Utopian Model Research Articles

Perspectives for a human-centric industry: understanding the social critique of the utopian proposal

AbstractThis article assesses the exploration of the utopian paradigm within the context of technological advancement and its implications for human labor. It engages in this reflection, beginning with John Danaher’s reading of utopian perspectives related to the evolution of the labor domain, and then focusing on the significance of the social element and its dynamics in redefining labor and productive structures. It focuses on utopia as a regulatory ideal, valuing the conjectural contributions from theories throughout the history of utopian thought. The analysis aims to understand how utopian theories arise in contexts of social dissatisfaction, prompting internal reflection on the structure. The article is organized into three sections: the first introduces the concept of utopia, tracing its historical and philosophical roots, with a focus on influential figures such as Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier. Through the study of nineteenth-century social theories, the article explores their radical proposals for societal restructuring in response to the socio-economic upheavals of their time. The second section examines utopia as a form of social critique, emphasizing its critical function in assessing and guiding societal development, by engaging with Norbert Elias’s definitions of utopia. The third section evaluates the relevance of utopia in contemporary discourse on social change, emphasizing the critical examination of utopian visions in relation to the concept of the end of work and aiming to articulate clear parameters defining a utopian model as a social regulatory ideal.

Invisible Infrastructure: Reinforcing Postwar Gender Inequality in Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower

1970s Japan saw major changes in the way society lived and worked. A changing family structure, one led by the patriarchal “salaryman,” created new demands for housing. The Nakagin Capsule Tower, completed by architect Kisho Kurokawa in 1972, formerly located in the business district of Shimbashi, Tokyo, Japan, was Kurokawa’s utopian model for Japan’s salarymen. This presentation investigates how the Nakagin Capsule Tower inscribed gendered institutional thought in its construction, restricting women to the home and maintaining male power in the public sphere. Moreover, I explore the relationship between the construction of masculinity and urban space in postwar Japan and discuss the ways in which a housewife is unable to fulfill societal expectations within the Nakagin Capsule Tower. While Kurokawa believed the Nakagin Capsule Tower was a utopian architecture that would improve society, it maintained the salaryman/housewife relationship that prevented Japan from socially evolving to include women in their workforce and reinforced the city as a place only for men in service to the economy. This assessment investigates how the built environment has the power to detract from women’s opportunities outside of the home and the ways architecture met the social demands of men in postwar Japan.

Картина будущего в социально-философском осмыслении писателей XX века (И. Ефремов, Р. Анайя): трансформация межэтнических отношений в ходе глобализации

The article determines the nature of the reflection of ideas about the future society development and the transformation of interethnic relations in the works of the Russian Soviet writer and Chicano author of the 20th century. The novels of Ivan Efremov “Andromeda Nebula” (1957) and Rudolfo Anaya “Jalamanta” (1996) are involved in the study. The purpose of the article is to identify the scenarios of the future presented in the novels of I. Efremov, R. Anaya, and the features of interethnic relations’ transformation in literary texts. The methodological basis of the research consists of works devoted to the study of the multidimensional representation of future image, including literary, the features of utopian consciousness, the poetics of the fantastic. The article applies a comprehensive approach to models of the expected future presented in literary texts, based on a combination of the method of socio-philosophical analysis, semiotic and comparative and historical research methods. Based on the analysis of the novels, similarities and differences in the representation of the writers’ ideas about the future social structure are established, the multiplicity of models of the future associated with the recreation of a utopian model in the text (the image of an ideal future) is shown. Special attention is paid to identifying the specifics of interethnic relations in the hypothetical reality of the future.

