Utopian Thinking Research Articles

The Philosophical Category of the Ideal in the Models of the Future State of the Religious Extremists

The article analyzes the philosophical category of the ideal in the models of the future state structure, which are developed by the religious extremists in the context of modern social reality as the implementation of the ideal. The research is based on the activities of the Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami terrorist organization in Siberia. It is aimed at identifying the components of the religious extremist associations’ ideology of constructing a model of an ideal state. The socio-philosophical analysis of the ideology provisions and the hermeneutical approach to the manifestations of extremism serve the basis of the research methodology. The extremist ideas in religion are deviations from the norm and can arise in any religious tradition, thus expanding the scope of interpretations of religious law and positioning the existing situation in the religious community as untrue and distorted. The future state is represented by the extremists as an ideal social structure established on the principle of justice and in accordance with sacred precepts. The conflict of such worldview ideas as “it should be so” and “it is so” as well as the “perfectionist illusion” about an ideal society imply the possibility of creating an ideal world in modern social reality. Violence is understood as a necessary means to achieve this goal if other methods are ineffective. The authors characterize the similarities between the models of an ideal society developed by the religious extremism and the utopias in terms of content and interpretation, as well as religious extremist consciousness and utopian thinking in terms of structure and orientation. The ideologies of extremist associations embrace the understanding of the principle of justice, the idea of exclusivity, the model of the ideal, and the theological foundations of social actions. The tendency of thinking to utopian ideas, the intuitive assumption of the existence of an ideal, just society, and the conflict between “the proper” and “the existing” contribute to the spread of extremist ideas. Extremism uses the properties of consciousness: religiousness and thinking in absolute categories (in a destructive aspect in order to add naturalness to its ideas) and religious ideas (in order to justify illegal activities with a sacred will). The actions of the members of the extremist associations are given the status of free personal choice regarding the fulfillment of religious prescriptions and the divine will to create a world just society

Utopianism and the equity path to sustainability

By adding social equity to its goals of ecological and economic viability, the sustainability project runs the risk of being dismissed as wishful utopian thinking. Like the socialist movements that preceded it, the sustainability movement must grapple with the pitfalls of utopianism and chart a path forward that acknowledges the current social, political, and economic realities that seek to thwart it. To use references from the history of nineteenth and twentieth century socialism, sustainability, like Marxism, will need to distinguish itself from “utopian” thinking by promoting a “scientific” strategy that identifies and engages key historical dynamics and political agents that will promote an ecological transition. This article argues that the most promising strategy for sustainability progress centers, paradoxically, on the most neglected element of the sustainability equation: equity. Recent research indicates that the promotion of greater economic and political democracy is correlated with improved environmental performance. These findings suggest that an indirect approach to sustainability—prioritizing efforts to increase social equity—might be the most pragmatic and direct strategy for building a sustainable future.

Beyond tabulated utopias: Action and contradiction in urban environments

In this commentary I reflect upon the possibilities for action to deliver sustainable and just urban environments. I depart from the questions that inspire this special issue: what is it about cities that enables them to make a substantial contribution to environmental dilemmas? And how did cities become the darling trope of the international environmental policy regime? I use the metaphor of ‘the Crystal Palace’ to situate proposals for sustainable urbanism in a spectrum of options between naïve idealism and full-fledged cynicism. I argue that between those two extremes there are multiple alternatives to advance sustainable futures. Urban political ecology (UPE) is in a privileged position to reveal the contradictions inherent in the current incarnation of sustainable urbanism. That is why UPE scholars cannot miss the opportunity to produce context-relevant research to change urban sustainability policies and beliefs. In the second part of this commentary, I explore a case study already presented elsewhere in the special issue. The case of the successive unsuccessful projects for Olympic candidacy in Jaca (Spain) shows the impact of a series of speculative design exercises to build a technocratic eco-city. However, Jaca’s Olympic dreams have historical and cultural roots in the town. Its inhabitants have both propelled and contested the Olympic project at different moments over the evolution of the project. Progressive forms of environmentalism also emerge from the encounter between urban history and utopian thinking.

