An intentional community is a voluntary residential community designed to foster a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork. 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.
Some see intentional communities as alternative lifestyles. Others see them as impractical social experiments. Some see them as a natural human response to the isolation and fragmentation of modern housing, offering a return to the social bonds and collaborative spirit found in traditional village life. Others see them as ways to address problems that are seen as plaguing modern cities, such as alcohol abuse, poverty, unemployment and crime, especially when used in conjunction with emigration from industrialized countries and colonization of new lands.
The multitude of intentional communities includes collective households, cohousing communities, coliving, ecovillages, monasteries, survivalist retreats, kibbutzim, Hutterite colonies, ashrams, and housing cooperatives.
As well, planned developments such as some company towns that provided comfortable workers' housing and aspirations of a stable sober workforce, could be considered intentional communities and sometimes even spark from an aspiration for a utopia.
History
Ashrams are likely the earliest intentional communities, founded around 1500 BCE. Buddhist monasteries appeared around 500 BCE. Pythagoras founded an intellectual vegetarian commune in about 525 BCE in southern Italy. Hundreds of modern intentional communities were formed across Europe, North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand out of the intellectual foment of utopianism. Intentional communities exhibit the utopian ambition to create a better, more sustainable world for living.
Synonyms and definitions
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terms referring to an intentional community can be alternative lifestyle, intentional society, cooperative community, withdrawn community, enacted community, socialist colony, communistic society, collective settlement, communal society, commune, mutualistic community, communitarian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.
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. Also the alternative term commune is considered to be non-neutral or even linked to leftist politics or hippies.
| 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." |
| 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". |
| 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." |
| 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." |
Variety
The purposes of intentional communities vary and may be political, spiritual, economic, or environmental. In addition to spiritual communities, secular communities also exist. One common practice, particularly in spiritual communities, is communal meals. Egalitarian values can be combined with other values, and an egalitarian community is a specific kind of intentional community in which members have equal access to resources and decision-making" and more broadly as "a fair society where all individuals possess equal rights and opportunities, supported by affirmative action". Benjamin Zablocki categorized communities this way:
- 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
Membership
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, and to live out the teachings of the New Testament, practicing compassion and hospitality. 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.
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.
Governance
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.
Communes' core principles
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 "communitarian" in 1840.
At the start of the 1970s, The New Communes author Ron E. Roberts classified communes as a subclass of a larger category of utopias. He listed three main characteristics:
- 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:
- 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, and the commune is experienced with emotions that go beyond just social collectivity.
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) lists 222 communes worldwide (28 January 2019). 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.
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 country
Australia
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" 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.
Canada
Intentional communities were established in Canada as early as the first part of the nineteenth century, and some are in operation in Canada at the present time. 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 1812 to 1889. Other utopian communities were established at Maxwell near Sarnia, and in BC at Holberg (a Owenite settlement founded in 1829), Ruskin and Sointula on Malcolm Island (a well-known historical Canadian utopian settlement).
As well, other settlements were established on temperance, Henry George, Tolstoyan, Doukhobor, Orthodox Mennonite and Hutterite principles.
Canadian utopias also made an appearance on the written page. In the 1897 novel In the New Capital by Edmontonian/Torontonian John Galbraith, the main character time-travels from 1897 to 1999 when a new Ottawa is operating under utopian socialist/single tax/temperance laws. Prairie activist E.A. Partridge discussed the possibilities of a western Canadian utopian co-operative commonwealth called "Coalsamao" in his 1925 book A war on poverty: the one war that can end war. One historian described the 1933 Regina Manifesto as at least partly a utopian document.
Several intentional settlements exist today in Canada.
Germany
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, but data is unreliable. 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. A large number of contemporary intentional communities define themselves as communes, and there is a network of political communes called "Kommuja" with about 40 member groups (May 2023).
In the German commune book, Das KommuneBuch, communes are defined by Elisabeth Voß as communities which:
- 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
Israel
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. 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.
Ireland
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".
Russia
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. 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 — toloka (толока), pomochi (помочи), artel (артель) — are also based on communal ("мирские") traditions.
In the years immediately following the revolutions of 1917 Tolstoyan communities proliferated in Russia, but they were eventually wiped out or stripped of their independence due to collectivisation and ideological purges in the late 1920s. 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.
Some Tolstoyans emigrated to Canada.
South Africa
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. By 2022, the population was 2,500. The town was experiencing rapid growth and the population had climbed by 55% from 2018. They favour a model of strict Afrikaner self-sufficiency and have their own currency, bank and local government, and only employ Afrikaners.
United Kingdom
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.
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. Mildly nomadic, they run street "cafés" which distribute food to their known members and to the general public.
The Bruderhof has three locations in the UK. 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. In Scotland, the Findhorn Foundation founded by Peter and Eileen Caddy and Dorothy Maclean in 1962 is prominent for its educational centre and experimental architectural community project based at The Park, in Moray, Scotland, near the village of Findhorn.
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.
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.
United States
A variety of alternative living arrangements, based on aspirations for better living and relief from burden of consumerism and insobriety, dot U.S. history, as demonstrated by attempts, at the large and small scale, to establish intentional communities during the long course of that country's history. Even the many company towns in the U.S. in the early 1900s could be considered part of this story. These historic utopian communities predated and led to the rise of the communes of the hippie movement—the "back-to-the-land" ventures of the 1960s and 1970s.
A commune that played a large role in the hippie movement was Kaliflower. This utopian living cooperative started in San Francisco in 1967 with the values of free love and anti-capitalism. Two other prominent communes in northern California at the time were Wheeler's Ranch and Morning Star Ranch.
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". 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, Twin Oaks in 1967 and Koinonia Farm in 1942. Twin Oaks is a rare example of a non-religious commune surviving for longer than 30 years. A newer intentional community is Synchronicity LA, founded in 2008.
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