Utopian Vision and Its Double: An Allegorical Portrait of Black Life in Hurston’s One-act Play Mr. Frog

Zora Neale Hurston was an anthropologist and a woman writer participating in the African American literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. A prolific and versatile writer, she wrote a number of plays, and, in particular, devoted herself to creating ‘black folk comedy’ as a form of ‘the new and the real Negro theatre’ that honestly showed the language and daily life of black people in South Florida. This study focuses on Herston’s one-act play Mr. Frog as an example of black folk comedy. A fable story, the short dramatic skit represents the utopian model of coexistence and symbiotic community by portraying the lives of animals. On the other hand, this utopia created on stage is a space that does not exist in reality, so in return, it indirectly suggests ‘other’ picture hidden behind the surface, namely, the portrait of contemporary black people in South Florida living the harsh reality of racism. In the play, the utopian vision is presented as ‘double’ and this writing strategy meets the nature and effects of an allegorical narrative deriving from the correlation of surface text and the hidden meaning or subtext. This study concludes that Mr. Frog, through the fable story of animals, dramatizes the ‘double’ of the utopian vision that diverges into the ideal community for coexistence and the reality of black life, thereby suggesting a model for allegorical playwriting.

КОНСТРУИРОВАНИЕ СОБЫТИЙНОСТИ В СУДЕБНЫХ РЕЧАХ РУССКИХ АДВОКАТОВ КОНЦА XIX – НАЧАЛА XX В.

The article is focused on the analysis of event construction in courtroom speeches presented by Russian lawyers in the late 19th – early 20th century from rhetorical and narrative perspectives. The first part of the article is devoted to the development of judicial rhetoric after the reform of Alexander II (1864). It was strongly influenced by realistic writing tradition, which could not but contribute to the adoption of various literary strategies, including the approach to narration and representation of events. In the second part, we turn to the features common both for events in fiction and events that lie in the core of courtroom speech narrative. During the jury trials, narrative not only represented the human experience but also interpreted it and enabled lawyers to construct stories final parts of which could be consummated only by the verdict of the jury. It is concluded that the blurred line between real and constructed event made the narrative closure fundamentally important for the jury. Their choice of ending not only defined the position of the accused in one of the semantic fields but also created an illusion that the lenient sentence could approximate the reality to the utopian model of the world based on Christian values. In conjunction with the rhetorical strategies used by lawyers in courtrooms, the specific features of event construction could influence the decision-making of the jury.

Remaining human in a transhumanist world

Given that the transhumanist vision of the world is frequently painted as desirable for people and optimistically utopian, the article’s aim is to investigate one of such visions, imagined by Scott Westerfeld in The Succession duology to see if such a utopian model accounts for the necessity of the survival of humanity. While avoiding the usual strictly dystopian and alarmist scenarios, Westerfeld’s postmortal and extropian world is rife with challenges to the transhumanist ideas, asking about the actual grounds on which future communication and cooperation would be based, and the limits of enhancement that need to be drawn not to lead to dehumanization.

Developing a Utopian Model of Human-Technology Interaction: Collective Intelligence Applications in Support of Future Well-Being

ABSTRACT Human-technology interactions are omnipresent in daily life, a reality that must be faced to enact positive change without uprooting the technological systems that have come to define us. The present study develops a collective intelligence model for human-technology interaction (HTI) design that aims to promote peace, prosperity, and happiness through design intentionality informed by utopian targets of radical improvement in society. Participants generated ideas, clarified and consolidated them, and then developed an interpretive structure model of the most important affordances identified during the idea generation phase. Coupled with a two-pass thematic analysis of the original idea set, what emerged is a model that is informed by stakeholder users of the technologies of tomorrow. Affordance themes centered on the importance of promoting world peace through technological means, identifying and rectifying material and financial inequalities, addressing negative well-being effects in current technologies, and increasing global collaboration and eventual expansion into the cosmos.

