Sewn cloth binding, diagrams, index, 118 pages
Originally published 1970
by the Institute for Humane Studies, $10.95
A theoretical anthropologist sketches the history of the real estate industry from a novel perspective and wonders whether hotels, shopping malls and multiple-tenant income properties in general may not be nature's rude prototypes for communities of the future. Such specialized "entrepreneurial communities" he believes may be harbingers of an emerging society freely based on voluntary contracts among individuals, a societal order transcending present geographic, political and psychological boundaries. He traces in detail how, even as the political situation worsens, we are moving away from dependence on the political mode toward voluntary means of fulfilling all of the functions needed for an orderly and creative community.
The author has distilled in this book his experience and years of research in real estate market analysis and allied fields. His training in social anthropology at the University of Washington and later at the University of Chicago, supplemented by independent study in economics and philosophy, has produced a sophisticated perspective that challenges many traditional assumptions about viable social arrangements.
Copyright at Common Law, West El Paso Information Network, 1998