Beyond Loneliness and Institutions

Book excerpt: Beyond Loneliness and Institutions is about experimental villages for extraordinary people--these villages are communal, operate on a shared economy, reconstruct ancient social and cultural forms, and provide room for people with a rich variety of eccentric behaviors. Many people whom the sate classificatory systems label as deficient live together in these experimental villages; they share housing, meals, work, and cultural life. There are no individual salaries, no staff, and no clients. And these communes are neither institutions nor ordinary. They are places for the extraordinary. Nils Christie interacted with experimental villages for twenty years before writing Beyond Loneliness and Institutions. During these twenty years, he moved back and forth between the villages and ordinary society. Each move, each time, was both a cultural and an emotional shock. He experienced two types of life, each with its own reason for life. Their differences do, however, illuminate each other. Beyond Loneliness and Institutions attempts to describe what this illumination renders visible--on both sides.