Intentional community

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File:Peckham Bruderhof.jpg

Members of the Anabaptist Christian Bruderhof Communities live, eat, work and worship communally.

File:Amsterdam - Young musicians - 1250.jpg

Young musicians living in a shared community in Amsterdam

File:Traditional Ashram.jpg

Traditional ashram

File:Ecovillage "Velyka Rodyna" in Troshcha 02.jpg

Ecovillage "Velyka Rodyna" in Troshcha (Template:Langx).

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An intentional community is a voluntary residential community designed to foster a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork.<ref name="communal">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="pitzer">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="mecalf">Template:Cite book</ref> Such communities typically promote shared values or beliefs, or pursue a common vision, which may be political, religious, utopian or spiritual, or are simply focused on the practical benefits of cooperation and mutual support. While some groups emphasise shared ideologies, others are centred on enhancing social connections, sharing resources, and creating meaningful relationships.

Although intentional communities are sometimes described as alternative lifestyles<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> or social experiments,<ref name=communal/><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> some see them as a natural response to the isolation and fragmentation of modern housing, offering a return to the social bonds and collaborative spirit found in traditional village life.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The multitude of intentional communities includes collective households, cohousing communities, coliving, ecovillages, monasteries, survivalist retreats, kibbutzim, Hutterite colonies, ashrams, and housing cooperatives.

HistoryEdit

Ashrams are likely the earliest intentional communities, founded around 1500 BCE. Buddhist monasteries appeared around 500 BCE.<ref name=communalidea53>Template:Cite book</ref> Pythagoras founded an intellectual vegetarian commune in about 525 BCE in southern Italy.<ref name=metcalf/> Hundreds of modern intentional communities were formed across Europe, North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand out of the intellectual foment of utopianism.<ref name=metcalf>Template:Cite journal</ref> Intentional communities exhibit the utopian ambition to create a better, more sustainable world for living.<ref name=metcalf/>

Synonyms and definitions Template:AnchorEdit

Additional terms referring to an intentional community can be alternative lifestyle, intentional society, cooperative community, withdrawn community, enacted community, socialist colony, communistic society, collective settlement, communal society, commune, mutualistic community, communitarian experiment, experimental community, utopian experiment, practical utopia, and utopian society.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

The term utopian community as a synonym for an intentional community might be considered to be of pejorative nature and many intentional communities do not consider themselves to be utopian.<ref name=communal/> Also the alternative term communeTemplate:Efn is considered to be non-neutral or even linked to leftist politics or hippies.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Definitions of "intentional community"
Authorship	Year	Definition
B. Shenker	1986	"An intentional community is a relatively small group of people who have created a whole way of life for the attainment of a certain set of goals."<ref name=communal/>
D. E. Pitzer	1989	Intentional communities are "small, voluntary social units partly isolated from the general society in which members share an economic union and lifestyle in an attempt to implement, at least in part, their ideal ideological, religious, political, social, economic, and educational systems".<ref name=pitzer/>
G. Kozeny	1996	"An 'intentional community' is a group of people who have chosen to live together with a common purpose, working cooperatively to create a lifestyle that reflects their shared core values. The people may live together on a piece of rural land, in a suburban home, or in an urban neighborhood, and they may share a single residence or live in a cluster of dwellings."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
W. J. Metcalf	2004	An intentional community is "[f]ive or more people, drawn from more than one family or kinship group, who have voluntarily come together for the purpose of ameliorating perceived social problems and inadequacies. They seek to live beyond the bounds of mainstream society by adopting a consciously devised and usually well thought-out social and cultural alternative. In the pursuit of their goals, they share significant aspects of their lives together. Participants are characterized by a "we-consciousness," seeing themselves as a continuing group, separate from and in many ways better than the society from which they emerged."<ref name=mecalf/>

