Utopias for a Dying World

Utopias for a Dying World PDF Author: Amy Stapleton
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
The ecosystems upon which human life depends for its existence are rapidly collapsing. This book confronts that frightening realization and explores the philosophical basis for a new ecological awareness (in German the Bewusstseinswandel) which could prevent modern technological civilization from destroying itself and the world. Contemporary works of German science fiction, from both the West and the former GDR, are examined for their ability to help initiate this lifesaving new perspective."

Utopias for a Dying World

Utopias for a Dying World PDF Author: Amy Stapleton
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
The ecosystems upon which human life depends for its existence are rapidly collapsing. This book confronts that frightening realization and explores the philosophical basis for a new ecological awareness (in German the Bewusstseinswandel) which could prevent modern technological civilization from destroying itself and the world. Contemporary works of German science fiction, from both the West and the former GDR, are examined for their ability to help initiate this lifesaving new perspective."

Utopianism for a Dying Planet

Utopianism for a Dying Planet PDF Author: Gregory Claeys
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691236690
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
How the utopian tradition offers answers to today’s environmental crises In the face of Earth’s environmental breakdown, it is clear that technological innovation alone won’t save our planet. A more radical approach is required, one that involves profound changes in individual and collective behavior. Utopianism for a Dying Planet examines the ways the expansive history of utopian thought, from its origins in ancient Sparta and ideas of the Golden Age through to today's thinkers, can offer moral and imaginative guidance in the face of catastrophe. The utopian tradition, which has been critical of conspicuous consumption and luxurious indulgence, might light a path to a society that emphasizes equality, sociability, and sustainability. Gregory Claeys unfolds his argument through a wide-ranging consideration of utopian literature, social theory, and intentional communities. He defends a realist definition of utopia, focusing on ideas of sociability and belonging as central to utopian narratives. He surveys the development of these themes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before examining twentieth- and twenty-first-century debates about alternatives to consumerism. Claeys contends that the current global warming limit of 1.5C (2.7F) will result in cataclysm if there is no further reduction in the cap. In response, he offers a radical Green New Deal program, which combines ideas from the theory of sociability with proposals to withdraw from fossil fuels and cease reliance on unsustainable commodities. An urgent and comprehensive search for antidotes to our planet’s destruction, Utopianism for a Dying Planet asks for a revival of utopian ideas, not as an escape from reality, but as a powerful means of changing it.

Sustainable Utopias

Sustainable Utopias PDF Author: Jennifer L. Allen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674249143
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
To reclaim a sense of hope for the future, German activists in the late twentieth century engaged ordinary citizens in innovative projects that resisted alienation and disenfranchisement. By most accounts, the twentieth century was not kind to utopian thought. The violence of two world wars, Cold War anxieties, and a widespread sense of crisis after the 1973 global oil shock appeared to doom dreams of a better world. The eventual victory of capitalism and, seemingly, liberal democracy relieved some fears but exchanged them for complacency and cynicism. Not, however, in West Germany. Jennifer Allen showcases grassroots activism of the 1980s and 1990s that envisioned a radically different society based on community-centered politicsÑa society in which the democratization of culture and power ameliorated alienation and resisted the impotence of end-of-history narratives. BerlinÕs History Workshop liberated research from university confines by providing opportunities for ordinary people to write and debate the story of the nation. The Green Party made the politics of direct democracy central to its program. Artists changed the way people viewed and acted in public spaces by installing objects in unexpected environments, including the Stolpersteine: paving stones, embedded in residential sidewalks, bearing the names of Nazi victims. These activists went beyond just trafficking in ideas. They forged new infrastructures, spaces, and behaviors that gave everyday people real agency in their communities. Undergirding this activism was the environmentalist concept of sustainability, which demanded that any alternative to existing society be both enduring and adaptable. A rigorous but inspiring tale of hope in action, Sustainable Utopias makes the case that it is still worth believing in human creativity and the labor of citizenship.

Utopian Road to Hell

Utopian Road to Hell PDF Author: William J Murray
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781935071341
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Hope and the Longing for Utopia

Hope and the Longing for Utopia PDF Author: Daniel Boscaljon
Publisher: James Clarke & Company
ISBN: 0227903900
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
At present the battle over who defines our future is being waged most publicly by secular and religious fundamentalists. 'Hope and the Longing for Utopia' offers an alternative position, disclosing a conceptual path toward potential worlds that resist a limited view of human potential and the gift of religion. In addition to outlining the value of embracing unknown potentialities, these twelve interdisciplinary essays explore why it has become crucial that we commit to hoping for values that resist traditional ideological commitments. Contextualized by contemporary writing on utopia, and drawing from a wealth of times and cultures ranging from Calvin's Geneva to early twentieth-century Japanese children's stories to Hollywood cinema, theseessays cumulatively disclose the fundamental importance of resisting tantalizing certainties while considering the importance of the unknown and unknowable. Beginning with a set of four essays outlining the importance of hope and utopia as diagnostic concepts, and following with four concrete examples, the collection ends with a set of essays that provide theological speculations on the need to embrace finitude and limitations in a world increasingly enframed by secularizing impulses. Overall, this book discloses how hope and utopia illuminate ways to think past simplified wishes for the future.

Utopia in the Age of Survival

Utopia in the Age of Survival PDF Author: S. D. Chrostowska
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503630005
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
A pathbreaking exploration of the fate of utopia in our troubled times, this book shows how the historically intertwined endeavors of utopia and critique might be leveraged in response to humanity's looming existential challenges. Utopia in the Age of Survival makes the case that critical social theory needs to reinstate utopia as a speculative myth. At the same time the left must reassume utopia as an action-guiding hypothesis—that is, as something still possible. S. D. Chrostowska looks to the vibrant, visionary mid-century resurgence of embodied utopian longings and projections in Surrealism, the Situationist International, and critical theorists writing in their wake, reconstructing utopia's link to survival through to the earliest, most radical phase of the French environmental movement. Survival emerges as the organizing concept for a variety of democratic political forms that center the corporeality of desire in social movements contesting the expanding management of life by state institutions across the globe. Vigilant and timely, balancing fine-tuned analysis with broad historical overview to map the utopian impulse across contemporary cultural and political life, Chrostowska issues an urgent report on the vitality of utopia.

Greentopia: Utopian Thought in the Anthropocene

Greentopia: Utopian Thought in the Anthropocene PDF Author: Angela Kallhoff
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031568028
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description


Utopia; Or, The History of an Extinct Planet

Utopia; Or, The History of an Extinct Planet PDF Author: Alfred Denton Cridge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Utopias
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Book Description


Utopia

Utopia PDF Author: Thomas More
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description
Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.

Utopias and Dystopias in the Fiction of H. G. Wells and William Morris

Utopias and Dystopias in the Fiction of H. G. Wells and William Morris PDF Author: Emelyne Godfrey
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137523409
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
This book is about the fiercely contrasting visions of two of the nineteenth century’s greatest utopian writers. A wide-ranging, interdisciplinary study, it emphasizes that space is a key factor in utopian fiction, often a barometer of mankind’s successful relationship with nature, or an indicator of danger. Emerging and critically acclaimed scholars consider the legacy of two great utopian writers, exploring their use of space and time in the creation of sites in which contemporary social concerns are investigated and reordered. A variety of locations is featured, including Morris’s quasi-fourteenth century London, the lush and corrupted island, a routed and massacred English countryside, the high-rises of the future and the vertiginous landscape of another Earth beyond the stars.