The International Township of Auroville was inaugurated as an international experiment in Human Unity on the southeast coast of India in 1968. My research on Auroville constitutes a case study of collective decision-making. Coding extracts from the weekly internal newsletters of the Township 1975 to 2000 in the qualitative software program, NVivo, I reconstruct features of decision-making in the township which I argue form implicit agreements on principles of organization. Illocutionary action, the effort to reach mutual understanding, underscores each of these principles. Illocutionary action is the building block of Jurgen Habermas Theory of Communicative Action and his Discourse Ethics. Because of the correspondence between decision-making in Auroville and the formulations of Jurgen Habermas, I apply key dimensions of Habermas theory to developments in the township in order to identify the practical consequences of adherence to the primacy Habermas pays to illocutionary action. In this way, I submit his theory to practical test. Contrary to the theoretical expectations of Habermas, decision-making characteristic of lifeworld continues to play a role in steering the systems developed to facilitate the expansion of the Auroville Township.

The International Township of Auroville was inaugurated as an international experiment in Human Unity on the southeast coast of India in 1968. My research on Auroville constitutes a case study of collective decision-making. Coding extracts from the weekly internal newsletters of the Township 1975 to 2000 in the qualitative software program, NVivo, I reconstruct features of decision-making in the township which I argue form implicit agreements on principles of organization. Illocutionary action, the effort to reach mutual understanding, underscores each of these principles. Illocutionary action is the building block of Jurgen Habermas Theory of Communicative Action and his Discourse Ethics. Because of the correspondence between decision-making in Auroville and the formulations of Jurgen Habermas, I apply key dimensions of Habermas theory to developments in the township in order to identify the practical consequences of adherence to the primacy Habermas pays to illocutionary action. In this way, I submit his theory to practical test. Contrary to the theoretical expectations of Habermas, decision-making characteristic of lifeworld continues to play a role in steering the systems developed to facilitate the expansion of the Auroville Township.

This thesis examines the role of concepts of jurisprudence, utopian theory and intentional community in three novels that are based on actual attempts to construct utopian intentional communities. Chapter one focuses on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, applying Ronald Dworkin’s interpretive theory in order to evaluate the Blithedale commune’s attempt to construct its own legal community. Questions of “why does it fail?” are pervasive in this thesis, but in this chapter, I pull apart the various roles of individual members in order to decipher both the role of the individual and the community in self-created legal systems. Chapter two adds to the consideration of constructive interpretivism by looking at the role of associative obligations in T.C Boyle’s Drop City. In particular, I analyze how associative obligations change when the commune relocates to Alaska, considering the effects of space in shifting associative obligations. The final chapter considers the meaning of legal death in Richard Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar. I explain the implications of a commune based on negative intent in order to determine whether this community can still maintain integrity to its cause. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Céu do Mapiá is a community of people living in the rainforest in the southwestern quadrant of Brazil. It was founded in 1983 by ex-rubber tapper Sebastião Mota de Melo and a collection of followers of the religion known as “Santo Daime.” These men and women were seeking to create a “New World,” separating themselves from a society that was undergoing a great deal of upheaval as the period marked the initial phases of major deforestation in the Amazon. The community, therefore, offered a chance of escape from the devastation around them and the freedom to practice their religious beliefs. ‘The Holy Gift,’ as it translates in Portuguese, Santo Daime is a religion that melds together popular Roman Catholicism and indigenous ayahuasca use, as well as Afro-Brazilian spirit possession, Amazonian encantaria, and most recently, New Age beliefs and concepts. Ayahuasca is a concoction of two plants, B. caapi and P. viridis, that produces psychotropic effects and has been widely consumed among indigenous tribes in the Amazon. However, in the context of Santo Daime, it has been deemed a kind of sacrament, the central force of a religious movement that has expanded from its corner in the Amazon into urban centers across Brazil and into Europe, North America, and Japan. Though maintaining a fairly small following of 10,000, Santo Daime has become a global religious movement. This thesis attempts to unravel two seemingly contradictory processes embodied in the community of Céu do Mapiá: separation and expansion. First, I outline the trajectory of the community from its initial ideals to its later entanglements with state and other international actors. Second, I trace the network of people, ideas, and goods that have become a part of Santo Daime’s international expansion. Third, I discuss the contemporary everyday rhythms in the communities and how they have been shaped by the various relationships that have developed through this expansion, positing that place is a nexus of relations. / text