VarietyEdit

The purposes of intentional communities vary and may be political, spiritual, economic, or environmental.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In addition to spiritual communities, secular communities also exist.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> One common practice, particularly in spiritual communities, is communal meals.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Egalitarian values can be combined with other values.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Benjamin Zablocki categorized communities this way:<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Academic communities (see Living-Learning Communities)
Alternative-family communities (see Tenacious Unicorn Ranch)
Coliving communities
Cooperative communities
Countercultural communities
Egalitarian communities
Experimental communities
Political communities
Psychological communities (based on mystical or gestalt principles)
Rehabilitational communities (see Synanon)
Religious communities
Spiritual communities

MembershipEdit

Members of Christian intentional communities want to emulate the practices of the earliest believers. Using the biblical book of Acts (and, often, the Sermon on the Mount) as a model, members of these communities strive to demonstrate their faith in a corporate context,<ref name="ic.org">Template:Cite news</ref> and to live out the teachings of the New Testament, practicing compassion and hospitality.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Communities such as the Simple Way, the Bruderhof and Rutba House would fall into this category. Despite strict membership criteria, these communities are open to visitors and not reclusive to the extent of some other intentional communities.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

A survey in the 1995 edition of the "Communities Directory", published by the Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC), reported that 54 percent of the communities choosing to list themselves were rural, 28 percent were urban, 10 percent had both rural and urban sites, and 8 percent did not specify.<ref name="ftc"/>

GovernanceEdit

The most common form of governance in intentional communities is democratic (64 percent), with decisions made by some form of consensus decision-making or voting. A hierarchical or authoritarian structure governs 9 percent of communities, 11 percent are a combination of democratic and hierarchical structure, and 16 percent do not specify.<ref name="ftc">Template:Cite book</ref>

Communes' core principlesEdit

The central characteristics of communes, or core principles that define communes, have been expressed in various forms over the years. The Suffolk-born radical John Goodwyn Barmby (1820-1881), subsequently a Unitarian minister, invented the term "Template:Linktext"<ref name=Encyclopedia>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Failed verification in 1840.<ref> Template:Oed - "A social banquet of the adherents of the Communist, or Communitarian school is expected to take place." New Moral World, 1 August 75/1. </ref>

At the start of the 1970s, The New Communes author Ron E. Roberts classified communes as a subclass of a larger category of utopias.Template:Refn He listed three main characteristics:Template:Refn

First, egalitarianism – communes specifically rejected hierarchy or graduations of social status as being necessary to social order.
Second, human scale – members of some communes saw the scale of society as it was then organized as being too industrialized (or factory sized) and therefore unsympathetic to human dimensions.
Third, communes were consciously anti-bureaucratic.

Twenty-five years later, Dr. Bill Metcalf, in his edited book Shared Visions, Shared Lives, defined communes as having the following core principles:Template:Refn Template:Page needed

the importance of the group as opposed to the nuclear family unit
a "common purse"
a collective household
group decision-making in general and intimate affairs

Sharing everyday life and facilities, a commune is an idealized form of family, being a new sort of "primary group" (generally with fewer than 20 people, although there are examples of much larger communes). Commune members have emotional bonds to the whole group rather than to any sub-group,Template:Citation needed and the commune is experienced with emotions that go beyond just social collectivity.<ref> Template:Cite book </ref>

With the simple definition of a commune as an intentional community with 100% income sharing, the online directory of the Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC)<ref name="directory.ic.org">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> lists 222 communes worldwide (28 January 2019).<ref name="FICComunes">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Some of these are religious institutions such as abbeys and monasteries. Others are based in anthroposophic philosophy, including Camphill villages that provide support for the education, employment, and daily lives of adults and children with developmental disabilities, mental health problems or other special needs.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Many cultures naturally practice communal or tribal living, and would not designate their way of life as a planned "commune" per se, though their living situation may have many characteristics of a commune.

By countryEdit

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AustraliaEdit

In Australia, many intentional communities started with the hippie movement and those searching for social alternatives to the nuclear family. One of the oldest continuously running communities is called "Moora Moora Co-operative Community"<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> with about 47 members (Oct 2021). Located at the top of Mount Toolebewong, 65 km east of Melbourne, Victoria at an altitude of 600–800 m, this community has been entirely off the electricity grid since its inception in 1974. Founding members still resident include Peter and Sandra Cock.

