Be sure that you scroll down and read the post on the Two Topics Memo, and don’t forget to submit that by email and bring a copy with you to class on Wednesday.
In addition to discussing these memos, we will also be talking about the assigned readings from Kanter. Please write a comment on this post about these readings. You may choose to discuss ways the readings might relate to the topics you are considering for your paper, or you can respond to one of the following questions:
- Do you agree with the way that Kanter defines a "successful" community? What counts, for her, as success? Why select this criterion or these criteria?
- Are "commitment mechanisms" a good way to measure success even on Kanter’s own terms?
- Underlying Kanter’s work is the assumption that internal dynamics affect a community more than external ones: do our past readings on other communities confirm that assumption or challenge it?
- Do we get a clearer view from these pages of what makes Kanter’s a "sociological perspective" on communes rather than an exclusively historical one? Point specifically to the things that you think distinguish her work from, say, Brundage’s, Foster’s, or Turner’s.
See you on Wednesday!
Early on in the reading, Kanter emphasizes the importance of commitment by each individual member of the commune to illustrate the ‘foundation’ of the commune. The organization, relationships, and fluidity all boil down to how committed each member is to the community and whether they are willing to invest everything they possess and value to drive the community’s success. Kanter highlighted each one of these factors throughout the reading to describe her nine “successful” 19th century communities (Oneida, Amana, The Shakers, etc.).
The individuals in these 19th century communes are the cogs that help keep the clock from expiring. These members must be willing to adhere to the commitment process; give up something in order to gain something back from the community. Kanter’s definition of a successful community is very persuasive and she created well-structured examples that illustrated each aspect of a successful community. At the root of all of her examples was the importance of a member’s commitment.
In Kanter’s “successful” community, members are required to give up belongings, sexual relations, financials, etc. in order to invest in the success of the commune. This ‘sacrifice’ helped members gain a sense of participation in their community. Participation brings the members of the community closer, increasing fluidity, teamwork, and goal sharing, but it all begins with commitment. Individuals no longer maintain their own standards and values, but develop those of the greater community.
Successful communities found themselves in total isolation after they set boundaries and deterred outsiders, reinforcing the “we-feeling” among its members. Once shut off from the outside influences, members could focus on their commitment to the community in all facets of life: work, ideology, relationships, leadership, etc. Kanter implied that leaving the outside influences behind upon entering the colony was one of the first sacrifices potential-members encountered. These specific examples make up Kanter’s commitment mechanisms that she believed, led to a community’s success. Each one of these unique aspects requires that members give up something to gain something; the root of Kanter’s argument. She argues that the renouncing of sex, wages, and other forms of ‘selfish’ concepts helped bring the members closer together and the various tables she provided throughout the reading statistically supported her argument. The “we-feeling” she constantly referred to helped minimize differences, settle disputes, and create a successful homogeneous population.
In her book, Kanter mentions that the most important and defining facets of a commune are sacrifice, investment, renunciation, communion, mortification and transcendence. The reason for using these criteria to use in judging the “success” of communes is that living in a “utopian” community requires residents to be involved “instrumentally, emotionally and morally, thereby building commitment to continued participation.” (126) In a way, some aspect of each of these variables promotes the idea of a more involved commune citizen. By Kanter’s logic, the more involved citizens a society has promoting its vision, the more likely the society is to remain true to its goals and be “successful” for a long time. Therefore, as aspects of commitment, the criteria were selected.
Each component of Kanter’s defining aspects of a successful commune are concerned specifically with commitment. For example, in order to be committed to anything, it is necessary to make sacrifices to focus on the task at hand; in this case, leading a life in line with the values of the other commune members. Sacrifice is a necessary component of membership in commune societies, because every member has to leave something behind in order to join the commune effort. In my opinion, if a community lacks sacrifice and allows anyone to join, then it risks membership from those who are truly committed to the effort. Therefore, the presence of sacrifice is a good measure of “success.” Likewise, in terms of investment, Kanter identifies that those communities that were successful had some requirements of “[committing] their ‘profit’ to the group, so that leaving it would be costly.” (80) I agree that investment is a good measure of “success,” because it is another way to promote irreversibility in terms of the commune members’ decisions and heighten their commitment to the cause. Also, most communes came with a renunciation of the outside world in the form of geographical and social isolation, and even rejected intimacy or family structures. Kanter argues “all but one of the successful nineteenth century groups practiced either celibacy or free love,” (87) meaning for the author, for a commune to be considered “successful,” it needed to be remote and separate from traditional social structures. I would agree partly with Kanter, because I think that if a commune truly wanted to be a rejection of society at large, it would have to be self-reliant economically, but the rebuff of tradition would not necessarily have to include a different approach to relationships if that was not at the core of the commune’s motives.
