Social Innovations and Civilizational Processes in the Findhorn Ecovillage, Scotland: Fractals for Sustainable Societies and Responses to Multiple Contemporary Crises

Pollyana de Freitas Andrade, Magda de Lima Lucio, Cleoni Virginio da Silveira

Findhorn; social innovation; civilizing process; interdependence; sustainability; ecological rationality; spirituality.

The Findhorn Ecovillage, founded in 1962 in Scotland, stands as one of the world’s longest-standing community experiments in sustainability, ecological spirituality and social innovation. This article analyzes Findhorn as a micro civilizational process unfolding over time, drawing on Norbert Elias’s process sociology and the Transformative Social Innovation Theory (TSI). A qualitative methodology was adopted—comprised of participant observation, semi-structured interviews and document analysis—allowing the identification of sociocultural and ecosystemic patterns that sustain the community over six decades. Findings indicate enduring practices of cooperation, ethical self-regulation, participatory governance and experiential learning, expressed through four fractal patterns of social innovation: ecological regeneration, solidarity economy, reflexive governance and spirituality as public ethics. These patterns correspond to concrete responses to environmental, social, institutional and symbolic crises. We conclude that Findhorn functions as a civilizational laboratory offering principles with potential for translation to other contexts.

Received: 03 Dec 2025, Received in revised form: 08 Jan 2026, Accepted: 13 Jan 2026, Available online: 17 Jan 2026

10.22161/ijaers.131.3