CanadaEdit

Utopian communities were established in Canada at Brights Grove, Ontario, Holberg, BC and Ruskin, BC. The Finnish settlement at Sointula, on Malcolm Island, BC, is a well-known historical Canadian utopian settlement. An Ontario Quaker sect, The Children of Peace, formed a utopian farm settlement at the community of Hope (now Sharon) in East Gwillimbury, York Region, which operated from 1825 to 1889. Prairie activist E.A. Partridge discussed the possibilities of a utopian co-operative commonwealth called "Coalsamao" in his book A war on poverty: the one war that can end war.<ref>Thomas 1984, p. 180</ref>

As well, other settlements were established on temperance, Henry George, Tolstoyan, Doukhobor, Orthodox Mennonite and Hutterite principles.<ref>Rasporich, "Utopian Ideals and Community Settlements in Western Canada 1880-1914", in Prairie West Historic Readings, edited by R. Douglas Francis and Howard Palmer, 1992</ref><ref>Fort Pitt Hutterite Colony (Frenchman Butte, Saskatchewan, Canada) at Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Accessed March 28, 2025</ref>

Several intentional settlements exist today in Canada.

GermanyEdit

File:Rhon Bruderhof Building.jpg

A building on the Rhön Bruderhof

The first wave of utopian communities in Germany began during a period of rapid urbanization between 1890 and 1930. At least about 100 intentional communities are known to have started,Template:Sfn but data is unreliable.Template:Sfn The communities often pursued nudism, vegetarian and organic agriculture, as well as anabaptism, theosophy, anarchism, socialism, eugenics or other religious and political ideologies. Historically, German emigrants were also influential in the creation of intentional communities in other countries, such as the Bruderhof in the United States of America and Kibbutzim in Israel. In the 1960s, there was a resurgence of communities calling themselves communes, starting with the Kommune 1 in Berlin, without knowledge of or influence by previous movements.Template:Sfn A large number of contemporary intentional communities define themselves as communes, and there is a network of political communes called "Kommuja"<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> with about 40 member groups (May 2023).

In the German commune book, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, communes are defined by Elisabeth Voß as communities which:Template:Sfn

Live and work together
Have a communal economy, i.e., common finances and common property (land, buildings, means of production)
Have communal decision making – usually consensus decision making
Try to reduce hierarchy and hierarchical structures
Have communalization of housework, childcare and other communal tasks
Have equality between women and men
Have low ecological footprints through sharing and saving resources

IsraelEdit

File:PikiWiki 3560 Architecture of the Golan Heights.jpg

The communal dining hall in Kibbutz Merom Golan, ca. 1968–1972

Kibbutzim in Israel, (sing., kibbutz) are examples of officially organized communes, the first of which were based on agriculture. Other Israeli communities are Kvutza, Yishuv Kehilati, Moshavim and Kfar No'ar. Today, there are dozens of urban communes growing in the cities of Israel, often called urban kibbutzim. The urban kibbutzim are smaller and more anarchist.<ref>Horrox, James. "A Living Revolution: Anarchism in the Kibbutz Movement", pp. 87–109</ref> Most of the urban communes in Israel emphasize social change, education, and local involvement in the cities where they live. Some of the urban communes have members who are graduates of zionist-socialist youth movements, like HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed, HaMahanot HaOlim and Hashomer Hatsair.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

IrelandEdit

In 1831 John Vandeleur (a landlord) established a commune on his Ralahine Estate at Newmarket-on-Fergus, County Clare. Vandeleur asked Edward Thomas Craig, an English socialist, to formulate rules and regulations for the commune. It was set up with a population of 22 adult single men, 7 married women and their 7 husbands, 5 single women, 4 orphan boys and 5 children under the age of 9 years. No money was employed, only credit notes could be used in the commune shop. All occupants were committed to a life with no alcohol, tobacco, snuff or gambling. All were required to work for 12 hours a day during the summer and from dawn to dusk in winter. The social experiment prospered for a time, and 29 new members joined.

