Join us in community this Sunday as Tom Kersen shares about his most recent exploration of intentional communities in the south, specifically the Hot Mulch Band and the broader countercultural scene in the Ozarks as a case study in disrupting the status quo. Drawing on Victor Turner’s concepts of liminality and communitas, Kersen argues that countercultural communities in the 1970s functioned as laboratories of equity–experimenting with self-sufficiency, alternative education, renewable energy, and cooperative economies. Through the story of Hot Mulch, we see how music, imagination, and risk-taking created spaces of communitas that challenged dominant cultural norms. While these experiments faced challenges, their legacies endure in movements for food sovereignty, permaculture, and community land trusts. For sociology, Hot Mulch reminds us that studying edge people is studying innovators, and that daring disruptions can compost old orders into fertile ground for equity.
If you are unable to attend in person, you may attend online via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/91584017613 [Meeting ID: 915 8401 7613].
If you are attending online, please also fill out our Online Visitor Book.
You may also participate via phone by calling: +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago), +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston), +1 360 209 5623 US or +1 507 473 4847 US [Meeting ID: 915 8401 7613]
Topics: Environmentalism, Joy, Pluralism, Prophetic People, Theme: Joy
