1. Utopian Communities

2. Emergence
• Utopias emerged from utopian spirit of the
age
• Various reformers from high-minded to
“lunatic fringe”

3. New Harmony, Indiana

4. New Harmony, Indiana
• Founded by Robert
Owen, 1825
• Communal society of
about one thousand
• Education and social
equality would flourish

5. The Result
• Little harmony prevailed
• Dissolved in 1827 with conflict and
inadequacies

6. Brook Farm, Massachusetts

7. Brook Farm, Massachusetts
• 200 acres of grudging soil
• Started in 1841
• Brotherly/sisterly cooperation of about 20
intellectuals

8. Committed to Transcendentalism
• Truth “transcends” senses
• Knowledge from inner light that illuminates
highest truth

9. Beliefs of Transcendentalism
• Social and religious individualism
• self-reliance, self-culture, self-discipline
• Bred hostility to authority, formal
institutions, conventional wisdom
• Dignity of the individual  humanitarian
reforms

10. The Result
• Prospered until 1846
• Large communal building lost by fire
• Collapsed in debt

11. Oneida Community, New York
• Established 1848
• Flourished for 30 years due to economic
foundation

12. Oneida: Basics
• Free love and “complex marriage”
• Birth control
• Eugenic selection of parents for superior
offspring

13. Founder John Humphrey Noyes
• Believed:
– Benign deity
– Sweetness of human
nature
– Possibility of perfect
Christian community on
Earth
• Contrasted with
Puritan doctrines

14. Noyes’s Doctrines
• Key to utopia/happiness: suppression of
selfishness
– No private property…

15. …no exclusive emotional relationships
• Which bred
jealousy, quarreling, covetousness…

16. …material things and sexual partners
shared
• free to love in “complex marriages”

17. Practices
• Men and Women shared all tasks
• Children raised communally after age 3
• Selective breeding program:
– Gave permission/orders to procreate (which
horrified neighbors)

18. Its Rise (1850s)
• Swell Newhouse, inventor of steel animal
traps
– Gave Oneida solid financial footing by…
– Manufacture of his traps and other products

19. Its “Fall”
• Horror from neighbors
over sexual practices
•  gave up “complex
marriage” in 1879
•  gradually gave up all
practices
•  shifted into a joint-stock silverware
company in 1880

20. Shakers
• Among longest-living sects
• Founded in England 1747
• Brought to America 1774 by Mother Ann Lee
(to New York)

21. Shakers: The Origin
• Name derived from ectastic form of worship
• Dissenting Quaker church

22. Shakers: Doctrines
• Personal communication w/ God (who was
both male and female)
• Simplicity and ingenuity
• Self-sufficiency

23. Shakers: Practices
• Segregated the sexes
• Came together to work and pray
• Practiced celibacy and prohibited marriage
• virtual extinction by 1940