Reconsidering the Community: Discourses of Utopian Intentional Communities in Chile

This article aims at characterizing the discourse of intentional communities. To reach this goal, we deploy a qualitative approach based on case-studies to describe and contrast the phenomenon of intentional communities taking place in Chile. Through discourse analysis we describe three initiatives along the axes: the vision of themselves, vision of society and practices aimed at creating ideal forms of living in community. Our findings show that discourses articulate disciplinary knowledge and practices with traditional and spiritual views. We recognize social transformations based on personal change and the role played by mediated communication through the internet in revealing disputes among community initiatives that suggest alternatives to what the norm in neoliberal Chilean society is, promoting ways to reinvent the individual, the community and relationship with nature.