Chapter 9 Sustainability and the intentional community: Green intentional communities

2009 ◽  
pp. 171-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Sargisson
Keyword(s):  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Intentional Community

Intentional Communities of Practice, the Challenge of Interactivity

2012 ◽  
pp. 305-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Wiatt Powell
Keyword(s):  
Online Learning ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Online Community ◽  
Cultural Barriers ◽  
Design And Technology ◽  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Intentional Community ◽  
Community Portal

This chapter examines the support of social interaction in a cooperative, situated online learning environment, and the cultural barriers that hinder such intention and interactivity. The findings of a literature review suggest that the greatest challenge to intentional Community of Practice (CoP) is a sense of interdependence among CoP members, the authenticity of the practice or purpose, and a trajectory for the CoP’s future. This case study attends to these issues with a cohort of practicing teachers. It explores an initiative to nurture CoP with cooperative projects and with the support of an online community portal. The case challenges CoP theory from an intentional or instructional standpoint, and informs design and technology in support of CoP.

Traditions and the Imagined Past in Russian Anastasian Intentional Communities

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-42
Author(s):  
Julia Andreeva
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Culture ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Intentional Community ◽  
Book Series ◽  
Russian People ◽  
Goods And Services

Abstract This article* deals with the concept of tradition and the interpretation of the Vedic past in Russian intentional communities. The movement is based on the book series The Ringing Cedars of Russia (Zvenyashchiye kedry Rossii) by Vladimir Megre published in the 1990s. The main heroine of these books is Anastasia, who shares with the author her knowledge of the ancient ancestors. Some readers take her advice and build a new kind of intentional community – ‘kin domain’ settlements (rodovyye pomestiya). The Anastasians tend to restore lost traditions, which are usually associated with Russia’s pre-Christian past. Traditional culture is understood as a conservative and utopian lifestyle that existed in the Vedic Age during the time of the Vedrus people. The commodification of local culture and tradition is one of the resources that ecovillagers try to use. The ‘traditional’ and ‘organic’ labels increase the price of many of their goods and services. One of the most popular products made by intentional communities is Ivan-chay (‘Ivan tea’), declared an indigenous and authentic beverage of the Russian people.

scholarly journals Planning by intentional communities: An understudied form of activist planning

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tore Sager
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
External Support ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Intentional Community ◽  
Planning Processes

The article is about intentional communities choosing a lifestyle outside the mainstream. It is explained why their planning is a sort of activist planning and often a case of radical planning. Planning by intentional communities differs from most activist neighbourhood planning by closer relation to a deviating worldview or ideology. The permanent insistence on non-conformity makes planning processes involving both government and intentional community cases of agonist planning. Activist planning theory has not studied how the thousands of dedicated activists living in intentional communities plan the development of their area. The article starts such an investigation by studying Svartlamon in Trondheim, Norway. It is an urban intentional community for social change, housing some 240 individuals. The activists have used planning strategically to mobilize and build external support, to frame the cooperation with the municipality and to establish a legal underpinning of the intentional community. The following questions are answered: Are the goals of the activists clearly reflected in the plans? How are the activists involved in the planning? Are the planning ideas of the intentional community well received by the municipality?

Choosing a Life

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Whitney Sanford
Keyword(s):  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Intentional Community ◽  
Community Structures

Choosing a Life explores who joins intentional communities and what draws these individuals to community life. Millennials and boomers, women in particular, have sought out community life, from communes to looser home-sharing arrangements, not wishing to retire as their parents did. Potential members must decide ‘how much community they desire’, from communal eating arrangements to looser cohousing community structures. This chapter also explores the process of finding and joining communities and the resources of the Federation of Intentional Community. Potential members often spend weeks visiting a community and meeting members; the process is a two-way vetting process, in which both sides must assess suitability long-term residence.

scholarly journals Community, commons, and degrowth at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Lockyer
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Participatory Action Research ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Intentional Community ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Waste Production ◽  
The Commons

Abstract For centuries, intentional communities of various sorts have been formed to experiment with alternative socio-cultural and economic models. As we enter the Anthropocene and find ourselves in a world challenged to create a post-carbon economy that is no longer reliant on endless growth, such models are in greater demand than ever. Since the mid-1990s, hundreds of ecovillages around the world have been experimenting with ways to achieve prosperity without growth. Linking to three transition discourses, this article uses ongoing ethnographic research to describe how one intentional community – Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in northeast Missouri, USA – is forging such models by cultivating cooperative cultural values and behaviors, recreating the commons, and sharing their experiences and lessons with broader publics through media, research, and educational programs. Based on ongoing participatory action research, I present data on areas such as energy use, water use, solid waste production, and perceived happiness to illustrate that the community is achieving the decreased consumption patterns required for degrowth while maintaining a high quality of life for its members. Finally, the paper reflects on the role of the activist-researcher facing the dual tasks of helping the community move toward its goals while simultaneously translating the particular to more broadly applicable theory and practice. Key words: commons, degrowth, ecovillages, intentional communities, participatory action research, transition discourses

