The Story

​

Phalanstère
Originated from Greek “phalanx” - a countryside community concentrates on agriculture and industrial activities. Phalanstère envisioned an early cooperative model, where members would receive shares based their contribution to the community, and in which collectively managed by the members. The community would be organized along principles like sexual liberation, domestic labor’s liberation and human interaction to embrace a diverse social enclosure. The model allowed freedom of choosing the occupation, and profits generated through the activities would be shared by their contribution. It allowed self-exploration and avoided the monotony of work in the capitalist world. Instead of creating a complete autonomy outside the city, Fourier still opened to outside import economically, such as tourism income. Although the idea didn’t work in Europe due to lack of funding, the idea spread to the US. The abstract utopian community derived from “Phalanstère” concept to create centrally planned structure, and encourage the collective ownership while abandoning the capitalism. However, the concept was created at an era of industrialization and capitalization, people were still chasing the materialism in certain sense. A complete socialism society would have many challenges to establish.

​

New Harmony
With the capital investment, Owen built his utopian community dream on the existing idealism community effort by Harmony society. Similar to Phalanstère, New Harmony was envisioned as a showcase to embrace and can be replicated in the future. Owen promoted collective ownership and equal reproductive value, through guidance and constitution formed by convention. As the spatial arrangement also aimed to minimize the private living space in the structure by starting a social innovation through the revolution of architecture by creating a shared live and workspace. Thus, a settler could claim ownership of shared community assets through individual efforts. Furthermore, it encouraged care of shared properties and each other in the society as everyone was taking the effort to contribute in the society. Due to lack of guidance from spirit leader, and contradictory leadership on anti-religious freedom which exclude diverse social groups in the community. The dream dissolved, the settlers split into independent but cooperative groups, which lost the intention of collective working and living. Additionally, the financial import method wasn’t sustainable to generate localized circulation. 

​

Oneida
Through the collective effort from the community and its founder Noyes, Oneida community was established and its Mansion House. In Oneida, the community promoted communal living, even private sleeping space, and the mansion was filled with labor-saving devices which of many are invented locally. The community encouraged free of domestic labor, so women worked along with the men. Although the freedom of love in Oneida created controversial complex marriage, and also selective breeding birth control. The effort to live as a whole family to share all properties and banding social relationship through a variety of activities emphasized the importance of social interaction. Although the mutual criticism was set to eliminate undesirable things and limited the individual freedom, it enhanced the integrity of the community. The community controlled the population at a sustainable level on a high management level, but it limits the organic growth.