| Yhteenveto: | This Master’s thesis is a study in utopianism at the Punta Mona Sustainable Living and
Education Centre, an ecological community of North Americans living on the Caribbean
coast of Costa Rica. The mission statement of Punta Mona is to show “sustainability” as a
lived reality and to inspire individuals to return to mainstream society to enact change
towards a more “eco-conscious” world. The main objective of this thesis is to critically
examine the concept of sustainability as it is understood and practiced at Punta Mona and
to raise questions over the tensions inherent in Punta Mona’s in-between position as an
ecological community and ecotourism venture. What power structures are implicitly
embedded within Punta Mona’s talk of “sustainability”, “community” and “oneness”?
Does Punta Mona ultimately challenge or reinforce Western conceptualizations, values
and paradigms, and at what potential cost to local or subaltern forms of knowledge?
Victor Turner’s concept of liminality will be used as the theoretical framework through
which such questions will be explored. Punta Mona displays many characteristics of
liminality as a “state of outsiderhood” or being on the margins of society. It creates a
liminal space far removed from mainstream society in which important personal aspects
such as identity, beliefs and ways of living can be put into play without affecting one’s
place in the “real world”. However, this thesis argues that paradoxically, Punta Mona
struggles with liminality due to its own liminal position between corporation and
community, non-sustainability and sustainability, North and South, core and margin, and
North America and Costa Rican society.
The empirical material of this thesis is drawn from firsthand participatory and
ethnographic fieldwork, and consists of 45 in-depth interviews with members of the
Punta Mona Community, conducted in English and Spanish. Victor Turner’s concept of
liminality is used to explore some of the paradoxes, ambiguities, boundaries and power
tensions inherent in the fluidity of a living utopian experiment and to raise questions over
its implications on contemporary political thought and life.
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