ABSTRACT
We began this study because we share an interest in utopias and a love of New Zealand. Nobody had ever systematically studied the utopias or intentional communities of this country and we felt this should be done. Intentional communities are a space in which people practice utopianism and have sometimes been called practical utopias. We wanted to learn more about this. Emerging from discontent with the present and seeking something better, intentional communities can be viewed as living utopian experiments. As such they can tell us much about how it feels to try to realise a dream. But of course, they are not only this. They are also peopleʼs homes and workplaces. As such, some of what we learned was less to do with utopianism and more to do with the gritty and messy business of everyday life. One of the things that recurred in interview – and in participant observation – was the disturbing effect of conflict within these groups. This chapter will explore this, in part because it is interesting to learn of the murky reality in intentional communities, and in part because our findings seemed to run contrary to the received wisdom about communities and conflict. Also, we learned of ways in which these groups manage conflict. This offers transferable lessons both to people in other such groups and those of us who live in the wider community.
