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

InAn 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 (Indiana Univ.) 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 near Bloomington, Indiana. Integrating numerous revealing quotes from members and 26 photos, Carspecken thoroughly documents in vivid detail alternative worldviews, values, and behaviors associated with this dynamic experiment, ongoing since 1987. This book merits attention from general and academic audiences because Lothlorien contrasts dramatically with the mainstream US, thereby offering not only a penetrating critique but, far more importantly, serious alternatives for rethinking and reforming a society plagued by many problems resulting from the widespread alienation of people from nature and from each other. Most of the residents and visitors of Lothlorien are actively committed environmentalists pursuing sustainable and green lifestyles that revere land and life as sacred. This utopian residential community and ecumenical nonprofit organization is a sanctuary for individual freedom and creatilSD