Download or read book A Place for Utopia written by Smriti Srinivas and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2015-11-02 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring several utopian imaginaries and practices, A Place for Utopia ties different times together from the early twentieth century to the present, the biographical and the anthropological, the cultural and the conjunctional, South Asia, Europe, and North America. It charts the valency of "utopia" for understanding designs for alternative, occluded, vernacular, or emergent urbanisms in the last hundred years. Central to the designs for utopia in this book are the themes of gardens, children, spiritual topographies, death, and hope. From the vitalist urban plans of the Scottish polymath Patrick Geddes in India to the Theosophical Society in Madras and the ways in which it provided a context for a novel South Indian garden design; from the visual, textual, and ritual designs of Californian Vedanta from the 1930s to the present; to the spatial transformations associated with post-1990s highways and rapid transit systems in Bangalore that are shaping an emerging “Indian New Age” of religious and somatic self-styling, Srinivas tells the story of contrapuntal histories, the contiguity of lives, and resonances between utopian worlds that are generative of designs for cultural alternatives and futures.
Download or read book Utopia written by Thomas More and published by e-artnow. This book was released on 2019-04-08 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book UTOpia written by Jason McBride and published by Coach House Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the election of Mayor David Miller in November 2003, Toronto has experienced a wave of civic pride and enthusiasm not felt in decades. At long last, Torontonians see their city as a place of possibility and potential. Visions of a truly workable, liveable and world-class city are once again dancing in citizens' heads. In the past two years, this spirit has, directly or indirectly, manifested itself in multifarious forms: in writer Sheila Heti's sui generis lecture series, Trampoline Hall; in the transformation of derelict hotels such as the Drake and the Gladstone into cultural hotspots; in renewed interest in waterfront revitalization and public transportation; in exciting, controversial architectural developments such as the OCAD building, the expansion of the ROM and the AGO; in the [murmur] project, which catalogues stories about Toronto neighbourhoods and broadcasts them to people's cell phones; in the explosion of the local independent music scene. uTOpia aims to capture and chronicle that spirit, collecting writing by many of the people inspired by and involved in these projects. Featuring passionate, visionary essays by thirty-four different journalists, artists, thinkers, architects and activists, uTOpia is a compendium of ideas, opinions and strategies. The anthology explores plans to redevelop the Island airport into a Ward's Island-style community; how the Zeidler family is energizing artist-run centres; what a car-free Kensington Market might mean; the necessity and beauty of laneway housing; the way past efforts to combat devastating developments like the Spadina Expressway have shaped current activism; what a utopian Toronto might look like mapped out; and much, much more. Playful, erudite and accessible, uTOpia writes Toronto as it is shared and created by the people who live here. Though it is by no means a complete picture of what is happening in the city right now, it will hopefully show that what was once just a T-shirt slogan - I Heart T.O. - is now genuine, heartfelt sentiment. Contributors include Howard Akler, Andrew Alfred-Duggan, Jacob Allderdice, Bert Archer, James Bow, Nicole Cohen, Jonny Dovercourt, Dale Duncan, Philip Evans, Mark Fram, Misha Glouberman, Chris Hardwicke, Sheila Heti, Alfred Holden, Luis Jacob, Lorraine Johnson, Edward Keenan, Mark Kingwell, John Lorinc, Sally McKay, Heather McLean, Dave Meslin, Shawn Micallef, Derek Murr, Ninjalicious, Darren O'Donnell, Planning Action, Barbara Rahder, Dylan Reid, Erik Rutherford, Jeffrey Stinson, Deanne Taylor, Conan Tobias, Stéphanie Verge, Adam Vaughan and Marlena Zuber.