Perhaps the most important variable Kanter discusses is that of communion. Engaging in communal work, ritual, group contact and sharing are all considered key components of any “successful” commune, and my opinion is no different from Kanter’s. In fact, I think that this variable alone may be the true measure of a commune’s success: if the citizens worked together to create a society that they were proud of, then in my mind they were successful. Communion goes along with the component of mortification, which provides “a new identity for the person that is based on the power and meaningfulness of group membership.” (103) By sharing confession and mutual criticism, among forms of spiritual differentiation and public denouncement, commune members de-individualized themselves and became more part of the group effort than their own. Consequently, I think that mortification is an extremely important determinant of a commune’s success, because without it, it is possible for the individual to be placed before the group. Lastly Kanter explains that transcendence, in terms of guidance and tradition, is way to assure commitment to the commune. I think that this is an astute observation, because without tradition, there is no hope longevity within the community, and I think one of the best measures of success is not necessarily how long the commune lasted, but that it lasted long enough with a distinct tradition to be historically significant.
In conclusion, my personal opinion is that the variables used by Kanter are indeed helpful criteria in defining a “utopian” community as “successful.” I think that a commune does not need to still exist today for it to have been “successful;” but, for the commune to ever have been considered a success in my mind, it had to have consisted of people truly committed to a singular vision. Each of the variables that Kanter identifies help promote that shared commitment, and thus, I agree with her criteria for defining a community as “successful” or not.
Kanter’s measure for success is the longevity of a commune, but she relates longevity directly to commitment, so in an indirect manner, Kanter argues that success is based on commitment. Later on in the reading, she briefly qualifies this by alluding to some other possibilities for measuring success: “personal satisfaction of members or the degree of congruence between original ideals and actual existence” (128). However, she concludes her justification by suggesting that these two measurements ultimately tie back to longevity (and therefore, to commitment). Her argument suggests a sociological focus in clear answers without the subtle nuances of historical perspective.
Kanter takes a de-personalized and somewhat cynical view of commitment and community, arguing that it is composed of components (continuance, cohesion, and control) and is based on people’s inclination to “[orient themselves] with respect to the rewards and costs that are involved in participating in the system” (68). On the one hand, the compartmentalization of elements allows for a scientific study, which sociologists tend to aim for as social scientists. However, when reading about Kanter’s factors for success, I felt like something was wanting. Yes, pros and cons (rewards and costs) are weighed when deciding whether to join the community of a marriage, but to term the commitment in such a quantifiable way as a “’rating’ on these three dimensions” seems to limit the human through the practical (68).
According to Kanter, there are also six commitment building processes, and she goes into detail about each one of these and their subsets. As I was reading, I started to feel like I was reading a recipe for a successful commune: one teaspoon of free love or celibacy and three cups of communal work efforts, with no compensation for those who choose to leave the community. Although Kanter’s analysis was not quite as black and white about the topic as my metaphor, her categorization methods, highlighted by her statistics charts, were excessive.To a certain extent, categorization is helpful, but Kanter did not acknowledge the human and unique element to a sufficient extent. And so we return to lumping, splitting, history, sociology, and finding a happy medium.
Kanter focuses on how the internal characteristics of a utopian community lead to its success or failure. According to her complex rubric of utopian mechanisms (sacrifice, investment, renunciation, communion, mortification, and transcendence), utopian communities succeed when they have clear boundaries and rituals. The more they ask of their members, the more cohesive the community becomes. (Of course, there’s a point of diminishing returns, but Kanter finds such incidents rare.) The utopia lives and dies of its accord, with little part played by the outside society. Indeed, Kanter claims–apparently wanting to drive historians mad–that the years of 1780-1860 saw little social change, and utopias were isolated in the frontier free from outside contact. External factors weren’t relevant to the success or failure of utopian communities because there weren’t any external factors to begin with.
