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This paper is part of a comprehensive study made on three Hare Krishna farms in the context of climate change and sustainability transitions. The overall purpose was to identify enabling and disabling factors for the wider diffusion of sustainable Krishna practices. This work reports only on one aspect of the research, namely de-technologizing tendencies, and their reasons, in Hare Krishna communities. Ethnographic research was carried out on three Hare Krishna eco-farms — Scotland, England and Hungary. Apart from observations and participatory action, twenty-nine interviews were conducted to tease out details of Hare Krishna practices such as land cultivation, cow protection, eating and food sharing. The tenets of a ‘New Economics’ or ‘postgrowth’ literature were applied to analyse the community's de-technologizing practices. Findings reveal that first: a radical de-technologizing characterises the lived experience of community members on Hare Krishna eco-farms. Second: Krishna practices harmonise with a New Economics concept which promotes simplification and demand-side resource reduction as a precondition for transitioning to a sustainable future. Academic publications studying the Hare Krishna community have largely focused on the group's religiosity, but this paper positions it as an environmental movement. To date, the connection between Hare Krishna lifestyle practices and sustainability transitions has not been presented. Connecting the believers’ lived experience to the tenets of the New Economics notion is a unique contribution to the sustainability transitions literature and related fields.

PurposeThis paper is based on several years of ethnographic and desk-based research studying the Hare Krishna movement. The work is the first in a series exploring how segments of specific faith communities embrace dietary veganism and how this relates to the concept of transformational learning/change in the context of sustainability transitions. The focus is on how these communities embrace a plant-based diet representing different rationales and attitudes of learning in the process of organisational change.Design/methodology/approachI investigated Krishna practices extensively by visiting and volunteering in several of its farm communities in Europe. I used the mixed method of qualitative observations, participation, in-depth interviews and email interviews during a period of ten weeks spent in the communities altogether. I had not been in contact with Hare Krishna believers before the fieldwork.FindingsKrishna veganism is analysed in the context of sustainability transitions by drawing on the concept of transformative (third-order) learning/change. Findings reveal an unexpected tendency to veganism despite the movement's worldview and radical commitment to dairy consumption. By calling into question their own collective dietary paradigm, the Hare Krishna community provides an exemplary case of third-order learning and change in an organisational context.Originality/valueThe paper invites scholars to include third-order learning into sustainability transitions frameworks while aiming to address the shortcomings of theorising levels of learning. The connection between Krishna veganism, third-order learning and sustainability transitions has not been put forward before.

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