Download or read book Utopia written by Roland Schaer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On April 4, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and The New York Public Library will present a major exhibition, displaying more than 400 books, manuscripts, drawings, prints, maps, photographs, and other original material from both libraries. This work is the catalog for the American exhibition. Through stirring essays by Roland Schaer and other leading scholars on utopian thought, the book will wxplore the long tradition of thought and art that has envisioned the "perfect place,"moving from classical antiquity to the present. It is conveniently divided into four parts: I. The Classical and Judeo-Christian models for the Western Idea of Utopia; II. The Flowering of Utopian Imagination from Thomas Moore to the Enlightenment; III. Utopia in History; and IV. The Utopias and Dystopias of the 20th Century. Along with a dazzling selection of paintings, illuminations, and other items from the Bibliotheque Nationale's noted collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, The New York Public Library contributions include first or important editions of seminal works of utopian thought, political science, history, and fiction since the invention of printing. As well, The New York Public Library contributes beautiful illustrations from its collection of 16th century drawings of Theodore de Bry, posters from the Soviet Union and the 1939 World's Fair in New York, engravings from colonial times, and illuminationed manuscripts. Lavishly illustrated with many full color representations, this book will appeal to scholars and students of philosophy, history, and art, in addition to general readers curious about utopian thought.
Download or read book No Place Like Utopia written by Peter Blake and published by W. W. Norton. This book was released on 1996 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No Place Like Utopia has a deep theme: how modern architecture, born and raised between the wars and after with a strong sense of social and political idealism, gradually fell back in the 1960s into its ancient role as an elitist pursuit dedicated to flattering the rich and powerful.
Download or read book Weekend Utopia written by Alastair Gordon and published by Princeton Architectural Press. This book was released on 2001-05 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hamptons are hot. Gordon, who grew up there, traces the invention of the idea of the Hamptons as a resort for the elite of New York City and shows how various forces, including artists, real estate developers, and media professionals transformed what had been a quiet rural place into a modern and worldwide phenomenon. 175 illustrations.
Download or read book No Place Else written by Eric S. Rabkin and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writers have created fictions of social perfection at least since Plato’s Republic. Sir Thomas More gave this thread of intellectual history a name when he called his contribution to it Utopia, Greek for no place. With each subsequent author cognizant of his predecessors and subject to altered real-world conditions which suggest ever-new causes for hope and alarm, “no place” changed. The fourteen essays presented in this book critically assess man’s fascination with and seeking for “no place.” “In discussing these central fictions, the contributors see ‘no place’ from diverse perspectives: the sociological, the psychological, the political, the aesthetic. In revealing the roots of these works, the contributors cast back along the whole length of utopian thought. Each essay stands alone; together, the essays make clear what ‘no place’ means today. While it may be true that ‘no place’ has always seemed elsewhere or elsewhen, in fact all utopian fiction whirls contemporary actors through a costume dance no place else but here.”—from the Preface The contributors are Eric S. Rabkin, B. G. Knepper, Thomas J. Remington, Gorman Beauchamp, William Matter, Ken Davis, Kenneth M. Roemer, William Steinhoff, Howard Segal, Jack Zipes, Kathleen Woodward, Merritt Abrash, and James W. Bittner.
Download or read book Rethinking Utopia written by David M. Bell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-01-20 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over five hundred years since it was named, utopia remains a vital concept for understanding and challenging the world(s) we inhabit, even in – or rather because of – the condition of ‘post-utopianism’ that supposedly permeates them. In Rethinking Utopia David M. Bell offers a diagnosis of the present through the lens of utopia and then, by rethinking the concept through engagement with utopian studies, a variety of ‘radical’ theories and the need for decolonizing praxis, shows how utopianism might work within, against and beyond that which exists in order to provide us with hope for a better future. He proposes paying a ‘subversive fidelity’ to utopia, in which its three constituent terms: ‘good’ (eu), ‘place’ (topos), and ‘no’ (ou) are rethought to assert the importance of immanent, affective relations. The volume engages with a variety of practices and forms to articulate such a utopianism, including popular education/critical pedagogy; musical improvisation; and utopian literature. The problems as well as the possibilities of this utopianism are explored, although the problems are often revealed to be possibilities, provided they are subject to material challenge. Rethinking Utopia offers a way of thinking about (and perhaps realising) utopia that helps overcome some of the binary oppositions structuring much thinking about the topic. It allows utopia to be thought in terms of place and process; affirmation and negation; and the real and the not-yet. It engages with the spatial and affective turns in the social sciences without ever uncritically being subsumed by them; and seeks to make connections to indigenous cosmologies. It is a cautious, careful, critical work punctuated by both pessimism and hope; and a refusal to accept the finality of this or any world.