We’ve certainly seen in this class how internal factors can shape how cohesive or chaotic a utopian community is. Oneida had its rituals of communion (complex marriage), renunciation (male continence), and mortification (mutual criticism), and lasted for a few decades on the strength of that community. The Farm offered the possibility of transcendence through midwifery and other juice-heavy ventures. Ruskin, meanwhile, collapsed in part because its membership was too heterogeneous, not given enough guidance by the leadership, and not required to give up enough.
But we’ve seen external factors play a large part as well in the histories of these utopian communities. The Farm succeeded in part because its work ethic and sexual politics, as inflected as they were with psychedelic language, appealed to its Tennesseean neighbors. Ruskin in part failed because of the Populists’ fusion with the Democrats, the Ruskinites’ reactive withdrawal from partisan politics, and the Socialist Party’s withdrawal of support from apolitical groups like the Ruskinites. Also, Ruskin’s failure played out within the larger society, as American radicals and socialists pointed to Ruskin as a cautionary tale.
I’m reminded of the debate over whether the Republican Party emancipated the slaves because they were forced to do so by outside forces or because they intended to do so from the beginning. It’s fine to analyze whether external or internal factors were more influential in a particular historical moment, but to ignore or rule out either set of factors is contrary to good historical thinking.
Commitment mechanisms can indeed be a good way to measure success in a Utopian Community because how committed a group is affects every other aspect of the community. Whether the problems facing a community are organization, getting work done or building relationships—commitment underlies the issues. For Kanter this mechanism is perfect since she places fault directly on the group itself for not banding together to solve their problems. Under Kanter’s framework if a group is determined enough they can accomplish their goals, and there is some evidence of this as the video we watched a few weeks ago over Black Bear Ranch Commune shows that members managed to fund their community by going from door to door of famous musicians and pleading for money. This idea that if a group is committed enough to its ideals they can achieve their goals is a solid measure to gauge success.
Upon examining other communities we studied this semester we see that commitment is a fair indicator of a group’s success. Drop City managed to construct its infamous domes by visiting junkyards and they managed to sustain themselves by scavenging in town (at least at times) however the community began to fail once the principal leaders left because they felt that the community had changed radically from its conception. This relates in part to the third question over external forces but the simple fact is that the community truly failed because the original leaders failed to commit fully at the beginning and implement processes that would ensure the purity of their vision of Drop City. I understand that this may seem to contradict the purpose of Drop City but the fact remains that both the readings and videos suggest there were certain implied processes but that over time people abandoned them. If those “implied” processes were stronger, then perhaps Drop City could have prolonged its lifespan. Kanter supports this with the statement that “commitment…depends on the extent to which groups institute processes that increase the unity, coherence, and possible gratification of the group itself (Kanter 71).”
In the end it is my argument that a group can fail due to many different factors both external and internal but that these issues are either avoidable or treatable with an increased effort at commitment. This idea of commitment isn’t merely an ideological commitment to the overreaching vision of the community but rather a practical realization that such goals can’t just be achieved without a considerable effort put into place.
Kanter, once again, “lumps” utopian communes into just two black-and-white categories: Successful or unsuccessful. At the beginning and then throughout this reading, Kanter’s definition of “success” is ultimately based on the longevity of the commune. She asserts that “the Shakers, Amana, and Oneida. . . are among nine ‘successful’ nineteenth century utopian communities, lasting thirty-three years or more. They can be contrasted with twenty-one ‘unsuccessful’ groups lasting less than sixteen years. . .” (64). This, I do not agree with. We have discussed on several occasions in class what constitutes a successful community and have yet to reach a consensus. However, to base success on the number of years a community was in effect seems to be the easy way out. To look at historical records and count the years is not difficult. To trace the impact of the community on the larger society and its own members, as well as to trace the impact of individual members on each other and communities, inside and outside, requires a much more effort and time- granted, is also more subject to fuzzy lines of subjectivity.
Kanter attempts to make a save on this definition of success by attributing longevity to commitment. I appreciated Kanter listing out some of the problems communities had to face (64) because it helped put some things into perspective. Based on these questions, it seems to be all about finding the perfect balance (utopian balance, perhaps?). Members need to get work done, but without coercion. Close relationships must be built but without exclusivity. I like that Kanter maintains the relationship between self and the community is a reciprocal one. This is the case with many other types of “successful” relationships, assuming the basis for “successful” is the feeling of fulfillment on both ends and if the relationship lasts. Commitment ties self-interest to social requirements (66), which works for a communal society. It was interesting that Kanter split “commitment” into three different types (69): instrumental, affective, and moral. She believes that all utopian communities had at least one of these types, which affected what type of commune it was.
