Download or read book Pragmatic Utopias written by Rosemary Horrox and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-11-29 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays was presented to Barrie Dobson in celebration of his 70th birthday. It will be welcomed by all scholars of pre-modern religion and society. Spanning the artificial divide between medieval and early modern, the contributors - all acknowledged experts in their field - pursue the ways in which men and women tried to put their ideals into practice, sometimes alone, but more commonly in the shared environment of cloister, college or city. The range of topics is testimony to the breadth of Barrie Dobson's own interests, but even more striking are the continuities and shared assumptions across time, and between the dissident and the impeccably orthodox. Taking the reader from a rural anchor-hold to the London of Thomas More, and from the greenwood of Robin Hood to the central law courts, this collection builds into a richly satisfying exploration of the search for perfection in an imperfect world.
Download or read book Pragmatic Utopias written by Rosemary Horrox and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-11-29 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning the artificial divide between medieval and early modern history, this collection of essays shows how men and women tried to put their ideals into practice, sometimes alone, but more commonly within the shared environment of cloister, college or city. The volume is presented to the distinguished medievalist Barrie Dobson in celebration of his 70th birthday, and takes the reader from a rural landscape to the London of Thomas More, and from the forests of Robin Hood to the central law courts.
Download or read book Sulphuric Utopias written by Lukas Engelmann and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How early twentieth century fumigation technologies transformed maritime quarantine practices and inspired utopian visions of disease-free global trade. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fumigation technologies transformed global practices of maritime quarantine through chemical and engineering innovation. One of these technologies, the widely used Clayton machine, blasted sulphuric acid gas through a docked ship in an effort to eliminate pathogens, insects, and rats while leaving the cargo and the structure of the vessel unharmed, shortening its time in quarantine and minimizing the risk of importing infectious diseases. In Sulphuric Utopias, Lukas Engelmann and Christos Lynteris examine this overlooked but historically crucial practice at the intersection of epidemiology, hygiene, applied chemistry, and engineering. They show how maritime fumigation inspired utopian visions of disease-free trade to improve global shipping and to encourage universally applicable standards of sanitation and hygiene. Engelmann and Lynteris chart the history of ideas about fumigation, disinfection, and quarantine, and chronicle the development of the Clayton machine in 1880s New Orleans. Built by the Louisiana Board of Health and adapted and patented by Thomas Clayton, the machine offered a barrier against bacteria and pests and enabled a highway to global trade. Engelmann and Lynteris chronicle the Clayton machine's success and examine its competitors, including carbon-based fumigation methods in Germany and the Ottoman Empire as well as the “Sulfurozador” in Argentina. They follow the international standardization of maritime fumigation and explore the Clayton machine's decline after World War I, when visions of “sulphuric utopia” were replaced by a pragmatic acknowledgment of epidemiological complexity.
Download or read book Politics Persuasion and Pragmatism written by Ellen Susan Peel and published by Ohio State University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An addition to the Theory and Interpretation of Narrative series, Peel's book addresses how feminist utopian narratives attempt to persuade readers to adopt certain beliefs. Using three feminist utopian novels as her main examples, The Marriages between Zones Three, Four, and Five by Doris Lessing; The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin; and Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig, Peel examines how belief-bridging and protean metaphor in these works persuade readers. Literary persuasion, often dismissed as propaganda, in fact works in subtle and profound ways. The book presents major techniques by which narrative literature exercises this sophisticated influence on beliefs. Ultimately concluding that the pragmatic works better than the static in utopian feminism, Peel shows how, in novels such as those under discussion, the narrative techniques support pragmatism. Inquiring how narrative form can shape political belief by affecting readers' responses, the author integrates topics that are rarely combined. The book investigates three theoretical issues: utopian belief, distinguishing the perfectionism of the static from the vitality of the pragmatic and showing how the latter creates narrative energy; the persuasive process, tracing narrative form and asking how implied readers match real ones and how readers are swayed by belief-bridging and protean metaphor; and feminist belief, a nuanced definition that accounts both for what links feminists and what makes them diverse. Politics, Persuasion, and Pragmatism explores the rhetorical and ethical power of narrative literature.
Download or read book Cruising Utopia written by José Esteban Muñoz and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2009-11-30 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Printbegrænsninger: Der kan printes 10 sider ad gangen og max. 40 sider pr. session
Download or read book The Task of Utopia written by Erin McKenna and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2001-11-13 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At their best, both American pragmatism and utopianism are about hope. Both encourage people to think about the future as a guide to understanding the past and forming the present. Just as pragmatism has often been misunderstood as valueless instrumentalism, utopianism has been limited to dreams of a static perfect world. In this book, Erin McKenna argues that utopian vision informed by pragmatism results in a process model of utopia that can help form the future based on critical intelligence. Using John Dewey's works with feminist theory and literature, McKenna develops this pragmatist feminist model of utopia.