Download or read book Welcome to Utopia written by Karen Valby and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BONUS: This edition contains a new Afterword and a reading group guide. Utopia, Texas: It’s either the best place on earth, or it’s no place at all. In the twenty-first century, it’s difficult to imagine any element of American life that remains untouched by popular culture, let alone an entire community existing outside the empire of pop. But Karen Valby discovered the tiny town of Utopia tucked away in the Texas Hill Country. There are no movie theaters for sixty miles in any direction, no book or music stores. But cable television and the Internet have recently thrown wide the doors of Utopia. Valby follows the lives of four Utopians—Ralph, the retired owner of the general store; Kathy, the waitress who waits in terror for three of her boys to return from war; Colter, the son of a cowboy with the soul of a hipster; and Kelli, an aspiring rock star and one of the only black people in town—as they reckon, on an intensely human scale, with war and race, class and culture, and the way time’s passage can change the ground beneath our feet. Utopia is the kind of place we still think of as the “real America,” a place of cowboys and farmers and high-school sweethearts who stay together till they die. But its dramatic stories show us what happens when the old tensions of small-town life confront a new reality: that no town, no matter how small and isolated, can escape the liberating and disruptive forces of the larger world. Welcome to Utopia is a moving elegy for a proud American way of life and a celebration of our relentless impulse toward rebirth.
Download or read book In Utopia written by J. C. Hallman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicling one man's search to find the meaning of Utopia in our present-day world, "In Utopia" explores the history of utopian literature and thought in the narrative context of the real-life fruits of that history. b&w illustrations.
Download or read book Utopia for Realists written by Rutger Bregman and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Universal basic income. A 15-hour workweek. Open borders. Does it sound too good to be true? One of Europe's leading young thinkers shows how we can build an ideal world today. "A more politically radical Malcolm Gladwell." -- New York Times After working all day at jobs we often dislike, we buy things we don't need. Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian, reminds us it needn't be this way -- and in some places it isn't. Rutger Bregman's TED Talk about universal basic income seemed impossibly radical when he delivered it in 2014. A quarter of a million views later, the subject of that video is being seriously considered by leading economists and government leaders the world over. It's just one of the many utopian ideas that Bregman proves is possible today. Utopia for Realists is one of those rare books that takes you by surprise and challenges what you think can happen. From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty, to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history, and beyond the traditional left-right divides, as he champions ideas whose time have come. Every progressive milestone of civilization -- from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy -- was once considered a utopian fantasy. Bregman's book, both challenging and bracing, demonstrates that new utopian ideas, like the elimination of poverty and the creation of the fifteen-hour workweek, can become a reality in our lifetime. Being unrealistic and unreasonable can in fact make the impossible inevitable, and it is the only way to build the ideal world.
Download or read book Existential Utopia written by Michael Marder and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-11-24 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Radical political thought of the 20th century was dominated by utopia, but the failure of communism in Eastern Europe and its disavowal in China has brought on the need for a new model of utopian thought. This book thus seeks to redefine the concept of utopia and bring it to bear on today's politics. The original essays, contributed by key thinkers such as Gianni Vattimo and Jean-Luc Nancy, highlight the connection between utopian theory and practice. The book reassesses the legacy of utopia and conceptualizes alternatives to the neo-liberal, technocratic regimes prevalent in today's world. It argues that only utopia in its existential sense, grounded in the lived time and space of politics, can distance itself from mainstream ideology and not be at the service of technocratic regimes, while paying attention to the material conditions of human life. Existential Utopia offers a new and exciting interpretation of utopia in contemporary culture and a much-needed intervention into the philosophical and political discussion of utopian thinking that is both accessible to students and comprehensive.
Download or read book The Individual and Utopia written by Clint Jones and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central to the idea of a perfect society is the idea that communities must be strong and bound together with shared ideologies. However, while this may be true, rarely are the individuals that comprise a community given primacy of place as central to a strong communal theory. This volume moves away from the dominant, current macro-level theorising on the subject of identity and its relationship to and with globalising trends, focusing instead on the individual’s relationship with utopia so as to offer new interpretive approaches for engaging with and examining utopian individuality. Interdisciplinary in scope and bringing together work from around the world, The Individual and Utopia enquires after the nature of the utopian as citizen, demonstrating the inherent value of making the individual central to utopian theorizing and highlighting the methodologies necessary for examining the utopian individual. The various approaches employed reveal what it is to be an individual yoked by the idea of citizenship and challenge the ways that we have traditionally been taught to think of the individual as citizen. As such, it will appeal to scholars with interests in social theory, philosophy, literature, cultural studies, architecture, and feminist thought, whose work intersects with political thought, utopian theorizing, or the study of humanity or human nature.
