Exploring WWOOF Exchange: Meanings and Practices of Ecological Social Network

Abstract

This thesis investigates the meanings and practices of social and ecological engagement within
the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) network. Moving beyond
framings of WWOOF as a cohesive social movement, this study argues that it functions as a
dynamic and diverse 'mixed economy of volunteering', where ecological values, knowledge,
and ethical commitments are co-produced through situated, relational, and often contradictory
practices.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted across six WWOOF-related sites in the UK,
supplemented by the analysis of web-based material, particularly online vlogs, the research
addresses four interconnected themes. First, it explores how participants establish belonging
and temporary yet durable bonds of reciprocal care through embodied practices like shared
meals and collaborative work, as well as through digital interactions that foster a sense of
community. Second, it examines the complex and often unbalanced dynamics of reciprocity,
showing how volunteers and hosts navigate power asymmetries and shifting expectations
around labour, learning, and cultural exchange. Third, it analyses care not as an abstract ideal,
but as a situated, embodied practice; one that is enacted, negotiated, and sometimes strained or
disrupted in both on-farm and digital contexts. Finally, it argues that resilience within the
network is not a systemic property but emerges unevenly through the adaptive, situated
strategies of participants, often grounded in permaculture ethics rather than the formal
WWOOF framework itself.
Most importantly, this thesis contributes a fine-grained ethnographic account of how
sustainability is lived, negotiated, and contested in practice, demonstrating that such networks
are sustained not by uniform ideals, but by the continuous, messy, and meaningful work of
navigating human and ecological relationships.