Heavens on Earth: Christian Utopias in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century America

2010 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 396-418
Author(s):  
Christopher Clark
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Intentional Community ◽  
American Christianity ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Communal Organizations ◽  
Twentieth Century America ◽  
Distinctive Role

In the rich and complex history of American Christianity, utopias in one form or another have played a constant part. From the early puritan settlements onwards, North America has played a distinctive role in the Christian imagination — as a place of refuge, as a place for experimentation, as the founding-spot for new sects, churches, and denominations. Among the experimenters have been many groups of Christians in America who have, over more than two centuries, gathered themselves into communal organizations — what participants and commentators now call ‘intentional communities’. Their numbers have been almost impossible to measure accurately; one authoritative listing counts about six hundred communal groups with over fifteen hundred separate settlements in the USA before 1965, and there will have been thousands more communes formed since then. Membership figures are even harder to pin down, but it is certain that the numbers of people who have at one time or another lived in an American intentional community runs into the hundreds of thousands.

At Home, Work, and Worship

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacy C. Kozakavich
Keyword(s):  
Community Building ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
Intentional Community ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Dynamic Nature ◽  
Family Structures ◽  
Work Spaces ◽  
Home Work

The domestic, devotional, and work spaces inhabited by past intentional community members hold traces of their family structures and can provide evidence of the dynamic nature of community building. Repairs to the Ephrata Colony's Kedar and a remnant abandoned arch in a Shaker basement are two examples of buildings as processes of negotiation and inhabitation that were physically changed as their builders' needs, abilities, and expectations changed. And as they were inhabited, buildings worked upon their residents to reinforce behaviors central to community belief, from the separating brothers' and sisters' staircases of Shaker family houses to the gathering rooms of the Oneida Mansion House. In providing examples from archaeological and architectural history approaches to intentional communities' built environments, this chapter demonstrates the strength of this scale in accessing family structures and identifying built responses to members' long- and short-term visions and goals.

DISABILITY POLICY: ARE WE MAKING PROGRESS?

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-276
Author(s):  
Shelley Burtt
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Disabilities ◽  
Disability Policy ◽  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Intellectual And Developmental Disabilities ◽  
Intentional Community ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Agricultural Communities ◽  
Final Rule ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract:This essay criticizes recent trends in disability policy as restrictive of individual liberty and informed by too narrow a definition of what constitutes human flourishing. I defend the value of intentional community settings as one legitimate residential option for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Recent federal regulations (HCBS Final Rule) define intentional communities or disability-specific housing as presumptively institutional in nature, misunderstanding the positive, noninstitutional features of intentional, integrated communities created by and for people with developmental disabilities. In addition, current disability policy, despite its stated concern for the autonomy of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, limits individual liberty by strictly defining the types of settings eligible for Medicaid waiver funding, expressly excluding agricultural communities, disability-specific residential settings, and intentional communities. A robust commitment to the autonomy of people receiving Medicaid waiver services would allow them to choose to direct their program dollars, recognizing that some individuals may choose a life in intentional community or with others facing similar challenges to themselves over an illusory “integration” into a wider society that remains too often unwelcoming and difficult to navigate.

Remaking Communities

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacy C. Kozakavich
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Societal Change ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Intentional Community ◽  
Tourist Destinations ◽  
Entrepreneurial Spirit ◽  
Societal Context ◽  
Time Critical ◽  
Critical Reflections

Reconstructions and restorations at intentional community sites, such as Shaker and Moravian villages, are popular tourist destinations and valuable resources for public education. How do these sites present past groups' ideals within a modern societal context that largely contradicts many of their fundamental principles? How can visitors seek inspiration from intentional communities' unique efforts to enact or embody societal change when modern reconstructions often focus on quaint agrarian lifestyles that celebrate nostalgia for a shared, uncontested past, or highlight small innovations and inventions that align with our American ideals of individualism and entrepreneurial spirit? This chapter seeks to open a broad conversation among archaeologists about our role in interpreting and presenting community pasts as acts of social critique. Moving forward, we must acknowledge the modern social and political assumptions and motivations behind our interpretations of past communities, whether they are picturesque visions of an imagined simpler time, critical reflections on the discriminatory beliefs entwined with many group's histories, or calls to rekindle a movement or spirit from which we can learn today.

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