Reimagining Utopias

Reimagining Utopias
Author: Iveta Silova
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2017-07-13
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9463510117
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Reimaginig Utopias explores the shifting social imaginaries of post-socialist transformations to understand what happens when the new and old utopias of post-socialism confront the new and old utopias of social science. This peer-reviewed volume addresses the theoretical, methodological, and ethical dilemmas encountered by researchers in the social sciences as they plan and conduct education research in post-socialist settings, as well as disseminate their research findings. Through an interdisciplinary inquiry that spans the fields of education, political science, sociology, anthropology, and history, the book explores three broad questions: How can we (re)imagine research to articulate new theoretical insights about post-socialist education transformations in the context of globalization? How can we (re)imagine methods to pursue alternative ways of producing knowledge? And how can we navigate various ethical dilemmas in light of academic expectations and fieldwork realities? Drawing on case studies, conceptual and theoretical essays, autoethnographic accounts, as well as synthetic introductory and conclusion chapters by the editors, this book advances an important conversation about these complicated questions in geopolitical settings ranging from post-socialist Africa to Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The contributors not only expose the limits of Western conceptual frameworks and research methods for understanding post-socialist transformations, but also engage creatively in addressing the persisting problems of knowledge hierarchies created by abstract universals, epistemic difference, and geographical distance inherent in comparative and international education research. This book challenges the readers to question the existing education narratives and rethink taken-for-granted beliefs, theoretical paradigms, and methodological frameworks in order to reimagine the world in more complex and pluriversal ways.

Food Utopias

Food Utopias
Author: Paul V. Stock
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2015-01-09
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1317657721
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Food is a contentious and emotive issue, subject to critiques from multiple perspectives. Alternative food movements – including the different articulations of local, food miles, seasonality, food justice, food knowledge and food sovereignty – consistently invoke themes around autonomy, sufficiency, cooperation, mutual aid, freedom, and responsibility. In this stimulating and provocative book the authors link these issues to utopias and intentional communities. Using a food utopias framework presented in the introduction, they examine food stories in three interrelated and complementary ways: utopias as critique of existing systems; utopias as engagement with experimentation of the novel, the forgotten, and the hopeful in the future of the food system; and utopias as process that recognizes the time and difficulty inherent in changing the status quo. The chapters address theoretical aspects of food utopias and also present case studies from a range of contexts and regions, including Argentina, Italy, Switzerland and USA. These focus on key issues in contemporary food studies including equity, locality, the sacred, citizenship, community and food sovereignty. Food utopias offers ways forward to imagine a creative and convivial food system.

Work, Love, and Learning in Utopia

Work, Love, and Learning in Utopia
Author: Martin Schoenhals
Publisher:
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2018-12-11
Genre: Equality
ISBN: 9781138549494
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Work, Love, and Learning in Utopiabreathes new life into the age-old human preoccupation with how to create a happier society. With a fascinating mix of research from cross-cultural psychology, macro history, and evolutionary biology, the book gives new credibility to the advocacy of radical equality. The author, a psychological anthropologist, argues that the negative emotions of sadness, anger, and fear evolved in tandem with hierarchy, while happiness evolved separately and in connection to prosociality and compassion. The book covers a wide range of human concerns, from economics and education, to media and communication, to gender and sexuality. It breaks new boundaries with its scope, arguing that equality of love is as important and possible as is economic equality. Its argument is provocative yet practical, and each chapter ends with concrete proposals that invite dialogue with any student of policy. Written in an easily accessible style, this book will appeal to anyone who has ever puzzled over how our social world could be remade. In particular, it will be very useful to students and scholars of anthropology, sociology, and psychology. /P> Written in an easily accessible style, this book will appeal to anyone who has ever puzzled over how our social world could be remade. In particular, it will be very useful to students and scholars of anthropology, sociology, and psychology.

