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Alienation and Charisma: A Study of Contemporary American Communes
- GenresCults
455 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1980
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March 8, 2019
This is an excellent book to read if you're interested in the sociological reasons that make communes work (or not work). It's a bit dense and academic --- I had trouble wrapping my brain around the idea of "cathexis." But it is also sympathetic to the communal ideal, clearly written, and understandable. It was written in the immediate aftermath of the (relative) heyday of the communal movements of the 1960's and 1970's, and focuses on those movements. It would also be helpful if you're interested in starting or joining a communal group yourself.
In Part I, he talks in more general terms about communes that they studied, and what keeps them together (or drives them apart). He comes to a surprising conclusion: that the greater the love relationships in the commune, the less stable it was. "Something about a commune does not love a dyad. Observers . . . have commented on the strain between marital commitment and communal commitment" (p. 121). "The probability of staying is greater for the loved than the unloved, but the probability of staying decreases for both categories as the overall saturation of love in the group increases" (P. 131). "The higher the density of loving, the greater the membership turnover" (p. 155-156).
In Part II, he discusses the ideological aspirations and achievements of communes. He divides communes into eight general types (political, eastern religious, Christian, etc.), and looks at problems of consensus, alienation, charisma, authority, and inequality, and the roles these played in communal life.
It's not exhaustive. He deliberately excludes some of the longer-term and better-known communal experiments, such as Catholic monasticism. But if you read it, you get a sense of what to look for in the longer-lived groups as well as the shorter-lived ones, a better sense of why creating a commune is more difficult than it seems, and some clues as to why the longer-lived groups made the structural decisions that they did. So even though it's not an exhaustive study, I haven't found a better account of the sociological workings of communal living.
In Part I, he talks in more general terms about communes that they studied, and what keeps them together (or drives them apart). He comes to a surprising conclusion: that the greater the love relationships in the commune, the less stable it was. "Something about a commune does not love a dyad. Observers . . . have commented on the strain between marital commitment and communal commitment" (p. 121). "The probability of staying is greater for the loved than the unloved, but the probability of staying decreases for both categories as the overall saturation of love in the group increases" (P. 131). "The higher the density of loving, the greater the membership turnover" (p. 155-156).
In Part II, he discusses the ideological aspirations and achievements of communes. He divides communes into eight general types (political, eastern religious, Christian, etc.), and looks at problems of consensus, alienation, charisma, authority, and inequality, and the roles these played in communal life.
It's not exhaustive. He deliberately excludes some of the longer-term and better-known communal experiments, such as Catholic monasticism. But if you read it, you get a sense of what to look for in the longer-lived groups as well as the shorter-lived ones, a better sense of why creating a commune is more difficult than it seems, and some clues as to why the longer-lived groups made the structural decisions that they did. So even though it's not an exhaustive study, I haven't found a better account of the sociological workings of communal living.
Displaying 1 of 1 review