Otto Neurath’s empiricist methodology of economics and his contributions to political economy have gained increasing attention in recent years. We connect this research with contemporary debates regarding the epistemological status of thought experiments by reconstructing Neurath’s utopias as linchpins of thought experiments. In our three reconstructed examples of different uses of utopias/dystopias in thought experiments we employ a reformulation of Häggqvist’s model for thought experiments and we argue that: (1) Our reformulation of Häggqvist’s model more adequately complies with (...) many uses of thought experiments, especially with the open-ended discussions of utopias and dystopias in thought experiments. (2) As a strict logical empiricist, Neurath is committed to a strictly empiricist account of thought experiments. John Norton’s empiricist argument view can indeed account for the justifications of empirical beliefs and genuine discoveries targeted by scientific utopianism in three distinct (yet connected) ways, all of which Neurath already contemplated: (2.I) Dealing with utopias and thought experiments on a regular basis increases creativity and inventiveness. (2.II) Particular ways of presenting knowledge facilitate scientific discovery and social progress. (2.III) The use of utopias in thought experiments can prompt conceptual change and allow access to new phenomena. We conclude by highlighting that, even though thought experiments support a positive attitude for exploring new social possibilities, Neurath points out that active decisions are unavoidable. The exploration of alternatives and the awareness of a need for decisions in policy discussion avert a technocratic outlook in social science. (shrink)

These six essays present an outsider's view of Western norms of progress, rationality, and maturity, and offer an alternate perspective on oppression in modern times. Well-known psychologist and social theorist Ashis Nandy stresses the importance of considering world views held by the "non-modern" cultures of the Third World in formulating a more humane and less technologically preoccupied vision of progress. Institutionalized oppression is seen as a process which co-opts the physical and psychological worlds of its victims and destroys the basis (...) of all dissenting visions of a just world. Concluding with an essay on Gandhi and his critical reaction to Western civilization, this book is an important contribution to political science, sociology, psychology, and South Asian studies. (shrink)

:Political theory is not a purely theoretical enterprise; it is intended to be practical and action-guiding. To perform this role, the requirements of political theory must be possible, and the standard of possibility it employs must be appropriate to the political domain. Because human beings vary in their capacity for morality and justice, a reasonably just society, as Rawls understands it, must not be expected. Despite his concerns to the contrary, the possibility of a just polity is not needed to (...) ward off resignation and cynicism. There is a principled path between a politics of complacency that thwarts feasible progress and a politics of utopian aspiration that ends by inflicting harm in the name of doing good. (shrink)

During the European Renaissance, scholars and members of the bourgeoisie showed a stronginterest in practical philosophy, namely ethics and politics. This shift was expressed in works that described ideal societies, also known as utopias. Meanwhile, the Renaissance philosophy of nature, influenced by Late Ancient philosophy and mysticism, imposed a new worldview, according to which nature was seen as a living entity. Renaissance political thinkers attempted to imbue their socio-political visions with a sense of natural philosophy. A principal idea in (...) utopian literature is the strong presence of science, a key factor in the transformation of nature. In its search for the ideal political order, humanity was not content with maximising nature’s benefits but envisioned creating a new nature, one that better served the socio-political ideals of the Renaissance and the early modern era. I would like to argue that the prominent role of technocracy in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century utopias led gradually to the disruption and perversion of nature. Despite of the intentions of the utopian thinkers, their views on nature –which range from the unconditional respect to nature to its advancement through science – encouraged finally the mastery of nature, because they connected the socio-political progress with the exploitation of nature and the control of natural forces. In particular, a discussion on the relationship between humanity, nature and science in Renaissance utopian thought can shed some light on how early technocracy progressively led to the ravaging of nature. Departing from the major Renaissance philosophers’ all-encompassing perspective, political philosophers of the time, especially those who contributed to utopian literature, predominantly viewed nature as an instrument at the disposal of humanity and its science – a playground for human inventiveness and resourcefulness. With their works, they provided a new rationale, non-religious this time that defended humanity’s full exploitation of nature. (shrink)

