The 60's Communes_ Hippies and Beyond - Timothy Miller (1999).pdf

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The greatest wave of communal living in American history crested in the tumultuous 1960s era including the early 1970s. To the fascination and amusement of more decorous citizens, hundreds of thousands of mostly young dreamers set out to build a new culture apart from the established society that they believed was on a slippery slope to oblivion. Widely believed by the larger public to be sinks of drug-ridden sexual immorality, the communes variously fascinated and repelled the American people. The intentional communities of the 1960s era were far more diverse than the stereotype of the hippie commune would suggest. A great many of them were religious in basis, stressing spiritual seeking and disciplined lifestyles. Others were founded on secular visions of a better society. Hundreds of them became so stable that they still survive today. This is a survey of the broad sweep of this great social yearning from the first portents of a new type of communitarianism in the early 1960s through the waning of the movement in the mid-1970s. Based on over 500 interviews conducted for the 60s Commune Project, among other sources, it preserves a colourful and vigorous episode in American history.

From Library Journal
As a historian of both the counterculture and non-mainline spirituality, Miller (religious studies, Univ. of Kansas; The Hippies and American Values) has a properly broad perspective from which to view U.S. communalism. In this sequel to The Quest for Utopia in 20th-Century America (Syracuse Univ., 1998), he examines the communes' brief zenith. But while Miller's surveying skills are, indeed, considerable--his appendixes identify 1600-plus communes extant in 1960-75--the body of his text occasionally reads like an annotated list of historic sites. He mentions each site at least once but reveals little that is new. Communes were places where sexual openness and drug use were rampant but not all-pervading, he (unsurprisingly) finds. What is surprising is that he mentions neither the Quakers of Pendle Hill nor Scott and Helen Nearing, the most prominent of the back-to-nature advocates. And he gives communal dwellers excessive credit for spreading an environmental ethos and appetite for whole foods--phenomena that are surely the legacy, more generally, of a wide range of events of the 1960s. The book's most interesting sections deal with the Jesus Freak phenomenon and young Christians' experiments with intentional community. On balance, however, Miller has done a great service: there are precious few scholarly treatments of the movement--nearly all the existing material on 1960s communalism was published before 1975. An important acquisition; recommended for academic and theological libraries.
-Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., PA




Pam Hanna
By Pam Hanna on April 18, 2000

Format: Paperback
If you've ever lived on a commune or if you're interested in studying intentional communities from roughly 1967 to 1975, this book is a page turner.
Having lived through the '60s era and having participated in the communal scene, I often find myself irritated by inaccurate reporting by authors who only seem interested in sensationalism (such as Robert Houriet's *Getting Back Together*, 1971), but Timothy Miller does his homework carefully, and I don't find such inaccuracies or biases in his work.
*The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond* is not a glib dismissal of a blip on the screen of American community. Miller makes it clear that this is an ongoing phenomenon. Many of these communities still exist (such as The Farm in Tennessee) even though many have gone through countless evolutions and restructuring.
Miller compares land and food arrangements, architecture, parenting, and social interaction of diverse communities across this country along with their philosophies, ideologies and spiritual perspectives. He doesn't unrealistically romanticize and neither does he condemn. He just tells it like it is--and was. And he bakes it into a cake.
The book illustrates the profound effect that these communities have had on our society. It doesn't pretend to include in-depth personal reminiscences or ideological transformations (such as those chronicled in Peter Coyote's excellent *Sleeping Where I Fall*), but it brings all elements together in an informative Big Picture of what was, what is, and what may follow from this movement. While the communes of the American past were primarily arks, says Miller, those of the 60s were lighthouses. I agree. This is one good read. I recommend it.]