. The APA Dictionary of Psychology (2020) indicates that the term translates from German to “feeling for community.” This community feeling is also referred to as social interest or community spirit and represents a spirit of equality, belonging, and unity.

The concept of “community feeling” is used by Adlerian psychologists to describe the state of social connectedness and interest in the well-being of others that characterizes psychological health. Table 1 summarizes Adler's observations between high and low community feeling.

Sarason (1974) expands Gemeinschaftsgefühl, the feeling of community, with the concept of “psychological sense of community,” which focuses on the community experience rather than the structure, formation, setting, or other features. Some of the characteristics include an interdependence with others, a willingness to maintain this interdependence, and the feeling that one is part of something larger. Sarason claims that “PSOC [psychological sense of community] is not a mystery to the person who experiences it. It is a mystery to those who do not experience it but hunger for it” (p. 157). As earlier explained by Pinker (2014), this deep-seated hunger for community describes the feelings of loneliness, isolation, and alienation commonly reported by people living in urban centers.

Although PSOC may seem like an intangible community characteristic, McMillan and Chavis (1986) suggest that a sense of community is present to some degree in all communities as an invisible “human spiritual bond.” The strength of this communal spiritual bond varies between people and communities. One of the reasons a communal bond varies is that there can also be a negative sense of community. This can occur when inequitable and exclusionary alliances are formed around racial, religious, ethnic, social, or cultural identity (McMillan & Lorion, 2020). In our tumultuous world, having a strong psychological sense of community may be viewed as a privilege.

How can the development of an “Ecopsychological Sense of Community” catalyze the much-needed change to bridge perpetual and ongoing social–ecological inequities? Is it possible to cultivate a “feeling of community” using a more expansive definition including all communities of life? We believe there is a role for community-centered ecopsychology to encourage and support many struggling, systemically oppressed, and invisible social–ecological communities.

In an article discussing the intersection of activism and ecopsychology, Bragg (2014) alludes to this necessary task. “As ecopsychologists, perhaps we need to ask ourselves what is the relative value of the psychological benefits of nature experience if we find ourselves amidst war, famine, or environmental disaster?! To use a well-worn phrase, are we ecopsychologically shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic?” (p. 17). Bragg provocatively suggests that the current configuration of ecopsychology leans toward nature being used in the service of individual psychological health, while ignoring global issues of social/environmental injustice and also forgetting about the importance of actually protecting the natural world. Of course, we all know that nature connection builds healthy resilient individuals, but is that enough? For more guidance on these poignant questions, we next consider what our psychology sibling of community psychology may have to offer.

Community Psychology

Building upon an expanded view of community and identifying the feeling of community, we consider what concepts and theoretical frameworks the field of community psychology can offer to the emerging field of community-centered ecopsychology. Community psychology is the study of people in the wider human context. Nelson and Prilleltensky (2010) explain that the roots of community psychology begin with the understanding that individual well-being does not occur in isolation from the rest of the human community.

The subtitle of Fisher's (2013) book Radical Ecopsychology, “Psychology in the Service of Life,” leads to the next question, toward which flavor of psychology does community-centered ecopsychology lean? To illustrate more of the differences between psychology and community psychology, Table 2 summarizes some generalized characteristics.

Unfortunately, both psychologies are human centric, leaving out relationships with the rest of nature. We do observe that ecopsychology projects will fall on the spectrum somewhere between traditional individual psychology and community psychology. One form of applied ecopsychology, the practice of ecotherapy, is sliding closer to traditional clinical psychology, but new community-based efforts are emerging and more closely emulate the characteristics of community psychology.

Anthropocentric psychology has traditionally focused on the individual level of analysis, except for group therapy, which gathers individuals into a post-place group for healing. Anthropocentric community psychology represents a different paradigm or world view of psychology. Traditional psychology sometimes pays attention to microsystems, such as small groups and the family, “but most of the major theories of personality and clinical psychology emphasize [human-focused], individualistic explanations of behaviour and individual strategies of change, such as psychotherapy” (Nelson & Prilleltensky, 2010, p. 5). This very Western view places the individual in the foreground over the collective. But, we must remember there are other worldviews, such as Indigenous and other earth-based cultures, that do the exact opposite, placing the collective over the individual. How can ecopsychologists learn from and perhaps meld both approaches?

The first foundational principle for community psychology is “Ecological Perspectives” (Dalton & Wolfe, 2012). In the broadest sense of the word, an ecological perspective encompasses physical, social, cultural, and historical aspects of context, including local and global trends such as globalization, urbanization, and large-scale environmental change (McLaren & Hawe, 2005). The primary themes of an ecological perspective include interdependence and mutual interaction among individuals, communities, and other settings.

Riemer and Harré (2017) suggest that the field of community psychology is beginning to recognize that people are embedded not just into social systems but also into nonhuman ecosystems. Because the ecological perspective is a core difference between traditional psychology and community psychology, there is an opportunity here for a community ecopsychological approach to make a difference.