I begin this paper by examining what MacIntyre has to tell us about radical disagreements: how they have arisen, and how to deal with them, within a polity. I conclude by radically disagreeing with Macintyre: I shall suggest that he offers no credible alternative to liberalism’s account of radical disagreements and how to deal with them. To put it dilemmatically: insofar as what MacIntyre says is credible, it is not an alternative to liberalism; insofar as he presents a genuine alternative (...) to liberalism, this alternative is not credible. In large part the credibility problems that I see for MacIntyre’s pro ject arise from the history on which he bases it; it is with this history that I begin. Reflection on MacIntyre’s profound and subtle political philosophy thus fails to dislodge liberalism from its contemporary intellectual supremacy—a supremacy which I think liberalism has well earned. If anything, such reflection enhances the hegemony of liberalism still further. And a good thing too. (shrink)

The resurgence of everyday cycling in the last decades across Western cities has engendered lively debates concerning its increasingly relevant role in innovating urban movement toward more sustainable futures. Most cities are building provisions and drafting plans to become more "cycle friendly," and "cycling indexes" are regularly used to rank the best-performing of them, while the World Health Organization has developed a health economic assessment tool to assist evidence-based decision making for cycling investments.1 Meanwhile, the number of cyclists in certain (...) areas of New York has tripled in the past ten years, the number of people cycling to work in London has doubled since 2001, and Paris, the first big... (shrink)

This is an edited transcript of a keynote paper given at IACR's 2021 Annual Conference. The paper outlines a critical realist approach to critique and illustrates its application to the contemporary economy. It argues that responsible, constructive critique depends on ethics, on causal explanation, and on the development of utopian visions. Utopias are tools, and concrete utopias are not visions of whole alternative ready-made societies, but rather partial models that can be built in practice as elements of the (...) larger social world. The argument is illustrated with three cases of digital utopianism, which help to demonstrate the practical challenges facing utopian schemes. Concrete utopias are a vehicle for combining our theoretical understandings of possibilities with an ethical analysis of needs in order to offer practical schemes for improving human flourishing. (shrink)

The Nordic countries have often been regarded as ideal states with respect to their organization of society, including, among other things, their democracy, public education systems, gender equality, and strong concern for nature. From the late twentieth century onward, an increasing interest in Nordic literature, film, and design—genres where social and environmental themes have been strongly highlighted—can be noted internationally.This discourse of the Nordic societies can be considered to contain both utopian and dystopian aspects. As Kjerstin Aukrust and Cecilie Weiss-Andersen (...) show in their article on French democracy, the Nordic, understood as a utopian motif, has been a long-standing topic in modern French... (shrink)

Nancy Gardner Prince began writing and self-publishing A Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince in the 1850s, at a time when few African American women had the ability to do so. Her story tells of diaspora and of the systematic economic, cultural, and political oppression of free African Americans in the antebellum North. Raised by a mother unable to cope with the economic and emotional burden of raising eight children on her own, Prince spends much of (...) her youth working as a domestic servant in white households. After a long, mostly unsuccessful struggle to maintain family unity, Prince makes the decision to improve her circumstances, marrying sailor Nero Prince after a brief courtship and .. (shrink)

Introduction. The article is focused on analyzing the utopian direction of Russian cosmism and its influence on the Soviet cosmonautics and the development of society in the USSR. This philosophical theory was created in the period that made it possible to incorporate the applied aspects of utopia into scientific and technological progress and thereby embody a number of steps towards the outer space exploration. The authors have developed criteria and parameters for assessing the utopian component of the Russian cosmism theories, (...) which made it possible to bring this construct to a higher level of abstraction and thereby create a working model for conducting such studies in the context of other utopias of models. The purpose of the article is to show the influence of the Russian cosmism utopia on the cosmonautics development in the USSR, develop empirical criteria for evaluating the phenomenon. Achieving the goal required solving the following tasks: 1) considering and analyzing the subject matter of the cosmism utopia; 2) developing parameters for assessing the impact of utopia on the development of the social system; 3) applying the developed parameters to assess the impact of utopian ideas on the development of the Soviet cosmonautics system. Methods. Developing the theoretical model for assessing social utopias, as well as considering and analyzing the cosmism utopia, required the use of structural-functional and systems analysis. The research was conducted within the framework of a synergistic paradigm. Scientific novelty of the research. The article conceptualizes the concept of utopia. It is shown that most of the definitions of utopia as a socio-political ideal focus on the limitations of its existence: utopia cannot be embodied, often has an unscientific character, does not correlate with the real state of the system, i.e. definitions of utopia are often reduced to the negative format. The authors believe that the influence of utopia on society, as a rule, is positive. It is noted that, along with limitations, utopianism has certain unique essential features that qualitatively affect the social projects implementation. Utopia in the systemic understanding acts as a complex of ideas influencing the development of the system, being both internal (since it is created artificially and consciously by the very elements of the system) and an external factor of influence. Unlike Plato’s eidos, the projection of which is reality, utopia is created inductively, but after its creation it again “descends” to the level of reality, since it begins to influence the social model in which it was created. Results. The article discusses the prognostic and modeling functions of the social utopias of Russian cosmists. It has been proved that one of the essential functions of the Russian cosmism utopias is the formation of an ideal type, towards which, in a historical perspective, the real social system begins to strive. It is convincingly demonstrated that utopia acts as a cognitive support and inevitably forms the canvas along which society begins to move, defining the utopian model as an attractor, although such a goal is not always formulated when creating a utopia. This relationship makes it possible to assess the degree of influence of utopian ideas on the formation of reality in each specific case, which, in turn, provides an opportunity to answer the question of how and to what extent the utopian ideal type participates in determining the characteristics and parameters of a real social system. Conclusions. It was found that the social utopia of cosmists as a cognitive concept is an important effective factor influencing the development of the space industry in the USSR. The parameters adopted in the study allow us to describe the measure of its influence as both an internal and an external factor on the development of the society in which it is implemented. The validity of perceiving the utopia of cosmists as a construct with a certain life cycle, the main part of which is the period of functioning, is stated. During this time period, utopian theory can have a significant impact on the actual development of society from various angles. (shrink)

