Voluntary Simplicity, Involuntary Complexities, and the Pull of Remove: The Radical Ruralities of off-Grid Lifestyles

Abstract

Why do residents of Western world live off-the-grid? This paper provides answers to this question. The expression ‘off-the-grid’, refers to the living condition of a household or a community lying outside the electricity infrastructure, but often also denotes disconnection from other infrastructures such as municipal water conduits, natural gas pipelines, road networks, garbage and waste collection, food supply chains, and telecommunications. Drawing from and contributing to the literatures on rural geographies and voluntary simplicity we argue that while off-gridders embrace values typical of the voluntary simplicity philosophy, their biographical and geographical trajectories reveal that living off-grids is not a clear and free choice. The performance of the mundane complexities typical of the lifestyle renders off-grid living a uniquely radical, but also contradictory and even paradoxical, constellation of practices through which new marginal spatialities are constituted. Drawing from ethnographic fragments culled from a multisited ethnographic project unfolding across Canada we present a thickly descriptive look into the motives and lifestyles of off-gridders living in the Yukon.