On the role of utopia in social thought and social sciences

ABSTRACT How can we understand the term ‘utopia’ and does the adjective ‘utopian’ discredit the social thought to which it refers? The author discusses the role of utopia in the emergence of social sciences and alludes to Immanuel Wallerstein and his analysis of utopistics. He also defends the hypothesis that in the times of political, economic and ecological crisis which is sweeping through Europe and the world in the first decades of the twenty-first century, utopian thinking may be reborn not only as a way of showing possible social alternatives, but also as a means of democratizing public debate and the existing status quo. In this perspective, utopianism can be invigorating not only for democracy, but also for independent and critical social thought. Social utopias, which contributed to the rise of the mass workers’ movement in the nineteenth century, today may become a force mobilizing human imagination and sensitivity to the struggles for a more emancipatory and democratic social order.

Worlds That Could Not Be: Utopia in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah

Worlds That Could Not Be: Utopia in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah

Participatory action planning as transductive reasoning: towards the right to the city in Los Arenales, Antofagasta, Chile

Abstract This article discusses the experience of creating an overall plan for developing an informal settlement in the Chilean city of Antofagasta. This was accomplished by applying transductive reasoning to a community urban planning practice that aims to advance the community towards achieving the right to the city. By doing so, the article elaborates on insights gathered from the application of transductive reasoning as a method developed by Henri Lefebvre to reflect on the possible futures of cities using a bottom-up approach, thus utilizing the right to the city as a political agenda. Thus, this intervention provides an empirical reflection on the scope of action research in which the ideas of Henri Lefebvre are suitable for transforming utopian thinking into a political agenda for social transformation by a grassroots organization. The conclusions express the critiques of other authors whose approaches to Henri Lefebvre’s methods are substantially theoretical, thus wasting its empirical potential and capacity to engage communities.

Imagining better societies: A social psychological framework for the study of utopian thinking and collective action

AbstractWe present an integrative theoretical model that specifies social psychological mechanisms by which utopian thinking, which activates the social imagination, may enhance collective action intentions oriented toward social change and human progress. The model synthesizes complementary insights from interdisciplinary research programs on utopianism, hope, construal level, and system justification to identify mechanisms by which imagining better societies: (a) increases social hope, (b) yields an abstract mindset that bridges the psychological distance between the status quo (“here and now”) and a better possible future, (c) decreases system justification motivation, and (d) promotes social justice‐oriented forms of collective action.

Utopia and the Anthropocene

Utopia and the Anthropocene

Stereotypy i fantazje. Science fiction i psychologia

The article presents a critical analysis of a monograph by Gavin Miller, Science Fiction and Psychology (2020), and offers a subjective reading of the book. The author of the article believes that Miller’s book presents an inspirational and thorough reading of the classical and contemporary science fiction which revises the interaction between two spheres of human activity, cultural and scientific. By analyzing the presence of utopian thinking which provides the groundwork for Miller’s considerations, the author notes that the scholar places great emphasis on scientific discourse and methodology.

Utopian Friendships in Mary Wroth and Margaret Cavendish

This article argues that Lady Mary Wroth’s The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania and Margaret Cavendish’s The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World engage in an unrecognized form of utopianism that is situated in women’s friendship. This utopianism departs from the traditional definition of utopia as an idealized geographical place and instead acts as a heuristic device for imagining alternatives to the present. As women’s friendships in these works blur binaries to imagine new categories, they enact a form of utopian thinking that offers new political and philosophical possibilities while remaining aware of their limitations. This article thus makes the case for Wroth’s unrecognized influence on Cavendish’s work as well as for a new understanding of early modern women’s friendship and utopianism.

“We Can Hate This World With Love”. An Interview

Philosopher Andrew Culp in this interview explains the main aspects of his dark Deleuzianism. Culp notes that his work owes much to the theories of Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thucker. He develops their ideas further, first among them the concept of asymmetry, which means that radical politics arises from a formal dissimilarity between the sides involved in a conflict. From Culp’s point of view, it was the idea of dissimilarity that made poststructuralist thinking attractive to many political philosophers because it allowed them to conceive of political power beyond the categories of power, hegemony, and domination. The philosopher explicates the main concepts that he has introduced, in particular productivism and connectivism. Culp characterizes the form as a specific consequence of cold war dynamics accompanied by maximization of productivity. He claims that the rejection of labor will allow us to pay attention to alternative aspects of social life. By connectivism Culp means the belief that communication can solve any socio-political problems. Culp criticizes this approach, which is associated especially with Bruno Latour, and argues that there is now no lack of information or communication. However, this has not facilitated solving urgent problems, most of which are political rather than technological or informational. Culp comments on the differences between his project and accelerationism. From his point of view, left-wing accelerationists try to retain the good aspects of technology and discard the harmful ones, which makes their approach similar to Proudhon’s. In discussing universal basic income, Culp points to the dangerous intersection of left-wing accelerationism and libertarianism. The philosopher also notes the fundamental divergences between his position and the techno-futurism of Nick Land. Culp goes on to clarify the political model of conspiratorial communism that he proposed in Dark Deleuze and also comments on the idea of hatred for this world as a form of utopian thinking.

