"Liberating Ourselves": Utopian Communalism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century United States

This dissertation uses Charles Tilly's definition of social movements and considers examples from three nineteenth century communal societies, and three from the twentieth century to argue that Utopian communalism is a social movement, not a series of related phenomena. This movement is a fabric of Utopian threads representing the sharing of ideas, methods and members woven together laterally between communities contemporary to each other and longitudinally across time from the past to the present and into the future. The six Utopian communities include Nashoba, Harmony Society and Modern Times in the nineteenth century and the Diggers, Peoples Temple and Kerista in the late twentieth century. This dissertation examines the six communities in relation to their attempts to resolve social problems of race, gender, and economic inequality. These questions illuminate the continuities in goals, methods, and struggles to overcome socially conditioned attitudes about race, gender and class. The author used published and archival memoirs, letters, community publications, sermons, visitor's accounts, legal and business records and interviews to illustrate the arguments. This dissertation concludes that Utopian communities have struggled to achieve their Utopian goals of gender, race and economic equality often because they proved unable to let go of social institutions and attitudes that perpetuate these inequalities. Nonetheless the striving for Utopia is in itself worthwhile and offers lessons for society at large in how to create a better world