Chelsea Schelly, Assistant Professor of Sociology, has been awarded an Early Career Research Award from the Rural Sociological Society for her proposal titled “Policies for Self-Provisioning: Understanding the Success of Alternative Rural Communities.” The award will help support her summer fieldwork in an intentional community, which will be the last empirical case study in her current book project. The book project examines technology use in intentional and alternative communities, looking at how different kinds of technologies can be used to support residential life, the policies that support alternative technology adoption in these places, and the practices involved in living with technologies that differ from those used to support mainstream residential dwelling.