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This dissertation considers the subject of ecovillages, intentional ecologically-oriented sustainable communities developed in the U.S., and the different understandings of community involvement, structure, and challenges that members of these communities confront in their efforts at managing these time and labor-intensive settlements. Informed by the work of performance ethnographers and critical phenomenologists, I consider twelve interviews I conducted on-site and electronically with people living in ecovillage settlements. Taking these interviews and my own observations from on-site visits to two ecovillages as entry points, I conducted a phenomenological analysis informed by a critical phenomenological ethos of these accounts, highlighting five motifs that recurred across their recollections of their lived experiences: (1) intentional design; (2) happenings; (3) community; (4) motivations; and (5) political and environmental ethos. I then considered how these motifs suggested several contingent foundations that underwrite the experience of ecovillage community formation more generally. I identified three such contingent foundations: (1) intention; (2) boundaries; and (3) becoming. From these foundations, I propose a phenomenological rendering of community in ecovillages as a purposive act of ongoing relating between the human and more-than-human world that is cultivated through an attention to articulated principles, enacted through actions and behaviors that follow from these principles, and reaffirmed through mutual witnessing and commitment to the aforesaid principles. Such an understanding of community poses interesting implications for communication studies and related sub-disciplines. I consider some of these implications in the conclusion to my dissertation, before outlining some of the future work I hope to pursue relating to ecovillages and intentional communities more generally.

Modern work has been proven to compartmentalize the life of the individual. One must look no further than semantics to realize the discontinuity between "work" and "home," for the segmented nature of these two states of being becomes apparent the moment that they are juxtaposed.  Historically, it has been argued that the tension between industrial/post-industrial labor and some kind of natural state of existence in which an individual can pursue her own destiny is both deeply rooted in the flowering of modernity and seems to be accepted as unavoidable. In this thesis, I present a case study where this tension is almost entirely put aside. In my analysis of Twin Oaks Community, an intentional community located in central Virginia, I show how modern labor organization can be deliberately cultivated to reconsider the relationship between a laborer and her work, and that a work/life balance is not necessary when all forms of work are valued. Results of a participant observation study performed at Twin Oaks, as well as reliance on theory and sociological studies indicate the ways in which Twin Oaks marries life and work in the pursuit of building community. This study will prove that Twin Oaks Community\'s labor organization, valuing of labor from all epochs (pre-industrial, industrial, and post-industrial), and overarching communitarian goals help to reunite the laborer with her natural life-activity. / Master of Public and International Affairs

This thesis examines current radical liberal Christian activism in the Southern United States through focusing upon a particular intentional community located in Atlanta, Georgia, The Open Door Community. Through praxis and reflection, this community has developed its own unique practice and theology that I have termed “Liberation Gospel.” This thesis analyzes and describes a unique community in order to understand where the community succeeds, and where it does not, in putting its theological beliefs into practice. This very liberal community does not distinguish between their politics and their theology.

It is the purpose of this paper to explore how Morris' novel relates to life in Twin Oaks, primarily as depicted in two books: Living the Dream (1983) by Ingrid Komar, a long-term visitor to the commune and Kinkade's Is It Utopia Yet? (1996). This comparison will demonstrate that the experiences of contemporary intentional communities such as Twin Oaks provide a meaningful context for reading News from Nowhere because of the similarities in goals and philosophy. It will further demonstrate that though Twin Oaks was originally inspired by a utopian novel much more in the tradition of Bellamy's work than Morris', the community's subsequent evolution has brought it much closer in philosophy to News from Nowhere than Looking Backward.

Counterculture history is often divided, with a focus on either the turbulent 1960s or the "back to the land" exodus of the 1970s. A study of Stephen Gaskin and his followers' founding of The Farm, a rural commune near Summertown, Tennessee, provides a unique insight into the commonalities and connections of these two periods. It will be the aim of this thesis to weave the separate narratives of this demographic into one complete idea. The idea that the hippies constituted a counterculture suggests that once that culture went into exile, onto numerous communes, they existed as a diaspora. The Farm's existence as a spiritual commune, with their roots in Haight-Ashbury's short-lived utopian dream, and their continuation and evolution of that dream in Tennessee, make this particular group a model for the diaspora. The Farm, with its larger profile, publishing, and outreach programs, became the preeminent post-Haight-Ashbury commune. The commune was able to preserve the counterculture in exile, while it became a leader in dictating the direction of its progress. The Farm's efforts in midwifery, sustainable living, promotion of vegetarian diets, and outreach in America's inner cities and the Third World all point to a proactive counterculture and the commune's leadership role for the remnants of the counterculture. While the profile of the counterculture has diminished, a shift in American attitudes toward natural childbirth, ecology, and a more earth-friendly diet containing a greater variety of organic and vegetarian options reveal a significant success for their agenda.