Utopia+Brooke+farm+New+Harmony+Oneida+shakers

=**Visions of Utopia **=

**Brook Farm**
 * Established by George Ripley in West Roxbury, Mass. 1848. [[image:http://www.lssne.org/getfile/758b9922-8560-40a8-8b4b-d58b7853afe6/Brook_Farm_Society.aspx align="right" caption="Women at Brook Farm"]]
 * Inspired by Transcendentalism.
 * Goal of the community was to permit its members a full opportunity for self-realization.
 * Ripley was one of the first americans to to have a possitive though of leisure, most people of the time though leisure as lazines.
 * Communal society - individualist - all members contributed equally, so that they could enjoy leisure in order to better themselves.
 * Communalism gave way to socialism as individualism dissolved.
 * Many members such as Nathaniel Hawthorne left when they began to feel disillusionment setting in.
 * A fire burned down the main building, and the settlement dissipated.
 * Hawthorne went on to write the Blithedale Romance which specifically talked about the Brook Farm experiment as opression on the individuals in the settlement.


 * New Harmony **
 * Some socialist communities used ideals of [|Charles Fourier] -Ideas of organized communities = cooperative "phalanxes" - drew attention
 * Other communities used ideals of Robert Owen, a scottish philanthropist and industrialist.
 * Robert Owen founded [|New Harmony]in 1825 in Indiana
 * "Village of Cooperation" in which all residents were equal in every way
 * Community failed economically, but Owen's ideal excited Americans
 * Other "Owenite" communities popped up all over the country in the years after

(Extra) -
 * Oneida Community **[[image:http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~silversmiths/makers/silversmiths/170843_1_noyesjohnhumphrey.jpg width="165" height="222" align="right" caption="John Humpherys Noyes" link="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Humphrey_Noyes"]]
 * Founded by [|John Humphrey Noyes] in 1848 in upstate New York
 * Members of the community called themselves "Perfectionists"
 * Noyes declared all residents were married to all other residents - no permanant Conjugal ties
 * The community monitored sexual activity and women were protected from unwanted childbearing
 * Children were raised by the community, often rarely seeing their parents
 * Considered themselves a society in which women were free from the demands of male lust and traditional family. Some considered it an early form of feminism.
 * Oneida began to decline when John Noyes passed the leadership to his son, Theodore, who was an atheist, and lacked talent for leadership.

**The Shakers** >
 * Founded by [|"Mother" Ann Lee] - 1740s
 * Established more then twenty communites during the 1840's
 * Survived during the 19th,and into 20th century. There is still remnant that survives today.
 * Name derived from religious ritual - members danced to "shake" away sins
 * Socialist community that redefined gender roles
 * Men and Women were almost completely separated from each other.
 * Extreme commitment to celibacy meant that no person could be born a [|Shaker]. They had to choose it for themselves
 * Female dominated society - few men joined
 * Functioned as an alernative to marriage's "gross abuses"
 * Viewed as heretics by other religious sects who often protested outside of their meetinghouses

__Sources:__ "Oneida Community." //American History//. ABC-CLIO, 2009. Web. 3 Dec. 2009. [|http://www.americanhistory.abc-clio.com].