Background: The myriads of environmental and social predicaments that came together with the rise of energy consumption and global capitalism now calls for a radical paradigm shift. Though this shift has been discussed over the last few decades under the concept of “sustainable development”, it appears that the focus has merely been put on “sustaining the unsustainable”. Hence, exploring alternative sustainability paradigms and their viability appears as a necessity to navigate in the Anthropocene era. 

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the strategies employed by Swedish ecovillages to achieve financial viability in the context of a strong sustainability paradigm. The focus is put on understanding how these organizations manage to avoid bankruptcy without compromising their values and purpose. 

Method: This thesis is qualitative in nature and is based on an interpretivist paradigm. More specifically, the researchers followed the Grounded Theory approach proposed by Strauss & Corbin to analyze their data and find a plausible theory. Therefore, the theory introduced by the authors is rooted in the primary data collected through in-depth interviews with a total of six residents from three different Swedish ecovillages.

Conclusion: The results of this research shows that the Swedish ecovillages studied achieved financial viability by channeling money from the capitalist market economy to their communal economy, while simultaneously relying on their ideology and resources to prevent this money from “leaking out”.