Communal Groups and the Larger Society: Legal Dilemmas

THIS PAPER DISCUSSES some tensions between communal groups and the larger society, identifying particular points of conflict and accommodation which are currently visible between the normative ordering systems of small groups and those of the larger culture.While I will not be attempting here to define a "communal society," some working definition was necessary to consider the topic of this paper.In thinking about communal groups, which groups would one use as subjects?The obvious candidates would be agreed-upon historical Utopias or perhaps contemporary groups deriving from the Anabaptist movement.In fact, this paper includes illustrative material from a much larger range of groups, not all spatially located, geographic communities, not all small enclosed "intentional" communities, not all societies holding all things in common.What these groups share is a sense of ordering, a normative system which encloses them.It is this characteristic, for present purposes, which justifies the present treatment.Typically, we might say, communal groups stand analytically in opposition to states, part of Society rather than the State. 2 (For the moment, at least, we put state itself aside, and concentrate on associations which are not the state.)In short, I would like to take a loose approach to the question "What