ABSTRACT
This chapter examines enactments of communal life. In natural enactments of communal life, the invocation of relevance shifts according to who is present, what outside concerns and interests come up, and what immediate business needs to be taken care of. In produced groups, communal life is lived in terms of a utopian scheme of interpretation which holds precedence over other interpretations as the ultimate definer of reality. Given a dominant mode of time consciousness, the constitution of the social world becomes an issue of how individuals, alone and collectively, focus attention and invoke meaning. In some communal groups, particular accounts of the way things are or should be become unifying schemes for directing attention and interpreting events. The principle of equality is justified on a rational basis: when people have equal rights and equal responsibilities as well as equal access to communal resources, they have no rational grounds for competing against one another or for feeling unfair treatment.