Sacrifice is, apparently, also essential to a strong commune (76). Most people think of utopias as a place all of their desires and ideas can be fulfilled and reached. Who said anything about sacrificing something? But sacrifice does occur on more micro-communities, like a family. Therefore, it seems Kanter is more so describing a successful community than a utopian community. Perhaps they are the same thing? If so, could we categorize families or extended families as a successful utopian community? There are sacrifices for the family. People are committed to family, wanting to do things that are required for it to function. There are perhaps shared morals and ideologies within a family.
Throughout everything Kanter describes, I noted that she believes most solid communities had harder requirements or rules, like abstinence or needing permission to leave the community temporarily (85). The description of the night watchman at the Harmony Society, seeing everyone come and go, knowing “who was to arrive” sounds uncannily like a Big Brother of Orwell’s 1986. In fact, reading Kanter’s description of a utopian society has me wondering whether Orwell had picked up her book and hadn’t agreed with her (although I believe he wrote the book before her publication). Kanter emphasizes control again, saying, “The most enduring communes were also the most centralized and the most tightly controlled” (129). If this is true, what does this say about humans in general? Is it not possible to create a community that looks out for one another communally without a higher power with oversight?
Kanter argued that “commitment mechanisms” are a useful tool to understand and qualify the success of a commune. As she is a sociologist, it is a good measure with a few exceptions. Kanter is more focused on the way people lived together than the context or complex ideals that brought them together. Since Kanter’s definition of communal success has much to do with the longevity of the community versus anything else that they might accomplish, commitment is an important feature. These commitment mechanisms are important when understanding how people lived in these communities because they lay out six ways the people devote themselves to the communes and therefore help to explain some of the ways in which the commune interacts. For example, people must be invested in the idea of a commune and invested in the idea of its success to want to be become part of it.
However, if people are not dedicated to a commune in these ways, there must be other reasons why they would be there. An example would be children of members of the commune. These children, if they were born into the commune, do not have much of a choice they can exercise as to whether or not they want to be a part it. This sometimes unwilling member would not have the same level of commitment as their parents and therefore, their interactions would have to be measured in other ways.
I also believe that Kanter’s idea of renunciation is a difficult concept to fully realize. Although members of the group may sever ties with their family members, it may be difficult be completely separated from society. Unless the commune is fully self-sufficient (which is extremely difficult), the members would still have interaction with people in the outside world. It also may not be possible for a commune to be completely geographically remote. The influence of the outside world could either alter the ideals that the group strives for or change their way of doing particular tasks. The outside world in this way would continue to influence the group members and possibly weaken the communal ties that have formed. She also does not account for any sort of positive interaction with the outside world, which could strengthen communal ties.
Kanter’s focus on commitment makes sense due to her sociological background, but she has several flaws in her ideas. These “commitment mechanisms” require fully consenting members. In the case of children born into the commune, they do not have an option and therefore might not follow these principles as their parents would. It is also difficult for a commune to fully renounce society, either because of geographical proximity or a need to interact with society to acquire goods for the commune. In a perfect commune, in which all members are fully consenting and the commune exists away from society, then Kanter’s principles could be used to greater effect.
Kanter uses the duration of the utopias as the basis for the effectiveness for the different communities. Of the 91 communes in the late eigtenth century to late nineteenth century, only nine were describe as “successful” as they had lasted longer then 33 years, and 21 groups were lumped as “unsuccessful” because they disbanded before seven years (64). Kanter’s argument is that the longevity of the commune testifies to how well it ran. She then comments that it takes strong individual commitment to the groups to make them last throughout the struggles. Through six commitment mechanisms of sacrifice, investment, renunciation, communion, mortification, and transcendence, the individuals would become a stronger group and thus the utopias would be able to retain the individuals better when the “going gets tough” as the individuals felt more reasons to stay. Kanter articulates that “the successful communitites tended to provide programs and philosophic guides for much of the behavior of member.” (121) Thus rituals, rules, and leadership hierarchies all help the stability of a community by keeping the individuals part of the larger group.
