Books on Utopian Movements, Communities, and Practices
Everyday Utopias by ISBN: 0822355698Publication Date: 2013-12-27"Everyday utopias enact conventional activities in unusual ways. Instead of dreaming about a better world, participants seek to create it. As such, their activities provide vibrant and stimulating contexts for considering the terms of social life, of how we live together and are governed. Weaving conceptual theorizing together with social analysis, Davina Cooper examines utopian projects as seemingly diverse as a feminist bathhouse, state equality initiatives, community trading networks, and a democratic school where students and staff collaborate in governing. She draws from firsthand observations and interviews with participants to argue that utopian projects have the potential to revitalize progressive politics through the ways their innovative practices incite us to rethink mainstream concepts including property, markets, care, touch, and equality. This is no straightforward story of success, however, but instead a tale of the challenges concepts face as they move between being imagined, actualized, hoped for, and struggled over. As dreaming drives new practices and practices drive new dreams, everyday utopias reveal how hard work, feeling, ethical dilemmas, and sometimes, failure, bring concepts to life" (Abstract from Publisher Website).- A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict byCall Number: HM1281 .A25 2000ISBN: 0312240503Publication Date: 2001
Islam and Dissent in Postrevolutionary Iran by ISBN: 1845118804Publication Date: 2008-11-15"The Iranian revolution of 1979 overhauled not only the foundations of Iranian society, religion and politics, but also our understanding of the role of religion in modern government. Here Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi takes us on an enlightening journey, showing that the revolution unintentionally opened up the public sphere to competing interpretations of Islam. Far from being the exclusive preserve of high-ranking seminarians as before, in contemporary Iran lay theologians, intellectuals, lawyers and social activists are active and influential interlocutors in debates on the meaning of Islam.A key figure is philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush, a leading force behind Iran's pro-democracy movement and vocal critic of the state. Through a close reading of Soroush's writings, and by tracing the links between Muslim intellectual critique and the realpolitik of postrevolutionary power struggles, Ghamari-Tabrizi offers nothing less than a pathbreaking reassessment of the Iranian revolution" (From Publish Website)
Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century by ISBN: 9781904859789Publication Date: 2008-05-01"What if we had direct control over our daily lives? What if society's defining institutions—those encompassing economics, politics, kinship, culture, community, and ecology—were based not on competition, individual ownership, and coercion, but on self-management, equity, solidarity, and diversity? Real Utopia identifies and obliterates the barriers to an egalitarian, bottom-up society, while convincingly outlining how to build it." --From Publisher Website
Utopian Impulse in Latin America by ISBN: 9780230103528Publication Date: 2011-10-15"The present volume explores the concept of utopia in Latin America from the earliest accounts of the New World to current cultural production. The carefully selected essays in this volume represent the latest research on the topic by some of the most important Latin Americanists working in North American academia today. With an interdisciplinary approach, the texts included discuss the notion of a utopian impulse in literature, music, performance, cinema, visual arts, critical theory, cultural studies, and political science. Among the many questions the book grapples with are how the utopian impulse is reconfigured over time, especially in new cultural fields and situations, and how Latin American utopias should be contextualized in the so-called global era" (book jacket).
Zion City, Illinois by ISBN: 0815626215Publication Date: 1996-05-01"This is a treatment of Zion City, an Illinois Christian communal society, and its founder, John Alexander Dowie, on the eve of its centennial" (WorldCat).
Spaces of Hope (California Studies in Critical Human Geography) by Call Number: 321.07 H262sISBN: 0520225783Publication Date: 2000"Brings a perspective to two of the principal themes of contemporary social discourse: globalization and the body. Exploring the uneven geographical development of late-twentieth-century capitalism, and placing the working body in relation to this geography, this title finds in Marx's writings a wealth of relevant analysis and theoretical insight" (from WorldCat).
Online Resources Concerning Contemporary Utopian Movements and Societies
Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street is a people-powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally. #ows is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and aims to fight back against the richest 1% of people that are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future. -- From occupywallst.org
Additional Reading
- Levitin, Michael. "The Triumph of Occupy Wall Street." The Atlantic. June 10, 2015.http://tinyurl.com/nohkdr2
Black Panther Party
In October of 1966, in Oakland California, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The Panthers practiced militant self-defense of minority communities against the U.S. government, and fought to establish revolutionary socialism through mass organizing and community based programs. The party was one of the first organizations in U.S. history to militantly struggle for ethnic minority and working class emancipation--a party whose agenda was the revolutionary establishment of real economic, social, and political equality across gender and color lines. --From Marxists Internet Archive
Additional Reading
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Stanford Black Panther Party Research Project - currently unavailable
- UC Berkeley Library Social Activism Sound Recording Project: The Black Panther Party
Internet Resources on Contemporary Intentional Communities and Utopian Societies
"8 Modern Utopias" (from Forbes)
Lists 8 contemporary communities from around the world which are guided by Utopian principles.
Federation of Egalitarian Communities:
"The FEC is a union of Egalitarian Communities which have joined together in our common struggle to create a lifestyle based on Equality, Cooperation, and Harmony with the Earth."
Fellowship for Intentional Community
"We believe that intentional communities are pioneers in sustainable living, personal and cultural transformation, and peaceful social evolution. “Intentional communities” include ecovillages, cohousing, residential land trusts, income-sharing communes, student co-ops, spiritual communities, and other projects where people live together on the basis of explicit common values."
Examples of Intentional Communities
A city in the desert. A culture of possibility. A network of dreamers and doers
"We believe that intentional communities are pioneers in sustainable living, personal and cultural transformation, and peaceful social evolution. 'Intentional communities' include ecovillages, cohousing, residential land trusts, income-sharing communes, student co-ops, spiritual communities, and other projects where people live together on the basis of explicit common values."
- Article on Auroville in Slate