Life in Community
DC Community Evolution and Change: Perspectives from Lutheran Volunteer Corps
Posted on December 1, 2017 byWhile time has brought increased gentrification, a faith-based community’s fight for social justice in DC is far from over.
Life Lessons for Community Longevity
Posted on November 1, 2017 byThe founder of Bellyacres Artistic Ecovillage profers advice inspired by the nearly three decades he was immersed in the experiment.
Why I Study Communal Societies
Posted on October 21, 2017 byThe study of intentional communities, both past and present, is a rich and rewarding enterprise for the student of political theory. The members of intentional communities, whether historic or contemporary,… Read More
Overcoming Our Americanness
Posted on October 11, 2017 byUnless we learn from past and present communities, and collate lessons from our own, we will bob as separate crafts on the ocean of our uncooperative and ahistorical Americanness.
Intentional Community in a Nicaraguan Jungle: Honoring my duality through community practices
Posted on October 1, 2017 byThrough her experience temporarily “unplugging” to join a community emphasizing genuine connection and values-based living, an international law student gains lifelong lessons.
Tracing Windward’s Memeology
Posted on September 21, 2017 byThe Haudenosaunee, the Oneida Community, and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, with its vision of a “polyamorous line family,” all form part of Windward’s conceptual ancestry.
The Value of Community: What Defines Success?
Posted on September 1, 2017 by2 Comments
Short-term experiences of intentional community, and short-lived communities, can still have powerful, life-changing, and society-changing effects.
Learning from the Past, #176 Contents
Posted on August 28, 2017 byOur Fall issue, sponsored in part by the Communal Studies Association, focuses on Learning from the Past. Current communitarians reflect on lessons from their own and their communities’ histories, and on inspiration from historical communities that inform their own efforts. Students of communalism share the outcomes of their research, including recipes for success and failure and other insights from past and present communities. Community seekers and founders describe what they’ve learned so far. Throughout, we explore how learning from the past can help us navigate the present and move toward a more vibrant, functional, cooperative future.
Living Out a Gift Economy in Community with Others
Posted on August 1, 2017 by2 Comments
Putting love into practice can be done even when you have nothing materially.
Servant Leadership in Cooperative Business: Stirring It Up at East Wind Nut Butters
Posted on July 11, 2017 byAn egalitarian community’s General Manager reflects on embodying collective values and ecological sanity in a three-million-dollar-a-year business.
Participatory Budgeting in an Income-Sharing Community
Posted on June 11, 2017 by1 Comment
How does one share income and expenses among a hundred people? Twin Oaks discovers how to supplant apathy with widespread engagement.
The Gift Economy of Standing Rock
Posted on June 1, 2017 by1 Comment
The principles of indigenous culture informed the Water Protectors’ camps: generosity, compassion, and collective survival took precedence.
Visit Or Volunteer at the Sustainable Kashi Ashram
Posted on March 23, 2017 byMidway between Miami and Orlando, the Sustainable Kashi Ashram is an interfaith intentional community that combines yoga, meditation, and permaculture projects on 80 acres land on the eastern coast of Florida.… Read More
Finding Balance of Public and Private in Community
Posted on January 21, 2017 byThe erosion of the commons by private interests is a disaster for modern human settlements; a community without shared spaces is barely a community at all.
Bridge Meadows Brings Foster Children Into Intentional Community
Posted on January 12, 2017 by1 Comment
For many intentional communities and cohousing projects, being “intergenerational” is a core value and long-term goal. Parents envision themselves raising children with the support of other community members. Elderly residents… Read More
Public vs. Private: Group Dilemma Laid Bare!
Posted on January 11, 2017 by1 Comment
For some neighbors, the logical leap from “glimpse of skin” to “nudist colony” is a surprisingly short one to make.
Ecosexuality: Embracing a Force of Nature
Posted on January 1, 2017 by1 Comment
Only when we create a container that is loving enough and strong enough to embrace the erotic, do we create a container that is loving enough and strong enough to embrace all of Life itself.
Five Tools to Help Groups Thrive
Posted on December 21, 2016 byA clearly articulated evolutionary purpose, a welcoming of the whole self, and governance through self-management are keys to collective success.
Social Permaculture: Applying the Principles
Posted on December 11, 2016 byPermaculture’s 12 principles apply to human groups just as much as to any other ecological system.
Social Permaculture—What Is It?
Posted on December 1, 2016 byEcological relationships are relatively easy to deal with. Human relationships are often much more difficult, but we can design social structures that favor beneficial patterns of behavior.
Not Rocket Science, but Just as Important
Posted on November 25, 2016 byThe arts of cooperative living—supported tirelessly by the cash-strapped FIC, and worthy now more than ever of financial support—will be as essential as technical skills if our species is to survive on this planet or any other.
The Untold Story of Utopian Communes In America
Posted on November 24, 2016 byIt was a time of great change and social experimentation. Groups of like-minded people pooled their money to buy property in what one writer called a kind of “socialist land mania.” Another philosopher… Read More
The Damanhur Community In Italy Has Its Own Currency and Constitution
Posted on November 21, 2016 byThe community of Damanhur in northern Italy is known for the Temples of Humankind, a 5-story series of underground chambers built by residents of the community as a spiritual gathering… Read More
Social Permaculture, and Public vs. Private, #173 Contents
Posted on November 21, 2016 byOur Winter issue explores both Social Permaculture and the interface of Public and Private in intentional community. Starhawk and her colleagues share wisdom from the cutting edge of social permaculture practice, while diverse communitarians discuss how they find balance between the collective and the individual, openness and self-protection, outer-world activism and internal focus. We also learn about Sociocracy missteps, legal structures that help groups put their best feet forward (or not), and more.
Arcosanti Combines Architecture and Ecology in The Arizona Desert
Posted on November 17, 2016 byAbout 70 miles north of Phoenix, high in the Arizona desert, a blocky, concrete series of buildings rises out of the hillside. It looks like a cross between a futuristic… Read More
Happiness in Communal Life: A Scientific Project
Posted on November 1, 2016 byStatistics don’t lie: communal living seems to help people be happier.
The Case for Mass Civil Disruption and Resistance: The story of how 15 intentional communities and experiments came together to form a national coalition to defend life, come hell or high water
Posted on October 21, 2016 by1 Comment
Activists and communitarians gather to ask: “How do we respond to our current global crisis?”
Grassroots Activism Starts at Home
Posted on October 11, 2016 byAt the RareBirds Housing Co-operative, community life and outside activism deepen and strengthen each other.
Not the Last of the Mohicans: Honoring Our Native Predecessors on the Land
Posted on September 30, 2016 by1 Comment
How can we do right by the native peoples whose ancestral homelands now host our intentional communities?
This Women-Only Village In Kenya Is Challenging Traditional Gender Roles
Posted on September 22, 2016 byFor over 20 years, a small community in Kenya has been embarking on a rare experiment: a community without men, where women are the homeowners and breadwinners. Around 50 women… Read More
