Off the Grid Re-Assembling Domestic Life [Hardcover]

Off-grid isnt a state of mind. It isnt about someone being out of touch, about a place that is hard to get to, or about a weekend spent offline. Off-grid is the property of a building (generally a home but sometimes even a whole town) that is disconnected from the electricity and the natural gas grid. To live off-grid, therefore, means having to radically re-invent domestic life as we know it, and this is what this book is about: individuals and families who have chosen to live in that dramatically innovative, but also quite old, way of life.

This ethnography explores the day-to-day lives of people in each of Canadas provinces and territories living off the grid. Vannini and Taggart demonstrate how a variety of people, all with different environmental constraints, live away from contemporary civilization. The authors also raise important questions about our social future and whether off-grid living creates an environmentally and culturally sustainable lifestyle practice. These homes are experimental labs for our collective future, an intimate look into unusual contemporary domestic lives, and a call to the rest of us leading ordinary lives to examine what we take for granted. This book is ideal for courses on the environment and sustainability as well as introduction to sociology and introduction to cultural anthropology courses.

1. Grids 2. The pull of remove 3. Involvement 4. (Off)Roads 5. Power constellations 6. Comfort 7. Convenience 8. House building, DIW-style 9. Slower homes 10. Breaking Waters 11. Camping, out on the land 12. The New Quietism 13. A Better Way of Life?

&meaningful, thoughtful, honest& if you're thinking that off-grid might be something you want to look into or if you think it might be a good fit for your lifestyle, this is the book to help you figure out the way-to that. With Phillip Vannini's writing style it makes this an enjoyable read, he's a not just lC(