Utopische Kommunen

For my doctoral thesis, I conducted a large-scale comparative study of utopian communes worldwide, defining utopian communes (also communal groups or communitarian groups) as groups of not exclusively kin-related people who live together and share their property out of some idealistic motivation. Most such ventures falter quickly, seemingly lending support to pessimistic expectations of an inevitable "tragedy of the commons"; some, however, have continued for decades or even centuries. In my effort to identify the responsible factors, I selected 43 utopian communes from the last two centuries, mainly from the United States, Europe and Japan and including well-known cases such as the Hutterites, the kibbutzim, the Shakers, Oneida, Twin Oaks, or the Bruderhof communities. Relying on the ethnographic and historic literature and my own observations of the Japanese cases, I found group size, presence and type of a branch structure, presence and type of a charismatic leader, family and kinship, and beliefs to be crucial. In separate work, I also assessed the efforts of some communes to bring about more egalitarian gender relations.

Related publications

2003
"All the Flesh Kindred That Ever I See": A Reconsideration of Family and Kinship in Utopian Communes. Comparative Studies in Society and History 45:395-421.

2001
Religious Consensus and Secular Dissent: Two Alternative Paths to Survival for Utopian Communes. Anthropos 96:87-103.

2000
The Dominance of One and Its Perils: Charismatic Leaders and Branch Structures in Utopian Communes. Journal of Anthropological Research 56:425-451.

2000
"Philoprogenitiveness" through the Cracks: The Resilience and Benefits of Kinship in Utopian Communes. In: Peter Schweitzer (ed.) Dividends of Kinship: Meaning and Uses of Social Relatedness, pp. 177-206. London: Routledge.

1999
Verwandtschaftsexperimente: Ehe, Familie und Verwandtschaft in kommunitären Gruppen. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 124:1-30.

1998
Die Kunst des Teilens: Eine vergleichende Untersuchung zu den Überlebensbedingungen kommunitärer Gruppen [The Art of Sharing: A Comparative Study of the Survival Conditions of Utopian Communes]. Hamburg: Lit Verlag.

1997
Gender in Utopia: Das Streben nach Geschlechtsegalität in vier kommunitären Gruppen [Gender in Utopia: Striving for Gender Equality in Four Communitarian Groups]. In: Gisela Völger (ed.) Sie und Er: Frauenmacht und Männerherrschaft im Kulturvergleich [She and He: Female Power and Male Dominance in Cross-Cultural Comparison], vol. 1, pp. 305-312. Köln: Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum für Völkerkunde.

In a previous project, I studied utopian communes in Japan. Not widely known even among specialists, there are a considerable number of such groups, some based on religious beliefs, others on secular ideologies. During short-term field research in 1990 and 1993, I visited, conducted interviews in, and collected written material about ten such communes all over the country. In found that while the beliefs of these groups deviate strongly from those of mainstream Japanese, they build on fairly conventional features of social organisation, a fact that helps to explain the considerable success of most of these experiments.

Related publications

2003
Intentional Communities in Japan. In: Karen Christensen & David Levinson (eds.) Encyclopedia of Community, vol. 2, pp. 739-743. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage.

1999
Alternativkultur in Japan [Alternative Culture in Japan]. In: Hannelore Eisenhofer-Halim, Peter Pörtner & Holger Wöhlbier (eds.) Facetten des modernen Japan [Aspects of Modern Japan], pp. 91-105. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang.

1998
Ittôen, Atarashiki mura und Yamagishikai: Drei utopische Revitalisierungsbewegungen im Vergleich [Ittôen, Atarashiki mura, and Yamagishikai: Three Utopian Revitalisation Movements Compared]. In: Claudia Derichs & Anja Osiander (eds.) Soziale Bewegungen in Japan [Social Movements in Japan]. (MOAG 128), pp. 345-368. Hamburg: Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens.

1997
Charismatische Führer in japanischen Kommunen [Charismatic Leaders in Japanese Communes]. In: Peter Pörtner (ed.) Aufsätze des 10. Deutschsprachigen Japanologentags. München (on CD-ROM).

1996
Strong Leaders: The Charismatic Founders of Japanese Utopian Communities. In: Ian Neary (ed.) Leaders and Leadership in Japan, pp. 175-189. Richmond: Japan Library/Curson Press.

1994
Kommunitäre Gruppen in Japan [Communitarian Groups in Japan]. In: Mathias S. Laubscher & Bertram Turner (eds.) Völkerkunde Tagung 1991, Band 2: Afrika, Asien, Europa, Mittel- und Südamerika, pp. 199-204. München: Akademischer Verlag.

1992
Kommunitäre Gruppen in Japan: Alternative Mikrogesellschaften als kulturelle Spiegel. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 117:119-138.

1990
Utopische Kommunen in Japan [Utopian Communes in Japan]. In: Peter Pörtner (ed.) Japan-Lesebuch 2 [Japan Reader 2], pp. 185-195. Tübingen: Gehrke.

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