1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910825625903321

Autore

Ferrara Mark S.

Titolo

American community : radical experiments in intentional living / / Mark S. Ferrara

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New Brunswick, Camden ; ; Newark, New Jersey ; ; London, England : , : Rutgers University Press, , 2019

©2020

ISBN

1-9788-0824-0

1-9788-0826-7

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (222 pages)

Disciplina

307.770973

Soggetti

Communal living - United States - History

Collective settlements - United States - History

Utopias - United States - History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (pages 209-216) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Introduction: Community of Goods in the Colonies -- 1 Revolution and Social Reformation -- 2 Sleeping Cars, Spiritualism, and Cooperatives -- 3 Theosophy, Depression, and the New Deal -- 4 Hippies, Arcology, and Ecovillages -- Afterword: The Next Wave -- Acknowledgments -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX -- ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sommario/riassunto

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.