Download or read book A Modern Utopia written by Herbert George Wells and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1967-01-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Well's uncanny ability to highlight the problems which are now most acute and supply tentative solutions that allow a maximum of individual freedom merits serious consideration. Recommended reading for students and teachers dealing with government, science, and the contemporary dilemma of a world facing war, famine, and racial unrest."--Choice A Modern Utopia is one of the first important blueprints for the modern welfare state and an early major statement of Wells's idea of the World State, an idea that is perhaps his greatest contribution to the intellectual history of this century. In this "quintessential utopia," as Lewis Mumford calls it, Wells "sums up and clarifies the utopias of the past, and brings them into contact with the world of the present." The Bison Books edition, with an introduction by Mark R. Hillegas, associate professor of English at Southern Illinois University, brings back into print a work that has stimulated three generations of thinkers. "This is not flight into fancy no voyage into whimsy. It is a sober attempt to imagine what kind of society men would create if they really used their heads and worked at it. The result is one of the most plausible utopias ever written."--Chad Walsh, From Utopia to Nightmare "It is a beautiful Utopia beautifully seen and beautifully thought: and it has in it some of that flavor of airy unrestraint one finds in News from Nowhere."--Van Wyck Brooks, The World of H.G. Wells
Download or read book The Village Against the World written by Dan Hancox and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One hundred kilometers from Seville, there is a small village, Marinaleda, that for the last thirty years has been at the center of a long struggle to create a communist utopia. In a story reminiscent of the Asterix books, Dan Hancox explores the reality behind the community where no one has a mortgage, sport is played in the Che Guevara stadium and there are monthly "Red Sundays" where everyone works together to clean up the neighbourhood. In particular he tells the story of the village mayor, Sanchez Gordillo, who in 2012 became a household name in Spain after leading raids on local supermarkets to feed the Andalucian unemployed.
Download or read book Utopian Horizons written by Zsolt Cziganyik and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-30 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 500th anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia has directed attention toward the importance of utopianism. This book investigates the possibilities of cooperation between the humanities and the social sciences in the analysis of 20th century and contemporary utopian phenomena. The papers deal with major problems of interpreting utopias, the relationship of utopia and ideology, and the highly problematic issue as to whether utopia necessarily leads to dystopia. Besides reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary utopian investigations, the eleven essays effectively represent the constructive attitudes of utopian thought, a feature that not only defines late 20th- and 21st-century utopianism, but is one of the primary reasons behind the rising importance of the topic. The volume’s originality and value lies not only in the innovative theoretical approaches proposed, but also in the practical application of the concept of utopia to a variety of phenomena which have been neglected in the utopian studies paradigm, especially to the rarely discussed Central European texts and ideologies.
Download or read book Trying Home written by Justin Wadland and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of an anarchist colony on a remote Puget Sound peninsula, Trying Home traces the history of Home, Washington, from its founding in 1896 to its dissolution amid bitter infighting in 1921. As a practical experiment in anarchism, Home offered its participants a rare degree of freedom and tolerance in the Gilded Age, but the community also became notorious to the outside world for its open rejection of contemporary values. Using a series of linked narratives, Trying Home reveals the stories of the iconoclastic individuals who lived in Home, among them Lois Waisbrooker, an advocate of women's rights and free love, who was arrested for her writings after the assassination of President McKinley; Jay Fox, editor of The Agitator, who defended his right to free speech all the way to the Supreme Court; and Donald Vose, a young man who grew up in Home and turned spy for a detective agency. Justin Wadland weaves his own discovery of Home--and his own reflections on the concept of home--into the story, setting the book apart from a conventional history. After discovering the newspapers published in the colony, Wadland ventures beyond the documents to explore the landscape, travelling by boat along the steamer route most visitors once took to the settlement. He visits Home to talk with people who live there now. Meticulously researched and engagingly written, Trying Home will fascinate scholars and general readers alike, especially those interested in the history of the Pacific Northwest, utopian communities, and anarchism.
