An Unreal Estate Sustainability and Freedom in an Evolving Community [Paperback]

In An Unreal Estate, Lucinda Carspecken takes an in-depth look at Lothlorien, a Southern Indiana nature sanctuary, sustainable camping ground, festival site, collective residence, and experiment in ecological building, stewardship, and organization. Carspecken notes the way fiction and reality intertwine on this piece of land and argues that examples such as Lothlorien have the power to be a force for social change. Lothlorien's organization and social norms are in sharp contrast with its surrounding communities. As a unique enclave within a larger society, it offers to the latter both an implicit critique and a cluster of alternative values and lifestyles. In addition, it has created a niche where some participants change, grow, and find empowerment in an environment that is accepting of differenceparticularly in areas of religion and sexual orientation.

Anthropologist Carspecken . . . offers an extraordinarily captivating and challenging book based on a year and a half of reflective research in the 109-acre intentional community of Lothlorien. . . . Essential.A significant contribution to the study of intentional communities.So much attention is paid today to national affairs that we are losing an understanding of the nature of small-scale governance. Readers of An Unreal Estate will benefit greatly from the insights of community participants in their revealing interviews about opportunities, struggles, surprises, and the wide range of meaningful events that can occur in a small intentional community. This is a book that is very worthwhile for scholars as well as citizens to buy, read, and think hard about.

Lucinda Carspecken is Adjunct Professor in Qualitative Research Methods and Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington.

This book advances knowledge . . . in various areas of current critical and popular debate and will be of interest to scholars . . . as well as to a diverse popular readership.

Acknowledgments
A Note on Names

1. Thalã*