Locating utopia. Reinventions of the individual, the community and the inhabited space in Chile

Abstract

Utopian intentional communities are here understood as persons gathered around ideals to experience with models of coexistence and that suggest spatial and social orderings that contrast to the modern world. Recent contributions highlight the upsurge of the phenomena during the last decades all over the world. However, we lack studies that understand the diversity that exist in these settlements. Based on documentary analysis, interviews, and participant observation in three communities located in Chile, this work offers a lecture of the practices and discourses that sustain these settlements. To capture the existing diversity, we suggest distinguishing between religious, spiritual, and prag- matic communities. Further, we argue that these dynamic spaces are crossed by con- tradictions when they articulate, from the reflexive capacity of the subject, as a creative counterpoint to the capitalist social dynamics.