Back from the world, episode 3: Under the cobblestones, the earth

Audio 48:30

By: Céline Develay Mazurelle

For two weeks, for our series "Back from the world", we have been questioning our funny era by drawing on the stories of a Japanese hermit of the 13th century or an ecological philosopher of the 19th century who, from lives in huts to solitary journeys embodied and defended voluntary simplicity and the return to the earth.

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At the time, after the insurrection of May 1968, young city dwellers disappointed by the follow-up given to the movement, left for the countryside, to build another world: closer to nature and far from the consumer society.

Sarah Lefèvre found some of them in the Cévennes, in the south of France, in Ardèche, a pioneering organic department with the neighboring Drôme and one of the most "marked" in the end by this social spring that looked like a missed meeting.

Today, in the midst of a pandemic, their words are a disturbing echo of what we live and dream sometimes. Because the next world was already played out, for some, more than 50 years ago ...
A report by Sarah Lefèvre, recorded in 2018, on the occasion of the 50 years of May 68.

To read :
-  Returning to the earth, The neo-rural utopia in Ardèche since the 1960s  by Catherine Rouvière, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015
-  Les Esperados  by Yannick Blanc, Robert Laffont 1982 (reissue by L'Échappée)
-  Experiences of anarchist community lives in France  by Tony Legendre, Paperback, 2006
-  May and June 1968 in Ardèche: a story to discover  Pierre Bonnaud
-  Rebel sheep, Ardelaine, the local development fiber  of Béatrice Barras, Édition Repas, 2003.

To see :
- "Memories of the Mountain in the Little Ardèche Cévenne", film directed by Muriel Biton and Tony Koole (2017). More info  here
- “Les Moissons de l'utopie” (2011), “Avec nos sabots” (2012) and “Les Nouveaux Paysans” (2012), documentaries by Yves Billon, production Les films du village.

To discover :

- Find out more on  the Destination Ardèche website
-The  farmer reception network  and the organic farm of the Baraque de Lysanne Bruneau and Jonas Nivon in Aujac

-  Ardelaine,  cooperative and wool spinning mill created in 1982 in Saint-Pierreville, in the north of the Ardèche
-  Le Viel Audon,  hamlet located on the edge of the Ardèche, in Balazuc, in the south of the department. Youth sites for the restoration of buildings, farm and reception in a gîte.

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