Post-Apocalyptic Amazement: Aesthetics and Historical Consciousness in the Natural Contract

The intention of my essay is to introduce the concept of “natural-history” (Naturgeschichte) to foster dialogue on the role of art, aesthetics, and historiography in speculative materialism and the wider debates around the Anthropocene. I will present my argument in four steps: The first will be a brief reconstruction of the natural contract as conceived by Michel Serres in Le Contrat naturel (1990). Since in his essay Serres largely dispenses with an aesthetics, in my second step I will argue that at the same time the utopian model of the new, human-built environment, Biosphere 2 (1991) manifested exactly an aesthetics as suggested in legal-theoretical terms by Serres. In the third step, using the example of three films by Ben Rivers, one of which is specifically about Biosphere 2, I will show that the potential of utopian ideals is preserved in their realization only insofar as it is documented in images of transience that may be identified as allegorical representations. This implies a critique of the concept of utopia. In a fourth step, I will therefore show that the natural contract’s utopian body of ideas and the manifestation of the utopian concept in Biosphere 2 can be viewed from a historical-philosophical perspective, with reference to the allegorical representation of the film, as the fate of all nature in which history inscribes itself. To that end, Benjamin’s formulation of “fallen nature” [gefallene Natur] will need to be differentiated here. This selective counter-reading of Serres against Benjamin and the films of Ben Rivers ultimately aims at the restitution of a historical-philosophical argument to the status of art in the natural contract or—in a broader sense—in the Anthropocene; more precisely, it also pursues the conception of an aesthetics of amazement in post-apocalyptic narrative time.

Urban food forestry networks and Urban Living Labs articulations

ABSTRACT This article wrestles with the theoretical complexity of fostering food sustainability transitions in metropoles. It pays attention to how urban food forestry networks cultivated in parks may represent a critical part of these transitions, by providing a mechanism for urban peoples to reconnect with food processes while enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem services. The work considers this crucial topic, both theoretically and empirically, in two steps. First, a brief overview of utopian models and the critical literature grounds the discussion of the proposed regenerative place-making model. Second, the work weaves considerations regarding a utopian model of urban food forestry network, by conceptualising Urban Living Labs (ULLs) as flexible nodes of articulation. The work concludes that the key to unlocking this model’s potential for replication and transplantation to distinct localities lies as much in the multiple values entailed by the proposed intervention as it does in its flexible nodes of articulation.

A Jesuit Utopian Project on Behalf of the Conversos: Fernando de Valdés and the Statutes of Purity of Blood (1632)

Abstract In 1632, the Jesuit Father Fernando de Valdés (1584–1642) completed his Memorial para quitar o limitar Estatutos de limpieza. In this treatise, Valdés sought to abolish the statutes of purity of blood and reassess the longstanding division between New and Old Christians. Additionally, the Memorial offers a novel portrait of Castilian conversos. According to Valdés, New Christians were singled out for discrimination, despite their evident virtues as sincere Catholics and faithful subjects. He did not seek to break the existing social order, but rather to offer a profound critique of the Old Christian hegemony. Ultimately, Valdés proposed an essentially utopian model of society built on personal merits and behavior, rather than blood-based and inherited privileges. This article seeks to study this Memorial in the context of the debate about the statutes of purity of blood and as an important element of that debate within the Society of Jesus.

О прогностических и моделирующих функциях социальных утопий русских космистов

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.

Time-Space Utopian Model as a Critical Method of Sociology: A Book Review of <i>Utopia Method Vision</i>

Utopia as a method of sociology, has been identified as a proper and distinctive device for analyzing social structures and proposing social solutions to a better future. Since 2000, there has been an increasing attention to the function of Utopia. To discuss this topic, twelve well-known scholars in utopian studies participate in a two-year research seminar and contribute their perspectives of utopian method in the book Utopia Method Vision: The Use Value of Social Dreaming. This book provides a new sense of utopia’s time and space nature but not a time-space utopia method. To fill in the gap, this study will propose a time-space utopian model after devising space and time models respectively through the method Bricolage. The products will contribute to the systematic understanding of utopia method in a time-space dimension, thus promoting a visualized time-space utopia model as a critical method of sociology.

