globalising the unchangeable: new shifts in hutterite colonies
Tom Strickland
Before the fall of the Berlin wall and the strained widening in perspective of communist China there existed a group of people who bridged the gap between Communism and Capitalism. Adapting to changes and mutating at the very edge of our juggernaut of western capitalism the Hutterites continue to nourish a communal life that is financially sophisticated and successful. Through thoughtful adaptation that has kept the intentions of their society intact while accepting the changes in our world, this group has also substantially increased in number at a minimal expense to the planet. Given the relatively low defection rate from their colonies, Hutterites seem to have succeeded so far in maintaining their membership more effectively than any other ethnic group.The communal way of life is certainly not a universal solution, yet, with current suburban sprawl consuming farmland at a rate of 1.2 million acres a year - farmland that is poised to double its production to meet the global demand by the year 2080, according to a recent UN study - it seems valuable to investigate communities who successfully approach a similar contradiction of ideologies.The Hutterites perhaps do not make these connections but simply do what they do, successfully, in both their world and ours.
tom: its beautiful here. henry: yah it is, but beauty does not make money son. tom: it does in banff. henry: that is tourism.
Cayley Colony,Alberta. June 2001
H ISTORICALLY the Hutteries have not been as private a people as they seem today.The founders of the movement were far ahead of their contemporaries in social and political awareness, grounded in social structures prevalent in pre-capitalist and even pre-mercantile central Europe, especially the agricultural institution of the commons and the manufacturing organization of the Guilds. The Hutterite movement solidified during the Reformation when the convincing logic was religion, and social ideas could only be expressed through religion.The Hutterites along with many other groups searching for a language with which to resist feudalism, mercantilism, and capitalism seized upon the writings of Luther to articulate social demands in the name of religion. The eventual elimination
of communal rights in Europe bypassed the Hutterite movement: communal rights had been codified through the Hutterite socio-materialistic interest in the terminologies of the bible, thus was realized a new order based on Christian communistic principals. This super-commitment to communal intentions presents itself in the form of the colonies within the landscape. The relationship of these formations to infrastructures show changes in the actions of the colony and the colony’s relation to exterior events and activities.The buildings themselves illustrate how the colonies retain their communality at the every day level, while allowing the collective form to adapt to new modes of transportation and expanding market demands.
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