I do not agree that the tenure of a community is the only way to examine the successfulness of it. In class we have discussed many different ways of looking at a community from how much of an impact did it have on the outside world to how closely the members of the group abided to the groups ideologies. Along with the limited view on the success of the colonies, I also think it is important to point out that many communes failed because of outside influences also. Many farming communes struggled with money and ultimately failed because of bad weather creating bad crops. Other natural disasters such as fires also caused the down turn of some communities. I also think its worth noting that Kanter says that strong leaders and rule regiment create a better utopia but in a “free” society it seems very counterproductive to the themes, thus a more open system can’t be compared to a very structured one.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter sets out that the measure of the ‘success’ of a commune is longevity of that community (p.64). She specifically applies this to nineteenth century communes, and the reading compares nine ‘successful’ communes – which lasted thirty-three years or more – and twenty-one ‘unsuccessful’ communes that lasted less than sixteen years (p.64). She has her reasons for such a measurement. Kanter claims that the ease of measuring the longevity of a community makes it an efficient and suitable tool of measurement (p.138). One might argue that while longevity can be easily defined in many senses, does it create too stringent a boundary? For example, when is the cut off – if you class success as lasting twenty-five years and one commune exists for twenty-four years, would that be unsuccessful? Perhaps some subjectivity is needed. There is also a concern as to how the commune exists. Does it exist in its original form, or has it morphed? If a commune exists for thirty-five years, but in that time everything except the name has changed, is that longevity?
Kanter also argues that the nineteenth-century commune’s main priority was to simply exist (p.138). This may be true, but this significantly limits the use of these categories on other times and communes. If we are measuring success in one time as simply existence, can we compare these communes with those whose success may not be considered in such a way? Perhaps we should consider ‘accomplishment of primary goal’ as a means of success. For some, this might mean simple existence – others may hope to influence part of society, or become well known. This would not have the advantage of ease, and the groups goals may change or be unclear in the first place. Which leads the questions, should we even study success? It is such a subjective term that may be defined differently by different disciplines, individuals and times. It would be more beneficial, in my opinion, to study how the communes worked, how they operated within or separately from the wider society, and how they changed. By grouping communes into ‘successful’ and ‘unsuccessful’ we are writing off whole groups of communes which may be important to study for other reasons.
Kanter defines a “successful” commune by what I consider to be a fairly arbitrary metric: the longevity of existence. More precisely, her ranking is based on whether the commune lasted for longer than thirty-three years. If so, according to her introduction in “The Problem and Theory of Commitment,” the commune was a success. She explains how ninety-one communal projects from the period between 1780-1860 have existing records. According to Kanter, less than twelve lasted for more than sixteen years. Of those, nine existed for more than thirty-three years, and this is the pool Kanter decides flourished enough to be considered a success. She totally ignores the other three which lasted between sixteen and thirty-three years; in fact, during the rest of the chapter, we are unaware of how they might be measured by the mechanisms of sacrifice, investment, renunciation, communion, mortification, and transcendence. Instead, Kanter explains how the twenty-one “unsuccessful” groups lasted than sixteen years.
On face value, my instinct is dismiss Kanter’s criteria. She later explains that longevity is a valid measurement since “for many communities in the nineteenth century their overriding goal was simply to exist (Kanter p. 128).” She acknowledges there other standards to measure by, such as the personal satisfaction of individuals, yet focuses on longevity, arguing there is a close tie to long-term existence and other successful practices, including effective management of group relations, property, work, values, and leadership.
Although this justification eases some of my concerns, I still believe there is more to her success metric than she acknowledges. Longevity is not the ‘be all, end all’ of success, despite the fact that these communities might have identified their primary goal as to exist. They didn’t want to simply exist: they wanted to exist in accordance of certain values. I wonder if the components she identified as essential to success – continuance, cohesion, and control – are the primary and driving forces behind the communities, or whether longevity truly does cause such elements to mature. Is it possible that after a long period of time, communes simply fall into many of the same habits? In the end, I found Kanter’s analysis too simplistic, too “lumped.” Perhaps her findings were not as stark as I took them, but I felt like she did not explain how many of the unsuccessful communities did incorporate some of the same mechanisms the successful ones did, or what the great difference between twenty and thirty-three years is. Parceling out some of the nuances and further explaining some of the findings would have been extremely helpful to defend her claims.