Specifics of the Implementation of Architectural and Urban Utopias in the Large Regional Center of Russia (on the Example of Samara)

The article is devoted to the problem of implementing the idea in architecture and urban planning. Historically, the construction of exemplary models of life was left to the utopian genre, as evidenced by countless models of ideal forms of social structure. Any urban development project explicitly or implicitly contains an element of utopia, the proportion of which varies depending on the goals and objectives of a specific example. In the presented study, for the first time in architectural scientific discourse, a set of key factors is formulated that determines the feasibility of a utopian model in non-capital cities of Russia. Since the large regional centers of Russia have a cultural, natural, mental and historical identity, they can become an experimental sites for testing the modern urban development strategy. On the example of the development of the city of Samara, a large regional center of Russia, the main causes are identified, and also features of the implementation of architectural and urban utopias are revealed. Chronologically, the study includes historical, industrial, and post-industrial periods. As a result of the study, a forecast is given on the application of modern urban planning concepts in Samara. The proposed conclusions can be recommended for further use in the conditions of the Samara region, and if adapted, for use in other regions of the country.

Lost and Found: Archaeological Fragments and Contemporary Art

From the second half of the 18th century on, with Neoclassicism and the beginning of modern art history, classical art started to be seen as part of an irretrievable past and at the same time as a utopian model for the art of the present and the future. A significant outcome of such a paradoxical vision of Antiquity at the dawn of modernity is the increasingly important role assumed by classical fragments in the works of artists from the end of the 18th through the end of the 20th century. Such fragments (in the art of Fussli, Rodin, de Chirico and Brancuși, for instance) on the one hand evoke the prestige of a past considered irremediably lost, on the other hand they stand as a sign for memory and hint at the relationship with a living, ever changing and continuously renegotiated tradition. In the 1960s and 1970s, after art reached a post-medium condition, one may wonder what could be the meaning of the many classical fragments to be found, for example, in Giulio Paolini’s or Jannis Kounellis’ works; or of the use of the archaeological paradigm (or parodies) in Robert Smithson’s works. Fragments of the classical past or archaeological evocations in advanced art of those years are not to be considered empty ‘quotations’ from an undifferentiated past, but they seem instead to suggest a conception of history based on a non-linear, dynamic sense of memory and time that, in this paper, will be connected with Walter Benjamin’s theses On the Concept of History, for example, or with George Kubler’s book The Shape of Time. The debris of the past in the art of the 1960s and 1970s, therefore, is not meant to produce a kind of renovated rovinismo, rather it poses questions as to how a relationship with tradition could still be maintained by art after Modernism.

A reality check: unveiling the unseen faces of SRA compliance in Ghana

Emerging forest governance regimes emphasise the implementation of social responsibility agreements (SRAs) to enable local communities' access forest rents. While studies have considered SRA implementation in recent years, they are restricted to a few areas and fail to provide insights into wide-scale compliance. This study addresses this by analysing SRA compliance in 36 communities with different forest resource endowments in Ghana. The study found differences in levels SRA compliance with off-reserve actor largely non-compliant. Compliance was motivated by a combination of instrumental, but largely normative factors. Context-specific issues – e.g. low awareness and actor mistrust– enabled non-compliance. The findings suggest that a utopian model and reliance on sanctions alone may not improve SRA compliance in Ghana. Rather, SRAs need to evolve to embrace context-specific norms and the scale of timber contracts. The findings lay a benchmark for SRA compliance monitoring and have extended applications for FLEGT implementation in Ghana and beyond.

The Utopian and the Gothic in Ellis James Davis’s ”Pyrna: A Commune; or, Under The Ice”

<p>The paper discusses spatial modelling in Ellis James Davis’s Victorian utopia, <em>Pyrna</em>: <em>A Commune; or, Under The Ice </em>(1875) in the context of appropriating the Gothic mode into the utopian convention. In what follows, by examining selected aspects of the novella’s presented world, this article argues that the Gothic tropes of numinosity and sublime constitute significant elements of the examined narrative as major defamiliarizing components of the semiotically monolithic utopian spatial model.</p>

