Prefiguring Utopia

Author : Suryamayi Aswini Clarence-Smith
Publisher : Policy Press
Page : 203 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2023-09-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781529230802

Get Book

Prefiguring Utopia by Suryamayi Aswini Clarence-Smith Pdf

Auroville in Tamil Nadu, South India, is an internationally recognized endeavour in prefiguring an alternative society: the largest, most diverse, dynamic and enduring of intentional communities worldwide. This book is a critical and insightful analysis of the utopian practice of this unique spiritual township, by a native scholar. The author explores how Auroville’s founding spiritual and societal ideals are engaged in its communal political and economic organization, as well as various cultural practices and what enables and sustains this prefiguratively utopian practice. This in-depth, autoethnographic case study is an important resource for understanding prefigurative and utopian experiments – their challenges, potentialities and significance for the advancement of human society.

Author : Suryamayi Aswini Clarence-Smith
Publisher : Policy Press
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2023-09-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781529230796

Get Book

Prefiguring Utopia by Suryamayi Aswini Clarence-Smith Pdf

Auroville in Tamil Nadu, South India, is an internationally recognized endeavour in prefiguring an alternative society: the largest, most diverse, dynamic and enduring of intentional communities worldwide. This book is a critical and insightful analysis of the utopian practice of this unique spiritual township, by a native scholar. The author explores how Auroville’s founding spiritual and societal ideals are engaged in its communal political and economic organization, as well as various cultural practices and what enables and sustains this prefiguratively utopian practice. This in-depth, autoethnographic case study is an important resource for understanding prefigurative and utopian experiments – their challenges, potentialities and significance for the advancement of human society.

Author : Ross Dealy
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 413 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781487506599

Get Book

Before Utopia by Ross Dealy Pdf

This book explores the influence of Stoicism on the evolution of Thomas More's mind, asserting that More's engagement with the work of Erasmus radicalized his understanding of Christianity and shaped the writing of Utopia.

Author : Maxim Shadurski
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2019-08-14
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781000682878

Get Book

The Nationality of Utopia by Maxim Shadurski Pdf

Since its generic inception in 1516, utopia has produced visions of alterity which renegotiate, subvert, and transcend existing places. Early in the twentieth century, H. G. Wells linked utopia to the World State, whose post-national, post-Westphalian emergence he predicated on English national discourse. This critical study examines how the discursive representations of England’s geography, continuity, and character become foundational to the Wellsian utopia and elicit competing response from Wells’s contemporaries, particularly Robert Hugh Benson and Aldous Huxley, with further ramifications throughout the twentieth century. Contextualized alongside modern theories of nationalism and utopia, as well as read jointly with contemporary projections of England as place, reactions to Wells demonstrate a shift from disavowal to retrieval of England, on the one hand, and from endorsement to rejection of the World State, on the other. Attempts to salvage the residual traces of English culture from their degradation in the World State have taken increasing precedence over the imagination of a post-national order. This trend continues in the work of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, J. G. Ballard, and Julian Barnes, whose future scenarios warn against a world without England. The Nationality of Utopia investigates utopia’s capacity to deconstruct and redeploy national discourse in ways that surpass fear and nostalgia.

Author : Edward Rothstein,Herbert Muschamp,Martin Marty
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 106 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2003-02-06
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780195144611

Get Book

Visions of Utopia by Edward Rothstein,Herbert Muschamp,Martin Marty Pdf

Traces the history of utopian thinking, covering the reasons for their failures and how they are still being pursued.

Author : Nathaniel Coleman
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 351 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2020-02-20
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781474287739

Get Book

Materials and Meaning in Architecture by Nathaniel Coleman Pdf

Interweaving architecture, philosophy and cultural history, Materials and Meaning in Architecture develops a rich and multi-dimensional exploration of materials and materiality, in an age when architectural practice seems otherwise preoccupied with image and visual representation. Arguing that architecture is primarily experienced by the whole body, rather than chiefly with the eyes, this broad-ranging study shows how the most engaging built works are as tactile as they are sensuous, communicating directly with the bodily senses, especially touch. It explores the theme of 'material imagination' and the power of establishing 'place identity' in an architect's work, to consider the enduring expressive possibilities of material use in architecture. The book's chapters can be dipped into, each individual chapter providing close readings of built works by selected modern masters (Scarpa, Zumthor, Williams and Tsien), insights into key texts and theories (Ruskin, Loos, Bachelard), or short cultural histories of materials (wood, brick, concrete, steel, and glass). And yet, taken together, the chapters build to a powerful book-length argument about how meaning accrues to materials through time, and about the need to reinsert the bodily experience of materiality into architectural design. It is thus also, in part, a manifesto: arguing for architecture to act as a bulwark against the tide of an increasingly depersonalised built environment. With insights for a wide range of readers, ranging from students through to researchers and professional designers, Materials and Meaning in Architecture will cause theorists to rethink their assumptions and designers to see new potential for their projects.

