Le comunità intenzionali e i dilemmi della giuridificazione. Un approccio interculturale al riconoscimento normativo dell’identità comunitaria

Intentional communities are voluntary residential communities designed to actualize forms of daily living and ways of sharing that had been thought lost to modern societies. Despite their growing popularity, in most legal orders they do not yet have legal rights. Though these communities often demonstrate a natural tendency to close their own borders to the outside world, they are nevertheless required to interact with the society that surrounds them; if they are to face the inevitable exchanges and communication with the “outside” world, they need the law. For this very reason, many communities are asking, directly or through representative organizations, for appropriate legal structures that are capable of appreciating their distinctiveness and properly supporting their needs. Any proposed legal structure, however, presents a series of concerns. To begin with, legalization can have profound effects on the identitarian profile of the affected subjects, a risk that becomes especially significant in the case of intentional communities, for whom the construction of identity is pivotal to their very essence. It is precisely in cases like these, in which juridification could potentially put conflicting sides into dialogue, but at the same time can distort their subjectivity, that an intercultural use of law could provide the means for determining meaningful solutions. Such an approach could contribute significantly to a balancing of the—primarily cognitive—deficits of institutions when they come to intentional communities, favoring their inclusion in interdisciplinary normogenetic processes. An interdisciplinary approach would combine anthropological, sociological and economic perspectives working towards a participative inclusion of community members and the development of legal tools that satisfy their needs and favor their development within a truly pluralistic society.