However, in 1833 the experiment collapsed due to the gambling debts of John Vandeleur. The members of the commune met for the last time on 23 November 1833 and placed on record a declaration of "the contentment, peace and happiness they had experienced for two years under the arrangements introduced by Mr. Vandeleur and Mr. Craig and which through no fault of the Association was now at an end".<ref>Industrial Co-operation, the Story of a Peaceful Revolution: Being the Account of the History, Theory, and Practice of the Co-operative Movement in Great Britain and Ireland: Prepared for the Co-operative Education Association, Catherine Webb, Co-operative union, limited, 1907, p. 64</ref>

RussiaEdit

In imperial Russia, the vast majority of Russian peasants held their land in communal ownership within a mir community, which acted as a village government and a cooperative.<ref>Энгельгардт, Александр, Письма из деревни, М., 1987</ref><ref>Морозов, Юрий, Пути России. М., 1992, т. 2, гл. 13</ref> The very widespread and influential pre-Soviet Russian tradition of monastic communities of both sexes could also be considered a form of communal living. After the end of communism in Russia, monastic communities have again become more common, populous and, to a lesser degree, more influential in Russian society. Various patterns of Russian behavior — Template:Transliteration (толока), Template:Transliteration (помочи), Template:Transliteration (артель) — are also based on communal ("мирские") traditions.

In the years immediately following the revolutions of 1917 Tolstoyan communities proliferated in Russia, but later they were eventually wiped out or stripped of their independence as collectivisation and ideological purges got under way in the late 1920s.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Colonies, such as the Life and Labor Commune, relocated to Siberia to avoid being liquidated. Several Tolstoyan leaders, including Yakov Dragunovsky (1886-1937), were put on trial and then sent to the Gulag prison camps.<ref>Charles Chatfield, Ruzanna Iliukhina Peace/Mir: An Anthology of Historic Alternatives to War Syracuse University Press, 1994. Template:ISBN, (p.245, 249-250).</ref>

Some Tolstoyans emigrated to Canada.<ref>"Leo Tolstoy's Teachings and the Sons of Freedom in Canada", https://doukhobor.org/leo-tolstoys-teachings-and-the-sons-of-freedom-in-canada/ Accessed March 28, 2025</ref>

South AfricaEdit

In 1991, Afrikaners in South Africa founded the controversial Afrikaner-only town of Orania, with the goal of creating a stronghold for the Afrikaner minority group, the Afrikaans language and the Afrikaner culture.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> By 2022, the population was 2,500. The town was experiencing rapid growth and the population had climbed by 55% from 2018.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> They favour a model of strict Afrikaner self-sufficiency and have their own currency, bank and local government, and only employ Afrikaners.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

United KingdomEdit

File:Findhorn wind turbines.jpg

The wind turbines at Findhorn make the Ecovillage a net exporter of electricity.

A 19th century advocate and practitioner of communal living was the utopian socialist John Goodwyn Barmby, who founded a Communist Church before becoming a Unitarian minister.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The Simon Community in London is an example of social cooperation, made to ease homelessness within London. It provides food and religion and is staffed by homeless people and volunteers.<ref name="The Simon Community">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Mildly nomadic, they run street "cafés" which distribute food to their known members and to the general public.

The Bruderhof<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> has three locations in the UK.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In Glandwr, near Crymych, Pembrokeshire, a co-op called Lammas Ecovillage focuses on planning and sustainable development. Granted planning permission by the Welsh Government in 2009, it has since created 9 holdings and is a central communal hub for its community.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In Scotland, the Findhorn Foundation founded by Peter and Eileen Caddy and Dorothy Maclean in 1962<ref name="Findhorn Foundation">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> is prominent for its educational centre and experimental architectural community project based at The Park, in Moray, Scotland, near the village of Findhorn.<ref name="local">Local relations between the Findhorn Foundation and the village of Findhorn have occasionally foundered over inconsiderate use of the word "Findhorn" to mean either the former or the Ecovillage. See, for example, Walker (1994), Talk:Findhorn Foundation and also Findhorn (disambiguation).</ref>

