Intentional Communities: Utopianism, Cooperation, and Culture Change From Essenes to Ecovillages

3 units

This class provides an overview and examination of intentional communities over the last 2,000 years and in various regions of the world. Intentional communities are groups of people who have come together to live cooperatively and communally in pursuit of their visions of a better society. We will examine intentional communities past and present, foreign and domestic through the lenses of both scholarly treatments of intentional communities and accounts written by intentional community members. We will move chronologically through time, beginning with the earliest intentional communities that scholars have identified and ending with a significant section on contemporary ecovillages and other sustainability-oriented intentional community movements. We will also use various theoretical frameworks to guide our growing understanding of intentional communities. The class is seminar format but will include short lectures, occasional videos and at least one required field trip to an intentional community in or near St. Louis. An additional ethnographic internship credit opportunity involving primary research within intentional communities in or near St. Louis will be available to anthropology majors who take the class, pending final budgetary approval.