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OverviewFull Product DetailsAuthor: Rosabeth Moss KanterPublisher: Harvard University Press Imprint: Harvard University Press Dimensions: Width: 13.70cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 21.00cm Weight: 0.404kg ISBN: 9780674145764ISBN 10: 0674145763 Pages: 320 Publication Date: 14 March 2005 Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate , Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In stock  We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately. Table of ContentsPart One: The Utopian Faith * A Refuge and a Hope * Society's Maternal Bed: Idealizations of Communal Life Part Two: Lessons of the Past * Commitment: The Problem and the Theory * Live in Love and Union: Commitment Mechanisms in Nineteenth Century Communes * The Comforts of Commitment: Issues in Group Life * Away from Community Part Three: Problems of Today * Retreat from Utopia 8 They Also Serve: Communes with Missions * The Limits of Utopia * Appendix. Sample and Methodology for Study of Nineteenth Century Communes * Bibliography * Notes * IndexReviewsThe strength of his book is in its imaginative concept, original insight and historical competence...will certainly be widely read and hotly discussed.--Harvey Cox A thoughtful, exploratory, if somewhat rosy study of America's utopian communities which compares 19th century experiments (Oneida, The Shakers, New Harmony, Brook Farm, Zoar, etc.) with today's hippie-ish counterculture communes. Kanter (Brandeis - Sociology) finds great variety in their organization and structure - how work is allotted and shared, property arrangements, internal self-government, housing, dress, child-rearing and sexual practices. But she is most interested in the several commitment mechanisms which guard against centrifugal tendencies and group disintegration. These include shared ideologies or religious creeds, symbols and ceremonies that bind, and strict regulation of outside contacts. Acknowledging the ephemeral nature of most communes Kanter searches for the distinguishing characteristics of those which lasted for many years. Her conclusions go a long way toward extinguishing the popular conception of these communities as hedonistic enclaves of drugs and free love; the most successful groups were also the most highly organized, institutionally comprehensive, and ideologically monolithic. The anarchistic do-your-own-thing impulse has generally proved fatal - survival appears to require a high degree of austerity, renunciation, hard work and especially mortification - i.e., diminution of one's sense of a private, differentiated, autonomous, identity. Such a finding raises some disturbing questions about the authoritarian implications of these experiments. Kanter, who is warmly optimistic about the commune's potential to foster self-fulfillment, brotherly love, individual growth, etc., shies away from that nasty word totalitarianism and doesn't really do justice to critics of communal life or discuss the ones which degenerated into dictatorial personality cults or worse. Nonetheless, a substantive introduction to different ideals (from Jesus to Marx to Skinner) which have inspired these self-created and self-chosen communities. (Kirkus Reviews) Author InformationRosabeth Moss Kanter is Professor of Sociology and of Organization and Management, Yale University. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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