ABSTRACT
The ideal of genuine collectivity in forms of social organisation is a powerful one and one with a long history. In modern times it has been seen to underlie the concepts of community, social anarchism and feminist organisation, each of which expresses a desire to relate to others in terms which respect the capacities of individuals, which seek to avoid placing one group of people above another, and to promote collective ownership of the aims of the endeavour. Charles Handy (1988:134) has termed this construct ‘the collective dream’, capturing a sense of both the strong attraction of the ideal and the difficulty, even unreasonableness, of attempting to attain it in practice.
