This project examines the communal process of music learning as it occurs in a Byzantine chant learning group at a Greek Orthodox Church. The goal of this project was to investigate the act of music making, as situated in a particular sociocultural context, in order to address the question: Through what processes do individuals share music…

This paper considers features of domestic and social life aboard sail training vessels, exploring the particular character of life at sea, and how these features contribute to the distinctive character of sail training experience as a context for learning. Methodologically, the study lies in the sociological tradition of ethnography, focusing on…

Personal accounts of innovative social arrangements in two communes focus on community responsibility for child rearing. (NH)

Corrymeela, a Christian community in Northern Ireland, uses a variety of activities, one of which is outdoor education, to tackle the challenges of living within a contested society and to model new possibilities. Structured peace-building experiences focus on the relational aspect of those people, groups, and communities who experience conflict.…

Meaning matters in the way people form social ties. Adopting an unconventional analytic technique--the Galois lattice analysis--I show how network researchers can uncover relational meanings using conventional research techniques (i.e., closed-ended network surveys). Galois lattice analysis also inspires new ways of conceptualizing relational…

Research supported in part by Office of Economic Opportunity contract No. IED 1-66-12.

Israeli Kibbutz and city children, age 8-11, were compared in three experiments in which cooperative-competitive behavior was assessed. City children from the United States were also included in Experiment 3. In Experiments 1 and 2, groups of four children played a cooperation board game in which children represented only themselves in one…

This paper focuses its attention on the evolving communes in many North American cities and their members. The purpose was to learn as much as possible about how people live under this one particular set of conditions, the criteria for success or failure of this life style, and the implications for society and the future. This is an…

Children in intentional communities interact with a wide variety of adults independently, observe many parent/child relationships, and experience their parents in roles other than parent. Informal learning experiences about subjects not usually available to children abound. Integration into a community promotes childrens' academic and social…

A diverse group of people, many from intentional communities, discuss what community means, physically, materially, and spiritually; what sustains communities; how they deal with conflict and change; the rewards of living in community; and how children are raised, educated, and supported by communities. (TD)

An interview with a mother and daughter living in an intentional community in New Hampshire explores how their choices about lifestyle have shaped them, how homeschooling worked for them, the role of other community adults in raising children, why the daughter left and later returned, and how community is more than proximity to other people. (TD)

Characteristics of successful living arrangements in intentional communities are presented by examining kibbutz life. The first section discusses four bases for establishing and maintaining an intentional community: interest, justice, cultural flowering, and love (deep interpersonal and intergroup relationships and religious values). The second…