빈 공작연맹 주거단지의 건축 개념 및 ‘박스형 주택’의 평면 특성에 관한 연구

This study explored the innovative and experimental design of housing in the transition period to the modern era, focusing on the case of the Wien Werkbund Housing Estate, led by ÖWB(Östereichischer Werkbund). This housing exhibition was intended to present a utopian model for the modern living space. Thus, the purpose of this study is to reveal the typological characteristics and spatial layout within a box-shaped mass, which was designed for ‘minimal house’ for modern nuclear families. The floor plan provided maximum comfort within minimal dimension and tried to find a reasonable solution in a compact form. Thus, this study examined concrete and empirical basis for the planning of modern houses by quantitative analyzing of this cases. The types of floor plan could be classified into three categories: schiera type, square type, and front-extended type. The square type was dominant, indicating that there is a normative floor plan proportion, which is suitable for a limited area. This analysis also showed that the minimum area was found in the schiera type, and in the case of the front-extended type, it was difficult to layout the rooms, despite of the larger dimension. In conclusion, the specificity that defines the modern housing architecture of Wien is ‘diversity and disciplinarity in the aesthetic of the new era of the Box-Shaped house’. The experimental trial of ÖWB has been inherited the morphological characteristics of modern architecture, but it reflected the tradition of the Wiener Werkstätte, which was a great difference from the rigid technology oriented Functionalism architecture of the Deutscher Werkbund.

The Heritage-scape: Origins, Theoretical Interventions, and Critical Reception of a Model for Understanding UNESCO’s World Heritage Program

Written by the author of The Heritage-scape: UNESCO, World Heritage and Tourism (Lexington 2009), this article is a critical reflection of the heritage-scape concept nearly a decade after it was introduced in the literature. Including personal background stories that paint a picture of the intellectual origins and inspirations for the term, the article discusses the theory behind the heritage-scape, the concept’s contribution to the literature, and its reception by tourism and heritage theorists. As a theoretical buzzword meant to describe a particular, utopian model of the geopolitical order, it has nevertheless taken on a life of its own, and the article addresses some of the misconceptions, as well as clarifications made by the author, during the course of the last decade. Articulating a more holistic model of a World Heritage Program, the author also presents future areas of research — including more scholarship on the interrelatedness of tourism and heritage, and better integration of sustainability and ethics. The article concludes with a note of encouragement for junior scholars, who like the author a decade ago, felt they have something notable to communicate to the academic world.

АТЛАНТИДА КАК УТОПИЧЕСКАЯ МОДЕЛЬ В РОМАНЕ АЙН РЭНД «АТЛАНТ РАСПРАВИЛ ПЛЕЧИ»

The article is devoted to the study of Atlantis as a utopian model in the novel “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. The novelty of this topic is the lack of knowledge on Ayn Rand’s creativity in Russia. The objective of the paper is to trace the origins of the image of Atlantis in the work of the writer. To achieve this goal, the author refers to the texts of Plato “Critias” and “Timaeus”, Francis Bacon “New Atlantis” and David M. Parry “The Scarlet Empire”. As a result, the conclusion is drawn that it is an individual utopia, based on the American utopian model of individualism that is predominant in Ayn Rand’s novel.

Rousseau’s critique of market society: Property and possessive individualism in theDiscours sur l’inégalité

Recent studies have drawn welcome attention to Rousseau’s often neglected economic ideas and his analysis of market society, property and exchange. However, they usually attempt to reconcile Rousseau’s distrust of market capitalism with his proposals for ‘autarchic’ model domestic and political economies. This critical quest for a synthesis risks obscuring the contemporary salience of Rousseau’s critique of market society and its institutions, centring on the material and social forces that conspire to produce what C. B. Macpherson termed the ‘possessive individual’. I argue that when evaluated independently of his utopian model communities, Rousseau’s critique of market capitalism comes into sharp focus as a broadly compelling account of the psychological investments that lead individuals in market economies to consent to market systems, despite the presence of substantial inequality, disparities of opportunity and outcome, and other negative externalities. Rousseau’s critique speaks to contemporary concerns over rises in inequality and the concentration of wealth in advanced capitalist economies, as well as to the relative political complacency that has accompanied these changes.