Utopian Encounters: Healing, Transformation and Paradox amongst Women in Alternative Community

Abstract

Purpose: This study examines the stories of 37 women committed to five utopian communities located in the United States and Australia. Drawing on feminist, sociological and poststructuralist theories, it explores participants’ pragmatic attempts to create alternative visions of mutual support, care and connection in late modern society. Centrally, it considers the ways participants’ subjectivities intersect with alternative community and the extent to which such intersections generate utopian possibilities and/or ambivalences. Method: This project employs a feminist qualitative methodology and gathers data via in-depth qualitative interviews, participant observation and auto-ethnographic writing. It focusses on the subjectivities of women, or those who identify as women, specifically to provide insight into the ways women are currently engaged in generating non-hegemonic discourses in response to dominant neoliberal values and lifestyle practices. Findings: Centrally, this study illuminates the complex encounter between alternative community and the subjectivities of participants. It argues that discourse, materiality, relationality and emotions intersect and represent meaningful points of contact within alternative life. Thus, alternative community is found to be an entangled and complex site that facilitates relationships across the inside, outside, symbolic and the fleshy. It is also found to have potential to heal, transform and yet simultaneously constrain the subjectivities of its members. Thus, this study makes a case for understanding the mechanics and micro-dynamics underpinning this version of utopia, as it collapses boundaries, invites healing intersections, re-envisions the self and ultimately produces a range of paradoxical encounters. Contribution: This study contributes to the field of feminist social sciences as it brings together a range of theoretical approaches, including poststructuralism, new materialist feminism and environmental/communal scholarship, to analyse the rich stories of participants. Moreover, it offers fine-grained qualitative data on the more problematic (and subtle) aspects of community discourse and relationships. While the existing literature has often looked at more obvious problems, like break-downs in communication and process, this study looks at invisible expectations that can shape women’s subjectivities both productively and problematically. Centrally, it demonstrates that women committed to alternative community are currently engaged in the crucial work of responding to and reconfiguring dominant discourses and approaches to the social and natural world. Such reconceptualised ways of being in the world serve as a genuine and viable alternative to the consumerist neoliberal culture of post-modernity, yet they also perpetuate certain expectations and limitations which warrant scholarly and practical consideration into the future.