Intentional communities in Romania - the motivation to live in the community

• Author: Andreea C. Mardache
• Position: Transilvania University of Brasov
• Pages: 75-82

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşo v

Series VII: Social Sciences • Law • Vol. 11 (60) No. 2 - 2018

INTENTIONAL COMMUNITIES IN ROMANIA -

THE MOTIVATION TO LIVE IN THE COMMUNITY

Andreea C. MARDACHE1

Abstract: What is the motivation that drives some members of society to

leave the city and seek to live in the rural area in an intentional community?

In order to answer this question, I conducted a qualitative research using

two methods: observation and interview. Along with the desire to live closer

to nature, the presence of similar others constitutes one of the main reasons.

The members of intentional communities want to live and work in more

humanly dimensioned environments, in simplicity, to develop themselves

and live the feeling of freedom and the joys of life more intensely.

Key words: community, intentional community, motivation, voluntary

simplicity.

1. Introduction

Leafe Christian (2003, xvi) defines the residential or land-based intentional community

as “a group of people who have chosen to live with or near enough to each other to

carry out their shared lifestyle or common purpose together. (...) What most

communities have in common is idealism: they’re founded on a vision of living a better

way, whether community members literally live together in shared group houses, or live

near each other as neighbours. A community’s ideals usually arise from something its

members see as lacking or missing in the wider culture”. Gotea (2010) states that society

or, to a lesser extent, the community can be seen as a network of social networks that

are always constructed, reconstructed, and accessed by social actors. In this context, the

social network encompasses all the social relations between persons connected by one’s

kinship, common interests, spatial proximity, friendship, occupation, offering / receiving

services or various combinations of them.

Leafe Christian (2003, xvii) states that there is a “growing interest in intentional

communities, whether ecovillages, cohousing, or other kinds of communities” and “by

2002 the yearning for community, and individual communities, has been favorably —

and sometimes repeatedly — covered by the New York Times, USA Today, The Boston

Globe, NBC’s “Dateline,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,” CNN.

There have been several initiatives to build intentional communities in Romania as

well. The present article outlines the motivation to live in such a community as evoked

1 Transilvania University of Braşov, andreea.mardache@unitbv.ro