(2000). ‘Nothing is, but what is not’: Utopias as practical political philosophy. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 3, The Philosophy of Utopia, pp. 9-24.

This article discusses the role of representative strategies in twentieth-century Russian culture. Just as Russia interacted with Europe in the Marquis de Custine’s time via discourse and representation, in the twentieth century Russia re-entered European consciousness by simulating ‘socialism’. In the post-Soviet era, the nation aspired to be admitted to the ‘European house’ by simulating a ‘market economy’, ‘democracy’, and ‘postmodernism’. But in reality Russia remains the same country as before, torn between the reality of its own helplessness and poverty, (...) and the messianic myth of its own greatness. Post-Soviet culture is a product of Stalinist culture. ‘Russian postmodernism’ was created less by artists, writers, poets, and film makers, than by theorists and critics. At the beginning of the 1990s, a need to describe contemporary Russian culture emerged. In this way, ‘Russian postmodernism’ arose from the desire to ‘sell’ projects in the West—from the simple obligation to describe socialist experience in concrete, transferable terms that Westerners could grasp. The nostalgia experienced by the post-Soviet era creates its own simulated postmodernism , in which the matrices of the construction and functioning of culture cease to be connected with specifically Russian (Soviet) history, and instead reproduce Western models almost exactly. We are facing yet another attempt at radical cultural modernization. If the first attempt (revolutionary culture) was the most original and fruitful, and the second (Stalinist culture, Socialist Realism) was less productive but still original, then the third, post-Soviet, attempt (rich in individuality, but lacking in original ideas or style) is for the moment the least productive and original. If we exclude sots-art (conceptualism) from ‘Russian postmodernism’, there would be nothing left. Clearly, an original cultural model in post-Soviet Russia will not take shape until original strategies for processing the country’s cultural past are developed. In their turn, these strategies can only result from a radical transformation of post-Soviet identity into a new, genuinely Russian one. (shrink)

Although the title Dreamstreets and the use of the word utopias in the subtitle strongly suggest a focus on the utopian, there are only a few references to utopia in the book, which is about the author’s responses to some of the model villages established in Britain in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author says that there were about four hundred such villages, and she has visited many I have not visited and know little about; she is (...) particularly good on some of the less well-known model towns. While the table of contents suggests that she visited ten of them, she discusses quite a few more, all of which she has visited.I found the discussion of New Lanark (which is one of those not in the table... (shrink)

At the heart of Heike Endter's 2009 dissertation, published in 2011 as Ökonomische Utopien und ihre Bilder in Science-Fiction-Filmen, lies the assumption that art history, as a field and with its unique methodology, can provide an insight into film studies that has not yet been discovered and made accessible. Interestingly, Endter seeks to argue this unique insight as a benefit of art history, a discipline threatened by neoliberal ideals of employability, by analyzing a field of interconnected terms that directly address (...) this threat: "utopias, the economy, the visual and science fiction film". She is driven by the idea of a "use value," both morally and economically... (shrink)

