Communal Groups: Social Laboratories or Places of Exile?

Why do we study communal groups?Like all social groups, they are interesting in their own right, but most communal scholars seek other reasons or justifications for their research endeavors.They occasionally ask whether communal groups are good or bad for their members, and whether communal groups serve the rest of society in some positive manner, or as a terrible example to avoid, albeit perhaps still worthy of study.Indeed, as communal scholars, do we not have a professional duty to ask if utopian communal groups are good for their members and/or for their host society?Who benefits and who suffers; what is the ultimate point of communal experimentation; and who pays the price?Or do we retreat to a social and ethical relativist position, unwilling to express our professional judgment about the social groups we study?This paper looks at the relationship between communal groups and the rest of society, with particular emphasis on communal groups.as the outcome of society's attempts to marginalise its change agents.Costs and Benefits of Communal Living Don Pitzer's theoretical model of Developmental Communalism looks at the movement in and out of mainstream society of groups of people experimenting with a communal lifestyle, and focuses on how communalism serves its members.Developmental Communalism offers a perspective on the benefits of the communal lifestyle to its members and places rather less emphasis on whether communal groups are of benefit to the rest of society.lA 'somewhat sintilar analysis was provided earlier by