The Business of Marketing, Entrepreneurship, and Architecture of Communal Societies in the 1960s and 1970s

Abstract

This book provides an in-depth history of three US-based communal societies that operated in the late 1960s and 1970s-Soul City, Stelle and Twin Oaks-with an emphasis on their financing, marketing, and entrepreneurship processes. These communities reflect the diversity of people who were dissatisfied with the direction in which American society was heading-often underpinned by concerns over racism, sexism, the environment, and capitalism-and decided to take the radical step of joining a communal society. A moral economy approach offers a lens on how these communities were prevented from fully realizing their visions due to the confines of capitalism, as embedded in banking practices, zoning laws, and systemic racism.