ABSTRACT The beginning of the twentieth century was a period of an intense development of technological utopia. The advancement of the natural sciences at that time provided scholars and thinkers with a new perspective and a better tool for getting to know the universe. Thanks to this, utopian visions created at that time were more daring and ambitious than their predecessors. It is no coincidence that the first cosmic utopias were created at this time, positioning ideal communities outside the (...) earth. Russian authors Alexander Bogdanov and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky stand out among the creators of such utopias. These two renowned scientists, considered pioneers in their respective areas, presented within the span of slightly more than a decade surprisingly similar visions, one of them taking place on Mars and the other in the cosmic space. What sets the two narratives apart is the role they attribute to science and technology. Regardless of the fact that both utopias are characterized by a high level of scientific development and technological advancement, the scientific-technological factor is a vital determinant of the idealized community in only one of them. The key to understanding this discrepancy may be found in the works of British writer H. G. Wells. (shrink)

This article focuses on the pragmatist feminist theories of social reformer Charlotte Perkins Gilman and cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead. It begins by delineating Gilman's understanding of how the material-cultural environment affects the lives of women. Believing the American way of life to be too individualistic, Gilman developed a theory of social change aimed at generating more collectivist ways of living and promoting the economic independence of women. To achieve these ends, Gilman advocated for the reconstruction of the Victorian nursery, which (...) she believed would afford women the choice to pursue a professional career outside of the home, and promote the health of the community. Gilman's social theory is contrasted with that of Margaret Mead, who believed that plans for social reform are best left to readers. Rather than advocate for the adoption of an entirely new cultural practice, Mead sought to acquaint her culturally diverse American readership with the Samoan way of life, so that they might collectively decide how to best address the problem of choice facing young women in the 1920s. (shrink)

Este trabalho reflete sobre o modo como nossos ancestrais negros resistiram à necropolítica colonial mobilizando saberes para recriar no Brasil outros espaços religiosos sob o nome de terreiros de candomblé. Mas o objetivo principal da discussão é tratar sobre as noções de sincretismo religioso, desconstruindo-a teoricamente conforme a decolonialidade aplica tal conceito derridiano. O termo necropolítica é usado aqui conforme Achille Mbembe o emprega. Como uma forma de contribuir com o debate em voga e, ao mesmo tempo, fazer o diagnóstico (...) do presente, a discussão se justifica também porque a questão do sincretismo religioso tem sido alvo de muitos questionamentos por parte dos movimentos negros e por parte dos teóricos da decolonialidade. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Born in periods of crises, utopias adopt a threefold structure: a critique of society, a spatial arrangement, and a new society sustained by this spatial arrangement. Accordingly, space and architecture are recognized as spatial levers to address crises and change societies. However, three problematic characteristics emerge from an analysis of past and contemporary utopias. First, utopias do not always advocate for new societal orders, as some tend to consolidate the existing ones. Second, they have evolved to (...) be increasingly tangible. Third, while appearing as collective narratives, they are written by a single hand, allowing little variations. To address these issues and revitalize their critical potency, utopias could act as beacons rather than concrete projects, work on processes rather than goals, and build collective narratives rather than monologues. Eventually, the article illustrates architecture’s twofold rationale: a means to physically build space and a critical tool to reflect on society. (shrink)

Recombinant DNA technology is an essential area of life engineering. The main aim of research in this field is to experimentally explore the possibilities of repairing damaged human DNA, healing or enhancing future human bodies. Based on ethnographic research in a Czech biochemical laboratory, the article explores biotechnological corporealities and their specific ontology through dealings with bio-objects, the bodywork of scientists. Using the complementary concepts of utopia and heterotopia, the text addresses the situation of bodies and bio-objects in a laboratory. (...) Embodied utopias are analyzed as material semiotic phenomena that are embodied by scientists in their visions and emotions and that are related to potential bodies and to future, not-yet-actualized embodiments. As a counterpart to this, the text explores embodied heterotopias, which are always the other spaces, like biotechnological bio-objects that are simulated in computers or stored in special solutions. (shrink)

The dream of Leibniz and that of Frege, to create a lingua characteristica in order to demonstrate conceptual thought, incorporates in a wider process, the division and tension between the distinct Spheres which the human sub-species have been creating. Spheres which remain hidden by natural language, essentially spoken language. For the creation and demonstration of the Conceptual Sphere the establishing of a language of characteres has become indispensable, essentially written language. Is a consequence a tension is established between Natural language-Formal (...) language with their corresponding reductionist tendences. (shrink)

Nirvana and other Buddhist felicities. Utopias of the Pali imaginaire. Steven Collins., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988. xxiv, 684 pp. £55.00 ISBN 0 521 57054 9.

