Seeing Like a Commons: Eighty Years of Intentional Community Building and Commons Stewardship in Celo, North Carolina

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

In Seeing Like a Commons, Joshua P. Lockyer demonstrates how a growing group of people have, over the last 80 years, deliberately built the Celo Community, a communal settlement on 1,200 acres of commonly owned land in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. Joshua P. Lockyer highlights the potential for intentional communities like Celo to raise awareness of global interconnectivity and structural inequalities, enabling people and communities to become better stewards and citizens of both local landscapes and global commons.

Reviews

Seeing Like a Commons is the definitive study of the famous Celo community founded by TVA director Arthur Morgan. Now, after Celos first 80 years, Joshua Lockyers research reveals the processes that make it one of the longest enduring secular communal utopias in America. Lockyers effective application of the Community Design Principles identified by Nobel Prize winning political economist Elinor Ostrom provide both a practical and theoretical framework for his on-sight ethnographic observations, interviews, and for the book itself. Seeing Like a Commons is the first work to apply Ostroms commons concept to the field of communal studies. Lockyers own theory of transformative utopianism and use of the theory of developmental communalism also add to a deeper understanding of Celos success. Engaging vignettes, with which Lockyer opens chapters, personalize for the reader the inner workings of Celos governance and resolution of interpersonal conflicts. In all, Seeing Like a Commons is ethnography, history, and communal utopian studies at their best.

Author Bio

Joshua P. Lockyer is associate professor of anthropology at Arkansas Tech University.