Routledge Two Hundred Years of American Communes

The United States is the only modern nation in which communes have continuously existed for the past two hundred years. This definitive history of communes in America examines the major factors that have supported the existence and growth of communes throughout American history. The most impressive survey of the communal experience since the works of Noyes and Nordhoff, it is informed by a deep respect for the human subjects and organizational forms of American communes. The findings in the analytical chapters are of considerably theoretical import beyond the historical narrative.Oved details the founding, growth, development, and sometimes failure of alternative societies from 1735 to 1939: Icaria, Ephrata, Oneida, Shaker, religious, secular, and socialist communes. Extensive reference material cited will assure this work a special place in the archives of the literature on communes. Review -As one who has had firsthand experience of life on a kibbutz, Oved (Tel Aviv University) brings a special angle of vision to this study of communes... Taking into account such factors as ideology, social life, education, culture, rituals, economics, and the role of women and the family, Oved uses the comparative approach to draw a collective profile of American communes.- --R. Muccigrosso, Choice -In modern times voluntary communes have existed continuously for some 250 years in the United States. Yaacov Oved provides an exciting tour of these 250 years of communal experiments as well as a helpful and detailed chronology of communal life in the United States from the early days of the English colonies through the 1920s.... Oved's monumental work not only provides an introduction to communal activity in North America, but offers a new analytic framework as well, which will serve scholars in a variety of disciplines who are investigating the social and cultural life of communes.- --Donald B. Kraybill, American Anthropologist -The reader knowledgeable about communes will find new insights.... It is well worth a place in the library of any student of communes.- --Ruth Shonle Cavan, Contemporary Sociology "As one who has had firsthand experience of life on a kibbutz, Oved (Tel Aviv University) brings a special angle of vision to this study of communes... Taking into account such factors as ideology, social life, education, culture, rituals, economics, and the role of women and the family, Oved uses the comparative approach to draw a collective profile of American communes." --R. Muccigrosso, Choice "In modern times voluntary communes have existed continuously for some 250 years in the United States. Yaacov Oved provides an exciting tour of these 250 years of communal experiments as well as a helpful and detailed chronology of communal life in the United States from the early days of the English colonies through the 1920s.... Oved's monumental work not only provides an introduction to communal activity in North America, but offers a new analytic framework as well, which will serve scholars in a variety of disciplines who are investigating the social and cultural life of communes." --Donald B. Kraybill, American Anthropologist "The reader knowledgeable about communes will find new insights.... It is well worth a place in the library of any student of communes." --Ruth Shonle Cavan, Contemporary Sociology "As one who has had firsthand experience of life on a kibbutz, Oved (Tel Aviv University) brings a special angle of vision to this study of communes... Taking into account such factors as ideology, social life, education, culture, rituals, economics, and the role of women and the family, Oved uses the comparative approach to draw a collective profile of American communes." --R. Muccigrosso, Choice "In modern times voluntary communes have existed continuously for some 250 years in the United States. Yaacov Oved provides an exciting tour of these 250 years of communal experiments as well as a helpful and det