This first-rate collection of essays in French stems from several international colloquia organized by a joint research program on utopia and catastrophe at the universities of Bordeaux-Montaigne and Poitiers between 2011 and 2013. Globally, as the title of Jean-Paul Engélibert and Raphaelle Guidée's excellent introduction makes immediately clear, the volume questions and refutes the depreciation of utopia expressed frequently in the last decades: the contemporary propensity to point, if not to the death of utopia, to the flourishing of dystopias since (...) the nineteenth century and the view that utopias themselves are the root cause of most twentieth-century crises and... (shrink)

With an eye on the power of literary utopias that forever remain on the printed page, architects have struggled with the question of whether architecture in practice—real buildings—can be utopian. Many architectural utopias have been imagined—unbuilt and even unbuildable—but does the act of rendering one into physical form eliminate its utopian potential? Recent scholarship, breaking with a generation of postmodern cynicism, has suggested that it does not and has pointed architectural utopias in new directions. But the incongruity (...) between the burden of being both real and radically transformative remains daunting.Despite this threshold conundrum, the contemporary era is no less wanting of new utopias than ages... (shrink)

Inspired by the life and works of GrammyAward® winning artist, Lil Nas X, we explore ways a young Black queer musician has enacted emancipatory utopias to disrupt dominant cultural modes of being—offering unapologetic expressions and expansions of race, gender, and sexual identity. In this paper, we draw upon José Esteban Muñoz and Ytasha Womak to consider how utopian thinking through the lenses of queer futurity and Afrofuturism provides a way to dismantle the hegemonic and proleptic trappings of music education (...) and contemplate how music learners and teachers might enact emancipatory utopias relevant to their own historically lived experiences. (shrink)

Este ensayo quiere restablecer polémicamente una lectura de la revolución francesa y sus utopías a través de autores como Alexis de Tocqueville y Carlos Marx, continuando con Jean Jaurés y Pedro Kropotkine hasta la actualidad, en que se ubica la disputa central entre revisionistas, Francois Furet como el máximo exponente y los historiadores sociales Georges Lefebvre, Daniel Guérin, George Rudé y Albert Soboul. Para proponer una lectura de historia-presente sobre la revolución francesa y sus criterios de actualidad.

This book presents a critique of dominant governance theories grounded in an understanding of existence as a static, discrete, mechanistic process, while also identifying the failures of theories that assume dynamic alternatives of either a radically collectivist or individualist nature. Relationships between ontology and governance practices are established, drawing upon a wide range of social, political, and administrative theory. Employing the ideal-type method and dialectical analysis to establish meanings, the authors develop a typology of four dominant approaches to governance. The (...) authors then provide a systematic analysis of each governance approach, thoroughly unpacking and critiquing each one and exploring the relationships and movements among them that engender reform and revolution as well as retrenchment and obfuscation of power dynamics. After demonstrating that each governance approach has fatal flaws within a diverse global context, the authors propose an alternative they call Integrative Governance. As a synthesis of the ideal-types, Integrative Governance is neither individualist nor collectivist, while still maintaining the dynamic character required to accommodate responsiveness to cultural contexts. (shrink)

Few phenomena in world history have such a vivid imagery in popular culture as piracy. Law is a major element of those images, whether looking through its lens one considers pirates as lawless or, conversely, as free of the shackles of society. This article proposes to investigate the relationship between the two, choosing three eponymous images as the focus of its investigations. Beginning with the study of the ways in which images of piracy were created in popular culture, the author (...) then turns his attention to the question of the ways in which law has framed pirates throughout the ages. Thus, he looks into each of the three pre-selected images: of pirates as symbols of liberty (focusing on the question of pirate’s social organisation and pirate utopias), of pirates as outlaws (focusing on the question of how international law has treated pirates throughout history to the present day) and of pirates as treasure hunters (focusing on the question of legal rights to sunken treasures). In the final part of the article the author ponders the endurance of images of piracy, asking the question as to what this phenomenon reveals about law in particular and society in general. (shrink)