Food Utopias

Food Utopias
Author: Paul V. Stock
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2015-01-09
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 131765773X
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Food is a contentious and emotive issue, subject to critiques from multiple perspectives. Alternative food movements – including the different articulations of local, food miles, seasonality, food justice, food knowledge and food sovereignty – consistently invoke themes around autonomy, sufficiency, cooperation, mutual aid, freedom, and responsibility. In this stimulating and provocative book the authors link these issues to utopias and intentional communities. Using a food utopias framework presented in the introduction, they examine food stories in three interrelated and complementary ways: utopias as critique of existing systems; utopias as engagement with experimentation of the novel, the forgotten, and the hopeful in the future of the food system; and utopias as process that recognizes the time and difficulty inherent in changing the status quo. The chapters address theoretical aspects of food utopias and also present case studies from a range of contexts and regions, including Argentina, Italy, Switzerland and USA. These focus on key issues in contemporary food studies including equity, locality, the sacred, citizenship, community and food sovereignty. Food utopias offers ways forward to imagine a creative and convivial food system.

Chicanx Utopias

Chicanx Utopias
Author: Luis Alvarez
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2022-02-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1477324488
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Amid the rise of neoliberalism, globalization, and movements for civil rights and global justice in the post–World War II era, Chicanxs in film, music, television, and art weaponized culture to combat often oppressive economic and political conditions. They envisioned utopias that, even if never fully realized, reimagined the world and linked seemingly disparate people and places. In the latter half of the twentieth century, Chicanx popular culture forged a politics of the possible and gave rise to utopian dreams that sprang from everyday experiences. In Chicanx Utopias, Luis Alvarez offers a broad study of these utopian visions from the 1950s to the 2000s. Probing the film Salt of the Earth, brown-eyed soul music, sitcoms, poster art, and borderlands reggae music, he examines how Chicanx pop culture, capable of both liberation and exploitation, fostered interracial and transnational identities, engaged social movements, and produced varied utopian visions with divergent possibilities and limits. Grounded in the theoretical frameworks of Walter Benjamin, Stuart Hall, and the Zapatista movement, this book reveals how Chicanxs articulated pop cultural utopias to make sense of, challenge, and improve the worlds they inhabited.

Everfair

Everfair
Author: Nisi Shawl
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2016-09-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 076533805X
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An "alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's ... colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier"--Amazon.com.

Reimagining Democracy

Reimagining Democracy
Author: Davide Cadeddu
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 91
Release: 2012-03-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1461432596
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In the journal articles, historiographical essays, and numerous references to the political thought of Adriano Olivetti, the term constantly used to characterize his thinking is ‘utopia’. It is from this word, or rather, the misuse of this word, where one can begin to shed light on Olivettian political thinking. The term ‘utopia’, which has come to designate an entire vein of political literature, has also entered into common usage to define an impossible project, a wide-eyed dream; and a ‘utopian’ is that individual who longs for abstract projects instead of concrete ideas. It would be unproductive to resort to the diverse arguments of Firpo, of Mannheim, or of Bloch, of the philosophers of the Frankfurt School or others, since, as Giovanni Sartori has observed, after the word ceases to exist – where utopia is understood to mean impossibility – the impossibilities still remain. So, precisely because the literature on the political thought of Olivetti appears to suffer greatly from ‘empirical’ influences, it seems necessary to confront the complexities of his presumed utopianism with a methodological approach. This book investigates the inherent ‘impossibilities’, if they indeed exist, in the political thought of Olivetti. It also seeks to understand, as a result, if the Olivettian ideal is lacking in any true consistency, since it is secluded from an adequate analysis of historical reality, or if it is, rather, an idealism which does not lose sight of reality, in an attempt to overturn it as the basis for a plausible global vision. This book will be of interests to students and scholars in history, political economy and philosophy.

