Sociology and Utopia

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2325160
AutoresRuth Levitas (Huddersfield Polytechnic, autor correspondente)
Ano1979
Volume13
Fascículo1
Páginas19-33
Data de publicação1979-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0038-0385 • E-ISSN: 1469-8684
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/003803857901300102
OpenAlexW1996905703
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas12
Referências citadas7

The theme of this paper is that the content, form, location and social role of utopia vary with the material conditions in which people live. These variations have been obscured by definitions of utopia in terms of its function in catalysing social change, which has also produced the illusion that the contemporary Western world lacks utopias. By defining utopia with reference to its meaning to author and audience as an expression of their desires and aspirations, it is possible to trace a series of shifts in the English utopia, to relate these to one another and to the social context, and to show that the 'absence' of contemporary utopias is simply another transformation of this kind. From being a spatially-located wish-fantasy, utopia moved through the function of social criticism to being a temporally-located catalyst of social change. These changes depended on perceptions of society-in-time as increasingly malleable and open to human control, culminating in the nineteenth century belief in progress. Utopia now appears to have reverted to the role of wish-fantasy as a result of a prevalent fatalism and a shift away from an evolutionary perspective, a change which, paradoxically, allows it to be more utopian by tying it less closely to reality. Utopia as a catalyst of social change depends on an optimism which is now absent

Aesthetics · Art · Context (archaeology) · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Fantasy · Literature · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Utopia · Cooperative Studies and Economics · History · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism