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"Communal living."
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The Carhullan army
The state of the nation has changed. With much of the country now underwater, assets and weapons seized by the government - itself run by the sinister 'Authority' - and war raging in South America and China, life in Britain is unrecognisable.
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Eating from one pot : the dynamics of survival in poor South African households
The stability of African households in South Africa and family networks is becoming fragile because of the enormous burdens of unemployment and unequal power relations. Through careful analysis, the experiences of survival are discussed in relation to restructuring the country's welfare and social policies, and the extension of social grants.
eBook
Living Walden Two
In Walden Two, behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner describes one of the most controversial fictional utopias of the twentieth century. During the 1960s and 70s, this novel went on to inspire approximately three dozen actual communities, which are entertainingly examined in Hilke Kuhlmann's Living Walden Two._x000B_In the novel, behavioral engineers use positive reinforcement in organizing and \"gently guiding\" all aspects of society, leaving the rest of the citizens \"free\" to lead happy and carefree lives. Among the real-world communities, a recurrent problem in moving past the planning stages was the nearly ubiquitous desire among members to be gentle guides, coupled with strong resistance to being guided. _x000B_In an insightful and often hilarious narrative, Hilke Kuhlmann explores the dynamics of the communities, with an in-depth examination of the two surviving Skinnerian communities: Comunidad Los Horcones in Mexico, and Twin Oaks in Virginia. Drawing on extensive interviews with the founders and key players in the Walden Two communities, Kuhlmann redefines the criteria for their success by focusing on the tension between utopian blueprints for a new society and communal experiments' actual effects on individual lives. _x000B_
eBook
Sleepwalking into a new world : the emergence of Italian city communes in the twelfth century
Sleepwalking into a new world reveals how the development of the autonomous city-state took place, which would in the end make possible the robust civic adventure of the renaissance.
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Globalization of Communes 1950-2010
After World War II, communes and cooperative communities became internationally oriented in their membership and networking began to develop. Unlike earlier such enterprises, these groups shared an openness to international relationships. This was evident both in the groups' social composition, and in the extension of networks beyond their own country. Such globalization opened up the possibility of comparative analysis, which has become a trend in research since the 1950s. The dynamism and speed with which voluntary communities have spread throughout the world is impressive. In the 1950s there were only a few hundred such societies, but by the end of the last century there were thousands. These have taken a variety of forms. There are religious and secular communes, intentional communities, ecological communities, co-housing projects, various types of Christian communities, communities of Eastern religions, and spiritual communities inspired by New Age thought. Yaacov Oved shows that such societies maintain a community based on cooperation and expand their influence through newspapers, television, and the Internet. Their chief characteristic is their openness to the outside world, and their search for a way to move beyond a world of individualism and competitiveness. To accomplish this, they embrace all the tools of the modern world. Oved observes that those who predicted the failure of communes and intentional communities failed to appreciate the extent to which people in today's society aspire to communal life. This book answers the doubters and does so with a sense of deep historical understanding.
eBook
Everyday utopia : what 2,000 years of wild experiments can teach us about the good life
\"A spirited tour through 2,500 years of utopian thinking and experiments to tease out better ways of imagining our domestic lives - from childrearing and housing to gender roles and private property - and a look at the communities putting these seemingly fanciful visions into practice today\"-- Provided by publisher.
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American Community
Mainstream notions of the \"American Dream\" usually revolve around the ownership of private property, a house of one's own. Yet for the past 400 years, a large number of Americans have dared to dream bigger and bolder, choosing to live in intentional communities that pooled resources, and they worked to ensure the well-being of all their members. American Community takes us inside forty of the most interesting intentional communities in the nation's history, from the colonial era to the present day. You will learn about such little-known experiments in cooperative living as the Icarian communities, which took the utopian ideas expounded in a 1840 French novel and put them into practice, ultimately spreading to five states over fifty years. Plus, it covers more recent communities such as Arizona's Arcosanti, designed by architect Paolo Soleri as a model for ecologically sustainable living. In this provocative and engaging book, Mark Ferrara guides readers through an array of intentional communities that boldly challenged capitalist economic arrangements in order to attain ideals of harmony, equality, and social justice. By shining a light on these forgotten histories, it shows that far from being foreign concepts, communitarianism and socialism have always been vital parts of the American experience.
eBook
A history of collective living : forms of shared housing
The book tells the story of communal living from about 1850 until today. Three motives of sharing - the economic, political and social intention - divide the residential objects, which are investigated in a historical analysis and allocated to nine development phases. The author investigates and compares different forms of housing and the way they developed from their origins until today; she illustrates how everyday shared living and the degrees of privacy in housing are practiced in Europe. Owing to its comprehensive documentation, the analysis of typologies, layout plans, and user and expert interviews, the book can also be considered to be a lexicon or handbook on communal living. A detailed overview that is unique in this form.
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Fruitlands
This is the first definitive account of Fruitlands, one of history's most unsuccessful-but most significant-utopian experiments. It was established in Massachusetts in 1843 by Bronson Alcott (whose ten-year-old daughter Louisa May, future author ofLittle Women,was among the members) and an Englishman called Charles Lane, under the watchful gaze of Emerson, Thoreau, and other New England intellectuals.
Alcott and Lane developed their own version of the doctrine known as Transcendentalism, hoping to transform society and redeem the environment through a strict regime of veganism and celibacy. But physical suffering and emotional conflict-particularly between Lane and Alcott's wife, Abigail-made the community unsustainable.
Drawing on the letters and diaries of those involved, Richard Francis explores the relationship between the complex philosophical beliefs held by Alcott, Lane, and their fellow idealists and their day-to-day lives. The result is a vivid and often very funny narrative of their travails, demonstrating the dilemmas and conflicts inherent to any utopian experiment and shedding light on a fascinating period of American history.
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