Critical community psychology is used to uncover the repressive structures, beliefs, and practices that lead to inequities and suffering. The goal is to find ways for individuals and communities to achieve relief and emancipation from collective oppression as diverse as racism, sexism, forced migration, violence, and assaults on human rights (Watkins & Ciofalo, 2011). The critical framework of ecopsychology suggests that collective oppression is not only directed at humans but also extends to more-than-human communities of life, including all the elements of nature that humans are dependent upon for survival (Scull, 2008). To integrate community psychology and ecopsychology commits us to the exploration of the profound effects of injustice, violence, and the exploitation of others and nature on human and more-than-human psychological, communal, and ecological well-being.

Naidoo, Zygmont, and Philips (2017) specifically researched how an ecopsychological approach could be harnessed as a catalyst for community change. They concluded that for ecopsychology to be of value to community psychology, the focus must extend beyond nature connection or conservation and address social justice concerns. “Community psychology and ecopsychology have values, goals, resources, and practices that can be aligned and successfully harnessed and applied to address both social and ecological justice goals” (p. 87). Their study creating the Usiko Rites of Passage (n.d.) project in South Africa demonstrates that individual and collective growth and empowerment are mutually inclusive.

The Usiko Rites of Passage (n.d.) of passage provides a bottom-up holistic solution to long-term sustainable change in the lives of at-risk youth. This project started as a grassroots community effort by adult volunteers to create wilderness rites of passage programs targeting children of impoverished farmworkers, adolescents from townships, gang communities, and young offenders referred by the court system. These children generally live with poverty, hunger, trauma, and overcrowded homes, and attend under-resourced schools. This community development project utilizing ecopsychology and wilderness therapy fosters community building and restoring connection for youth and adults. This restoration leads to healing relationships with self, others, and the natural world for individual and collective well-being.

Crisis- and illness-focused mental health and human services programs cannot prevent or heal the accelerating climate-related social–ecological waves of individual and collective trauma. There is an opportunity for the field of ecopsychology to become an agent of change for building transformative community resilience. A couple of additional examples of community-centered ecopsychology projects are offered next.

Community Ecopsychology Projects

Macy's study and the collaborative creation of The Work that Reconnects Network (n.d.) (Global) are based on people coming together to share their gratitude and grief for the pain of the world, then going forth in action. As her opening quote indicates, community is the key vehicle for this profound study. Individually, we did not create these social–ecological messes on our own, so we cannot be expected to deal with the enormity of solving any of these problems alone.

The Kerulos Center for Nonviolence (n.d.) (Oregon) promotes sanctuary as the heart of their study that is informed by the philosophy and practice of trans-species living. This approach acknowledges that humans are not privileged over any other species and puts this understanding into everyday life and relationships. Trans-species psychology explores how the human species fits into and relates with the more-than-human communities of life.

National Healing Forests (n.d.) (Canada) has a central objective of Indigenous healing and reconciliation. This group has the vision to establish a network of healing forests across the country for residential school survivors, families, and all Canadians. This program encourages individuals and communities to come together in natural settings to reflect, meditate, heal, and participate in ceremony. The process develops a better understanding of the legacy of the residential school system, moving communities forward in a positive way.

The Global Ecovillage Network (n.d.) promotes a blueprint of social, ecological, cultural, and economic resilience. The core purpose of intentional communities, and ecovillages, is to continually foster and [re]build the invisible spiritual bond of community. Some concrete models of an ecopsychological sense of community are evident at La Cité Écologique (n.d.) (Quebec, Canada), Sólheimar (n.d.) (Iceland), and Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage (n.d.) (Missouri).

If you look around, you will notice many other examples of community-centric ecopsychology. The bottom line is that community ecopsychology is an emerging approach connecting groups of people with all communities of life, human and more than human, seen and unseen. By connecting to larger communities of life with the intention to empower and improve some aspect of life, both individual and collective health is improved.

Summary

Community ecopsychology extends the original project of ecopsychology to reconnect groups of people to other social–ecological communities of life. The integration of community psychology and ecopsychology commits to addressing the profound effects of oppression, violence, and the exploitation of human and more-than-human well-being. The emergence of community ecopsychology is an evolutionary response to climate-related social injustices and environmental disintegration of life on earth.

Starting with acknowledging the many diverse communities of life, then connecting with where we are physically standing on this planet, perhaps we can begin to [re]build the “feeling of community.” Developing an ecopsychological sense of community may be one answer to McKibben's technological cry for us to come together to get things done.

We acknowledge that there are no clear answers to the complexities of community, but there are many pathways, recipes, and processes to support community projects. What is the ecopsychological health of your community? How do you activate a spirit of equality, belonging, and unity in your work? We invite readers to consider expanding their efforts to incorporate a community ecopsychological approach in life and projects.