Kantian Ethics and Utopian Thinking

Is Kantian Ethics guilty of utopian thinking? First, potentially good and bad uses of utopian ideals are distinguished, then an apparent path is traced from Rousseau’s unworkable political ideal to Kant’s ethical ideal. Three versions of Kant’s Categorical Imperative (and their counter–parts in common moral discourse) are examined briefly for the ways that they may raise the suspicion that they manifest or encourage bad utopian thinking. In each case Kantians have available responses to counter the suspicion, but special attention is directed to the version that says “Act on the maxims of a universally law–giving member of a kingdom of ends.” Interpretations vary, but here primary focus is on one contemporary reconstruction and development of this central idea. Several objections suggest that this idea encourages bad utopian thinking are briefly addressed: that we cannot count on everyone to follow ideal rules, that even conscientious people disagree in their moral judgments, and that theories that allow exceptions to familiar moral rules create a “slippery slope” to moral chaos.

Mobility and data: cycling the utopian Internet of Things

ABSTRACTThis article explores how cycling is currently considered in European policy documents related to transport aspects of the Internet of Things (IoT), what kind of representation of cycling can be imagined for utopian EC IoT policies documents, and how a combination of empirical policy analysis and a utopian approach could inform future policy and research. Debates around smart/intelligent/data mobilities and the IoT – including policy debates – tend to be dominated by motorized modes such as autonomous and networked cars. This article explores the implications of this for more sustainable and active modes such as cycling, both for current policies and for utopian thinking. It draws on literature concerned with utopian thinking, mobilities studies and critical data studies. The methodology combines a content analysis and a visual analysis of the EC policy documents with creating text and images for utopian future versions of these documents. The results show the heavy automotive focus of EC IoT policy documents and suggest an alternative bicycle-focussed IoT utopia. The conclusion facilitates a debate around utopian societies where smart cycling products, infrastructure, policy and funding facilitate sustainable, active and data-responsible mobility at scale. This challenges the current continuation of automobile cultures in smart mobility and IoT policy discourses, and the data and associated power asymmetries between cars and cycling that highlight the significance of this research.

Mobilities and Utopias: a critical reorientation

ABSTRACTWhat does utopian thinking have to offer students and scholars of mobility? Could ‘mobile utopias’ assist us in envisioning futures – including those of mobility – differently? Do utopias provide a unique opportunity to examine the relationship between mobile societies and lives and the environments against which these are formed? By providing different ways of reading and arguing within different theoretical frameworks and doing so in relation to the contexts their contributions engage, the articles included in this special issue explore the limits of what the mobile utopias of the future might be, their social and spatial dimensions, and their totalizing, fragmentary, or, personal definitions. As a whole, the issue contributes to the intellectual project of how to turn utopia into a method, as Levitas, Jameson, Harvey, and others have long encouraged us to do. With a few exceptions, utopias have not received the attention they deserve from mobilities scholars. Our aim in putting together this special issue is to redress this balance and invite further reflection on what utopian thinking might offer current debates in mobilities scholarship. This Introduction draws connections across approaches, foci, methods, geographies, and sources, including those deployed in the issue’s six articles, in the interest of excavating possible hopeful orientations through critique. Central to this is the recognition of the significance of critiquing the images of mobility which circulate widely (think of drones) and of the necessity to listen attentively to voices overlooked by mobility futures which stand far removed from the reactions and feelings of people in their everyday worlds. Ours is an invitation both to pay close attention to what utopian thinking does – rather than what utopia is – and to help us carve out a new intellectual space where to reflect on the how, when and where mobilities and utopias meet, now, but also in the past, and in the future.

