Communes – News, Research and Analysis – The Conversation

Springhill Cohousing in Gloucestershire was the first new build intentional community in the UK, founded in 2000. Adrian Sherratt/Alamy

March 11, 2024

How alternative communities have evolved – from pacifist communes to a solution to the ageing population

Kirsten Stevens-Wood, Cardiff Metropolitan University

From conscientious objectors to hippies and seniors, intentional communities offer refuge and purpose for people seeking a different way of life.

Whitlanders in the 1940s. Established in 1941 near the base of Victoria’s Mount Buffalo, this Catholic community celebrated the ‘dignity of manual labour’ and was led by a charismatic athlete and former judge’s associate, Ray Triado. Joe Pisani

July 11, 2019

Friday essay: the Australians who pioneered self-sufficiency, generations before Nimbin

Rachel Goldlust, La Trobe University

Long before 70s hippies and hipster artisans, Australians were seeking solace by going back to the land. They ranged from anarchists to suffragists to Catholic agrarians.

A vendor at the Sigida Market, in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. ReutersS/Robert Carrubba

March 11, 2018

How Kinshasa’s markets are captured by powerful private interests

Kristof Titeca, University of Antwerp and Albert Malukisa Nkuku, University of Antwerp

Graft is common in the way that markets in Kinshasa are run.

Share houses of the late 1960s and 1970s provided women with a new way of living, independent of families and husbands. Shutterstock

October 17, 2017

Share houses and women’s liberation: a forgotten history

Molly Mckew, The University of Melbourne

The share house may be taken for granted now, but before the late 1960s it was hard for women to live independently of families or husbands. For some, communal housing was life-changing.

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