Utopian Realism Research Articles

East-West: Interactions between the United States and Japan and their Effect on Utopian Realism

This article sheds light on the creative interaction between East and West in the emergence of a counter hegemonic globalism and a new planning paradigm. Arguably this imminent, global counterculture represents a dynamic synthesis of Eastern and Western versions of an image of utopia as the ideal decentralized community, based on cooperation and in harmony with nature. The formation of this syncretic set of Eastern and Western social-aesthetic ideals coincides with the participatory line of planning thought. It examines these ideas by tracing their origins, transmission, and transformation along lines that become increasingly interconnected with the rise of a global system leading to the emergence of modernism in the West by World War I and the formation of a global consensus on the concept of sustainable development in the 1970s and 1980s. The formation, transmission, and transformation processes involved leading Western and Eastern intellectuals whose ideas on community planning evidenced strong influences from Asia (and Japan in particular).

Autonomy and tradition: a critique of the sociological and philosophical foundations of giddens’s utopian realism

This article examines the theoretical background to Giddens’s programme of ‘utopian realism’. It begins by looking at the way in which Giddens defines this programme in the context of social welfare. We then turn to a more detailed discussion of the theoretical presuppositions of ‘utopian realism’, focusing first on Giddens’s reworking of Durkheimian autonomy, and second, on his reclamation of the conservative idea of tradition as propounded by Michael Oakeshott. The critical focus of my argument rests on the philosophical claims Giddens makes for the sociology of morals. In this respect, I find his diagnosis of the discontents of modernity no less wanting than his proposed solution.

Magical Urbanism:Walter Benjamin and Utopian Realism in the film Ratcatcher

Deploys Walter Benjamin to discuss fantastical representations of childhood and class in the film Ratcatcher.

Utopian realism and a new politics of education: developing a critical theory without guarantees

This paper is about utopia and utopianism and the relevance of both to thinking analytically and practically about the form and content of education policy. Specifically, it commends a particular application of the utopian imagination - utopian realism - which entails envisaging possible futures in terms of detectable trends in actual social development. It also assesses the merits for education policy of a recent attempt to translate this kind of utopianism into a mode of practical politics known as the ‘Third Way’.

The Utopian realism of E. H. Carr

E. H. Carr is a thinker on international affairs who defies easy classification. His best-known work on the subject, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, delivered a powerful realist critique, still resonant today, of the idealist approach to international relations and helped bring about a renewed emphasis on the role of power in international affairs. Less familiar to students of international relations are Carr's more optimistic works. In Conditions of Peace and Nationalism and After, written during World War II, he was sanguine about the prospects for a peaceful postwar order and outlined the steps required to bring about that happy state of affairs. The same hopeful themes were sounded in the years after the war in The Soviet Impact on the Western World, The New Society and other shorter essays.

Security in Anarchy: Utopian Realism in Theory and Practice

Realism-the view that war is inescapable in a system where sovereign states compete for power and advantage to one another's detriment-still dominates thinking about international relations. Ken Booth argues that, as world politics continue to surprise us, a worldview in which war is seen as a rational policy choice is unacceptable. It is too soon in history to conclude that the international system is necessarily a 'war system'. As states become less important in what has been called the 'new medievalism', he arguesfor decentralizing power evenfurther towards a global civil society and a global community of communities. He quotes Oscar Wilde: 'A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at.'

The consequences of modernity

Part I:. Introduction. The Discontinuities of Modernity. Security and Danger, Trust and Risk. Sociology and Modernity. Modernity, Time and Space. Disembedding. Trust. The Reflexivity of Modernity. Modernity and Post-- Modernity?. Summary. Part II:. The Institutional Dimensions of Modernity. The Globalizing of Modernity. Two Theoretical Perspectives. Dimensions of Globalization. Part III:. Trust and Modernity. Trust in Abstract Systems. Trust and Expertise. Trust and Ontological Security. The Pre--Modern and Modern. Part IV:. Abstract Systems and the Transformation of Intimacy. Trust and Personal Relations. Trust and Personal Identity. Risk and Danger in the Modern World. Risk and Ontological Security. Adaptive Reactions. A Phenomonology of Modernity. Deskilling and Reskilling in Everyday Life. Objections to Post--Modernity. Part V:. Riding the Juggernaut. Utopian Realism. Future Orientations. The Role of Social Movements. Post--Modernity. Part VI: . Is Modernity and Western Project?. Concluding Observations. Notes.

Scientific progress and Peircean Utopian realism

I argue that (1) if scientific progress, construed in revolutionary terms, were to continue indefinitely long, then any non-trivial question answerable by the use of the scientific method would in fact be answered in a way that would allow for further refinement without undermining the essential correctness of the answer; and (2) it is reasonable to believe that scientific progress will continue indefinitely long. The establishment of (1) and (2) entails that any non-trivial empirically answerable question will be answered in a way that allows for further indefinite refinement. Moreover, inasmuch as the establishment of (1) and (2) undermines the ontological relativity inherent in the commonly held view that unto eternity there will be competing alternative scientific theories of differing ontological commitment, it provides for the ontologically and epistemologically privileged position of science.

Utopian Realism: The Futurist Novels of Bellamy and Howells

Utopian Realism: The Futurist Novels of Bellamy and Howells