Happiness and heroism, personal and collective as main elements of the ‘bright future’ in the Soviet (non)utopia

The article is a review-reflection on the book by I. Kaspe In Alliance with Utopia. Semantic Frontiers of the Late Soviet Culture (Moscow: New Literary Review; 2018. 432 p.). Despite the fact that the title emphasizes the word ‘utopia’, the author prefers a broad interpretation of the ‘utopian’ concept - as a kind of conceptual context which serves as a framework that makes ‘ultimate’ meanings and values of the Soviet culture (socialism) as if ‘visible’. It may seem strange at first glance, but actually these meanings and values concentrate ‘around’ different interpretations of heroism and happiness. The article reconstructs the author’s narrative logic together with the formal structure of the book, which helps the author to prove to readers (with varying degrees of credibility) the heuristic potential of utopia as an analytical research metaphor. In particular, from the first to the final parts of the book (and the author honestly informs readers in the beginning that the book is a collection of the revised articles that were published previously, but later were adapted for the task of the historical-phenomenological analysis of the perception of utopia and combined into four thematic sections) the author develops her own concept of utopia focusing rather on different attitudes to the utopian thinking than on different interpretations of utopia in different historical periods.

Blooming landscapes? The paradox of utopian thinking in the Anthropocene

ABSTRACT By reminding human beings that they are earthly creatures who depend on the habitability of their planet, the Anthropocene is changing our relation with time. On the one hand, looking backward, it confronts us with the abyss of deep time; on the other hand, the future itself acquires a threatening quality as the possibility of a ‘hothouse Earth’ becomes increasingly plausible. I focus on the impact that such perceptive disruption has on green utopian thinking. The effect is paradoxical. Those who cling to an alarming account of the Anthropocene can offer only a renewed version of the austere ecotopia envisioned by early environmentalism – a modest utopia organized around frugality. However, the so-called ecomodernists take the opportunity provided by the new geological age to offer a genuine utopian vision: one that does not break with the present but rather improves it dramatically.

The Rise of the Homme Machine: Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Biotechnology and Utopias

This essay argues that Carl Schmitt’s postwar writings offer an original critique of biotechnology and utopian thinking. Examining the classics of utopian literature from Plato to Thomas More and Aldous Huxley, Schmitt illustrates the rise of utopianism that aims to transform human nature and even produce an artificial “human-machine.” Schmitt discovers a counterimage to the emerging era of biotechnology from a katechontic form of Christianity and maintains that human beings must recognize their shared humanity in God, warning us that without a realm of transcendence, the enemy no longer offers an existential mirror but begins to incarnate foreign values, which must be destroyed completely. By comparing Schmitt with Michel Foucault and Donna Haraway, it is also argued that Schmitt’s thinking unlocks a novel path to exploring the meaning and histories of biopolitics and posthumanism. From a Schmittian perspective, Foucault’s depiction of biopolitics appears as a mere prelude to the coming age of biotechnology that will lead us into a posthuman era. Demonstrating interesting contrasts with Haraway’s utopian vision of the cyborg, it is maintained that Schmitt’s thinking offers a distinctively conservative-Christian critique of posthumanism.

Utopia, determinismo tecnologico, ingegneria sociale: la dianetica tra scienza e fantascienza

In May 1950 L. R. Hubbard published in a science fiction magazine “Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science”, which would later form the basis of Scientology. Emerging from the technocratic mindset typically associated with the periodical, the article considered the human brain as a computer in need of rewiring, giving birth to a peculiar kind of utopian thinking whose aim was not the creation of a ‘new man’, but the return to an original perfection of the mind. Through an examination of this text and its context, I propose to investigate the relationship between engineering culture and literary fictions, trying to understand how the mind-computer analogy shaped the vision of a regenerated society.

Utopia, determinismo tecnologico, ingegneria sociale: la dianetica tra scienza e fantascienza

In May 1950 L. R. Hubbard published in a science fiction magazine “Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science”, which would later form the basis of Scientology. Emerging from the technocratic mindset typically associated with the periodical, the article considered the human brain as a computer in need of rewiring, giving birth to a peculiar kind of utopian thinking whose aim was not the creation of a ‘new man’, but the return to an original perfection of the mind. Through an examination of this text and its context, I propose to investigate the relationship between engineering culture and literary fictions, trying to understand how the mind-computer analogy shaped the vision of a regenerated society.

O RBI e o pensamento utópico

Universal Basic Income policy proposals are often presented as a utopian project aimed at building a new political, economic, and social reality. We formulate a critical view of such proposals based on two fundamental pillars: first, the skepticism of a theoretical, historical, and anthropological nature regarding projects based on utopian thinking; second, specific objections and constraints to the possible application of RBI in the field of public policy implementation. The article concludes that while RBI is an interesting idealization in the context of political theory, its implementation poses problems that are difficult to solve in most real contexts and, most importantly, RBI projects suffer from many of the risks characteristic of utopian projects and social constructivism.