Utopia/Dystopia

Utopia/Dystopia
Author: Michael D. Gordin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2010-08-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1400834953
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The concepts of utopia and dystopia have received much historical attention. Utopias have traditionally signified the ideal future: large-scale social, political, ethical, and religious spaces that have yet to be realized. Utopia/Dystopia offers a fresh approach to these ideas. Rather than locate utopias in grandiose programs of future totality, the book treats these concepts as historically grounded categories and examines how individuals and groups throughout time have interpreted utopian visions in their daily present, with an eye toward the future. From colonial and postcolonial Africa to pre-Marxist and Stalinist Eastern Europe, from the social life of fossil fuels to dreams of nuclear power, and from everyday politics in contemporary India to imagined architectures of postwar Britain, this interdisciplinary collection provides new understandings of the utopian/dystopian experience. The essays look at such issues as imaginary utopian perspectives leading to the 1856-57 Xhosa Cattle Killing in South Africa, the functioning racist utopia behind the Rhodesian independence movement, the utopia of the peaceful atom and its global dissemination in the mid-1950s, the possibilities for an everyday utopia in modern cities, and how the Stalinist purges of the 1930s served as an extension of the utopian/dystopian relationship. The contributors are Dipesh Chakrabarty, Igal Halfin, Fredric Jameson, John Krige, Timothy Mitchell, Aditya Nigam, David Pinder, Marci Shore, Jennifer Wenzel, and Luise White.

Glimpses of Utopia

Glimpses of Utopia
Author: Jess Scully
Publisher: Pantera Press
Total Pages: 451
Release: 2020-08-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1925700771
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It's hard to be excited about the future right now. Climate change is accelerating; inequality is growing; politics is polarised; institutions designed to protect us are strained; technology is disrupting the world of work. We need to upgrade the operating systems of our society. Jess Scully asks, What can we do? The answer is: plenty! All over the world, people are refusing the business-as-usual mindset and putting humans back into the civic equation, reimagining work and care, finance and government, urban planning and communication, to make them better and fairer for all. Meet the care workers reclaiming control in India and Lebanon, the people turning slums into safe havens in Kenya and Bangladesh, and champions of people-powered digital democracy in Iceland and Taiwan. There are radical bankers funding renewable energy in the USA and architects redesigning real estate in Australia, new payment systems in Italy and the Philippines that keep money in local communities, and innovators redesigning taxation to cut pollution and incentivise creative solutions. Glimpses of Utopia is a call for optimism. Humans everywhere are rising up to confront our challenges with creativity, resilience and compassion. Harnessing technology and imagination, we can reshape our world to be fair and sustainable. This book shows us how.

Utopia Reimagined: European Living in 2050

Utopia Reimagined: European Living in 2050
Author: Simu Abedin
Publisher: Simu Abedin
Total Pages: 57
Release: 2024-01-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:
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Simu Abedin's "Utopia Reimagined: European Living in 2050" offers a compelling and visionary exploration into the potential future of European societies. In this thought-provoking journey, Abedin paints a utopian landscape where unity, sustainability, and technological innovation converge to shape a harmonious and transformative European living experience. The book unfolds as a tapestry, weaving together diverse threads of societal evolution, ethical considerations, and the profound human desire for a better tomorrow. Abedin invites readers to transcend the limitations of the present and immerse themselves in a future where artificial intelligence coexists ethically with humanity, energy is harnessed sustainably, and education becomes a lifelong journey. The chapters of "Utopia Reimagined" envision a Europe where crises are met with unity and resilience, where cultural diversity converges into a harmonious mosaic, and where the pursuit of well-being is guided by collective values that transcend borders. Abedin's vision extends beyond the realms of imagination, contemplating realistic intersections of technological advancement and the evolving human consciousness. From the ethics of genetic engineering to the role of philanthropy and social impact, Abedin navigates the complexities of a utopian future, addressing challenges and opportunities with a discerning gaze. The book is a prelude to possibilities, a call to envision and actively participate in the creation of a European living experience that transcends the constraints of the present. "Utopia Reimagined" is not just a projection of fanciful dreams; it is an earnest exploration of the potential pathways that lie ahead. Abedin's narrative challenges readers to question existing norms, contemplate a future where the human spirit soars in the pursuit of collective well-being, and actively engage in shaping a more harmonious and prosperous European tomorrow. As readers turn the pages of "Utopia Reimagined," they are invited to dream alongside Abedin, explore the contours of a utopian vision that might inspire present-day actions, and contribute to the ongoing narrative of a future where European living in 2050 is marked by unity, sustainability, and a commitment to the well-being of all.