The Findhorn Ecovillage community at The Park, Findhorn, a village in Moray, Scotland, and at Cluny Hill in Forres, now houses more than 400 people.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Historic agricultural examples include the Diggers settlement on St George's Hill, Surrey during the English Civil War and the Clousden Hill Free Communist and Co-operative Colony near Newcastle upon Tyne during the 1890s.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

United StatesEdit

There is a long history of utopian communities in America that led to the rise in the communes of the hippie movement—the "back-to-the-land" ventures of the 1960s and 1970s.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> One commune that played a large role in the hippie movement was Kaliflower, a utopian living cooperative that existed in San Francisco between 1967 and 1973 built on values of free love and anti-capitalism.

Andrew Jacobs of The New York Times wrote in 2006 that "after decades of contraction, the American commune movement has been expanding since the mid-1990s, spurred by the growth of settlements that seek to marry the utopian-minded commune of the 1960s with the American predilection for privacy and capital appreciation".<ref name="NYTimes 2006-06-11">Template:Cite news</ref> The Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC) is one of the main sources for listings of and more information about communes in the United States.

Although many American communes are short-lived, some have been in operation for over 50 years. The Bruderhof was established in the US in 1954,<ref name="ic.org"/> Twin Oaks in 1967<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and Koinonia Farm in 1942.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Twin Oaks is a rare example of a non-religious commune surviving for longer than 30 years. A newer intentional community is Synchronicity LA.

NotesEdit

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ReferencesEdit

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SourcesEdit

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Template:Cite book
Curl, John (2007). Memories of Drop City, The First Hippie Commune of the 1960s and the Summer of Love, a memoir. iUniverse. Template:ISBN. Red-coral.net
Curl, John (2009) For All The People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America, PM Press. Template:ISBN.
Fitzgerald, George R. (1971). Communes Their Goals, Hopes, Problems. New York: Paulist Press.
Hall, John R. (1978). The Ways Out: Utopian Communal Groups in an Age of Babylon. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Horrox, James. (2009). A Living Revolution: Anarchism in the Kibbutz Movement. Oakland: AK Press.
Margaret Hollenbach. (2004)Lost and Found: My Life in a Group Marriage Commune. University of New Mexico Press, Template:ISBN.
Template:Cite book
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. (1972) Commitment and community: communes and utopias in sociological perspective. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press. Template:ISBN
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. (1973) Communes: creating and managing the collective life. New York, Harper & Row. Template:ISBN
Lattin, Don. (2003, March 2) Twilight of Hippiedom. The San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved March 16, 2008
Lauber, John. (1963, June). Hawthorne's Shaker Tales [Electronic version]. Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 18, 82–86.
Template:Cite book
Meunier, Rachel. (1994, December 17). Communal Living in the Late 60s and Early 70s. Retrieved March 16, 2008, from thefarm.org
Miller, Timothy. (1997) "Assault on Eden: A Memoir of Communal Life in the Early '70s", Utopian Studies, Vol. 8, 1997.
Roberts, Ron E. (1971). The New Communes Coming Together in America. New Jersey: Prentice Hall inc.
Van Deusen, David. (2008) Green Mountain Communes: The Making of a Peoples’ Vermont, Catamount Tavern News Service.
Veysey, Laurence R. (1978) The Communal Experience: Anarchist and Mystical Communities in Twentieth Century America
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Wild, Paul H. (1966 March). Teaching Utopia [Electronic version]. The English Journal, Vol. 55, No. 3, 335–37, 339.
Zablocki, Benjamin. (1980, 1971) The Joyful Community: An Account of the Bruderhof: A Communal Movement Now in Its Third Generation (University of Chicago Press, 1971, reissued 1980), Template:ISBN. (The 1980 edition of the Whole Earth Catalog called this book "the best and most useful book on communes that's been written".)
Zablocki, Benjamin. (1980) Alienation and Charisma: A Study of Contemporary American Communes (The Free Press, 1980), Template:ISBN.

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External linksEdit

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