Author : George Kateb
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 104 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2017-09-29
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781351300384

Get Book

Utopia by George Kateb Pdf

Amid the twentieth century's seemingly overwhelming problems, some thinkers dared to envisage a world order governed by utopian proposals that would eliminate--or at least alleviate--the evils of society and secure positive advantages for all human beings. Others found this utopian optimism a hopeless fantasy and predicted a utopian order only repressiveness, boredom, and the impoverishment of human experience. The unique gathering of articles in Utopia vividly demonstrates the tension existing between utopian ideas and their proponents and the severe criticism of their adversaries. Among utopia's enthusiastic supporters, B. F. Skinner outlines the educational practices needed to sustain his concept of utopia, while Margaret Mead sets forth a bold defense of utopian vision in her article "Towards More Vivid Utopias." In active opposition to modern utopian idealism, Ralf Dahrendorf, the prominent German sociologist and politician, compares utopia with a cemetery and criticizes its fixed and uneventful life, and J. L. Talmon predicts that, since utopianism postulates absolute social cohesion, there is no escape from dictatorship in the utopian design. Still another alternative is offered by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who bases his futurist ideology on the trends of technology in the advanced countries of the world, especially the United States. He sees in the conscious application of technical-scientific rationality by an intellectual elite the method by which the promises of modern knowledge can be made good. Underscoring the fact that the utopian tradition can make us look at the real world with new eyes, George Kateb, the editor of Utopia, clarifies the terms of this long-standing debate and offers a thorough analysis of the "strong utopian impetus to save the world from as much of its confusion and disorder as possible." The work is an argument neither for utopian or anti-utopian visions. Rather it shows the possibilities of political norms in advancing the human condition in open societies.

Author : Lara Monticelli
Publisher : Policy Press
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2024-02-13
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781529215663

Get Book

The Future Is Now: An Introduction to Prefigurative Politics by Lara Monticelli Pdf

This edited collection analyses the unique characteristics of urban gardens, worker-owned coops, ecological communities, occupied factories and other social movements to demonstrate what we can learn from them in order to rethink our economies and societies.

Author : R. Levitas
Publisher : Springer
Page : 443 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2013-07-25
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781137314253

Get Book

Utopia as Method by R. Levitas Pdf

Utopia should be understood as a method rather than a goal. This book rehabilitates utopia as a repressed dimension of the sociological and in the process produces the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society, a provisional, reflexive and dialogic method for exploring alternative possible futures.

Author : Henry Wolfgang Donner
Publisher : Freeport, N.Y. : Books for Libraries Press
Page : 140 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 1969
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : STANFORD:36105039232678

Get Book

Introduction to Utopia by Henry Wolfgang Donner Pdf

Author : Ruth Levitas
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 1990
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0815625138

Get Book

The Concept of Utopia by Ruth Levitas Pdf

Probes the contested concept of utopia, examining the different ways in which it has been used by commentators and theorists in both liberal and Marxist radiations. The works of Karl Mannheim, Georges Sorel, Ernst Bloch, William Morris, and Herbert Marcuse are studied. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Author : Robert T. Tally Jr.
Publisher : Springer
Page : 193 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2013-02-26
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780230391901

Get Book

Utopia in the Age of Globalization by Robert T. Tally Jr. Pdf

The idea of "Utopia" has made a comeback in the age of globalization, and the bewildering technological shifts and economic uncertainties of the present era call for novel forms of utopia. Tally argues that a new form of utopian discourse is needed for understanding, and moving beyond, the current world system.

Author : H. G. Wells
Publisher : e-artnow
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2017-12-06
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9788027235551

Get Book

A Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells Pdf

A Modern Utopia is presented as a tale told by a sketchily described character known only as the Owner of the Voice. This character "is not to be taken as the Voice of the ostensible author who fathers these pages," Wells warns. He is accompanied by another character known as "the botanist." Interspersed in the narrative are discursive remarks on various matters, creating what Wells called in his preface "a sort of shot-silk texture between philosophical discussion on the one hand and imaginative narrative on the other." Because of the complexity and sophistication of its narrative structure, H.G. Wells's A Modern Utopia has been called "not so much a modern as a postmodern utopia." The novel is best known for its notion that a voluntary order of nobility known as the Samurai could effectively rule a "kinetic and not static" world state so as to solve "the problem of combining progress with political stability." Herbert George Wells (1866–1946), known as H. G. Wells, was a prolific English writer in many genres, including the novel, history, politics, and social commentary, and textbooks and rules for war games.

Author : Marie Louise Berneri
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2019-11-21
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781000734713

Get Book

Journey through Utopia by Marie Louise Berneri Pdf

In this title, originally published in 1950, the author has set out to give a description and a critical assessment of the most important (not necessarily the most famous) Utopian writings since Plato first gave, in his Republic, a literary form to the dreams of a Golden Age and of ideal societies which had doubtless been haunting man since the beginning of the conscious discussion of social problems. It is more than a mere compilation and criticism of Utopias, it brings out in a striking way the close and fateful relationship between Utopian thought and social reality, and takes its place among the important books which had appeared in the previous few years, warning us, from various points of view, of the doom that awaits those who are foolish enough to put their trust in an ordered and regimented world.

Author : Mark Stephen Jendrysik
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 108 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2020-04-09
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781509534944

Get Book

Utopia by Mark Stephen Jendrysik Pdf

Human beings universally dream of a better world. For centuries they have expressed their yearning for ways of life that are free from oppression, want and fear, through philosophy, art, film and literature. In this concise and engaging book, Mark Jendrysik examines the multifarious ways utopians have posed the question of how human beings might establish justice and realize truly human values. Drawing upon a range of sources, from Plato’s Republic and Thomas More’s Utopia to Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, he argues that, though for many utopia means ‘demanding the impossible’, the goals that seemed out of reach for one generation are often realized in the next. Nonetheless, he shows that, while utopian thought points toward our most noble aspirations, it also illustrates the dangers of totalitarianism, of the surveillance state and of global climate change. This engaging book will be an invaluable guide for anyone seeking to understand how, for good or ill, utopian aspirations shape our lives, even in times that seem designed to close off dreams of a better world.