Technophobia and perceptions of the city shared by the settlers of an ecovillage in the Tula region

Abstract

This article explores the system of perceptions of modern technology shared by the settlers of an ecovillage in the Tula Region. Technophobia becomes a key factor in the formation of life strategies for the studied group. During the time when future eco settlers lived in the city, their fear of modern technologies provoked culturally conditioned physical ailments which could be considered a kind of somatized anxiety. The feeling of physical harm from technologies and the rational consideration of the latter as a harmful phenomenon became key factors in making the decision to move from the city to the ecovillage. From the viewpoint of the eco settlers, the technologically oversaturated urban environment does not allow them to limit contact with the artifacts of modern technologies to an extent considered healthy for a human being.Informants strive to avoid contact with modern technologies and especially gadgets. They fear that gadgets might harm their physical and mental health and moral reasoning of their children, destroy their families and harm the environment.The technophobia of the informants is combined with the fact that many of them work in the Information Technologies industry. The author concludes that the eco settlers consider many technological artifacts as an indexical sign of the city and the negatives aspects of living in it. The article traces the softening of negative attitudes towards the structural modes of being which are at first rejected by the eco settlers upon moving to an ecovillage but then are necessarily recreated.