Download or read book Utopia written by Thomas More and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'It remains astonishingly radical ... one of Utopia's most striking aspects is its contemporaniety' Terry Eagleton In Utopia, Thomas More gives us a traveller's account of a newly-discovered island where the inhabitants enjoy a social order based on natural reason and justice, and human fulfilment is open to all. As the traveller describes the island, a bitter contrast is drawn between this rational society and the practices of Europe. How can the philosopher reform his society? In his discussion, More takes up a question first raised by Plato and which is still a challenge in the contemporary world. In the history of political thought few works have been more influential than Utopia, and few more misunderstood. Translated and introduced by Dominic Baker-Smith
Download or read book Women s Utopias of the Eighteenth Century written by Alessa Johns and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No human society has ever been perfect, a fact that has led thinkers as far back as Plato and St. Augustine to conceive of utopias both as a fanciful means of escape from an imperfect reality and as a useful tool with which to design improvements upon it. The most studied utopias have been proposed by men, but during the eighteenth century a group of reform-oriented female novelists put forth a series of work that expressed their views of, and their reservations about, ideal societies. In Women's Utopias of the Eighteenth Century, Alessa Johns examines the utopian communities envisaged by Mary Astell, Sarah Fielding, Mary Hamilton, Sarah Scott, and other writers from Britain and continental Europe, uncovering the ways in which they resembled--and departed from--traditional utopias. Johns demonstrates that while traditional visions tended to look back to absolutist models, women's utopias quickly incorporated emerging liberal ideas that allowed far more room for personal initiative and gave agency to groups that were not culturally dominant, such as the female writers themselves. Women's utopias, Johns argues, were reproductive in nature. They had the potential to reimagine and perpetuate themselves.
Download or read book Pragmatic Humanism written by Marcus Morgan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-01-29 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is sociology best understood as simply chipping away at our ignorance about society, or does it have broader roles and responsibilities? If so, to what—or perhaps to whom—are these responsibilities? Installing humanity as its epistemological and normative start and endpoint, this book shows how humanism recasts sociology as an activity that does not merely do things, or effect things, but is also self-consciously for something. Rather than resurrecting problematic classical conceptions of humanism, the book instead constructs its arguments on pragmatic grounds, showing how a pragmatic humanism presents an improved picture of both the nature and value of the discipline. This picture is based less around the claim that sociology is capable of providing authoritative revelations about society, and more upon its capacity to offer representations of the social in epistemologically open, transformative, ethical, and hopeful ways. Ultimately, it argues that sociology’s real value can only be disclosed by replacing its image as a discipline aimed towards disinterested social enlightenment with one of itself as a practice both dependent upon, and at its best self-consciously aimed towards, human ends and imperatives. It will appeal to scholars and students across the social sciences, and to those working in social theory, sociology, and philosophy of the social sciences in particular.
Download or read book Pragmatic Spatial Planning written by Charles Hoch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-10 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Instead of seeking theory to justify practical professional judgments this book describes how professionals can and should use theory to guide these judgments. Professional spatial planning in the US, and globally, continues to suffer from a weak conceptual grasp of its own practice. Practitioners routinely recognize the value and wisdom of practical judgment finely attuned to context, nuance and complexity; but later offer banal testimony and glib stories of ‘just so’ best-practice discrediting the ambiguity of their own experience. The chapters in this book provide a vocabulary tailored to the conventions of practical judgment, challenging students and practitioners to treat professional expertise as work in progress rather than ‘best’ practice. Instead of seeking theory to justify practical professional judgments, Hoch describes how professionals can and should use theory to guide these judgments. The pragmatist plan helps cope with complexity rather than control it, making it invaluable in the anyone’s pursuit of a planning career. This book will appeal to a wide cross section of students and scholars, especially those working in urban planning, public policy, and government.
Download or read book Utopias in Nonfiction Film written by Simon Spiegel and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Comprehensive and thorough, Utopias in Nonfiction Film takes a new direction in its surprise application to documentary that has the potential to shake up the field.'- Jane Gaines, Columbia University, USA 'Spiegel has introduced a new sub-genre to utopian studies, the documentary film. The book covers an impressive range of films, making the book one of the few truly international and comparative works in utopian studies.'- Lyman Tower Sargent, University of Missouri-St. Louis, USA "Simon Spiegel’s magisterial overview of utopian documentaries and nonfiction films is a treasure trove of information and unearths many forgotten and half-forgotten films, providing perceptive discussions of sidelined movies that deserve his (and our) critical scrutiny.“ - Eckart Voigts, University of Braunschweig – Institute of Technology, Germany This book is the first major study on utopias in nonfiction film. Since the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia more than 500 years ago, countless books have been written which describe a better world. But in film, positive utopias seem to be nonexistent. So far, research has focused almost exclusively on dystopias, since positive outlooks seem to run contrary to the media’s requirement. Utopias in Nonfiction Film takes a new approach; starting from the insight that literary utopias are first and foremost meant as a reaction to the ills of the present and not as entertaining stories, it looks at documentary and propaganda films, an area which so far has been completely ignored by research. Combining insights from documentary research and utopian studies, a vast and very diverse corpus of films is analysed. Among them are Zionist propaganda films, cinematic city utopias, socialist films of the future as well as web videos produced by the Islamist terrorist group ISIS.
Download or read book Reading Utopia in Chronicles written by Steven Schweitzer and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2009-03-01 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This examination employs a literary approach in an attempt to address the coherence of Chronicles as a whole.
Download or read book Refugia written by Robin Cohen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-06 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an unusual book. Combining social science fiction, utopianism, pragmatism, sober analysis and innovative social theory, the authors address one of the biggest dilemmas of our age – how to solve the problems arising from mass displacement. As early versions of the solution proposed by Robin Cohen and Nicholas Van Hear filtered out, their vision of a new, networked, transnational archipelago, called Refugia, was immediately denounced or met with scepticism by established refugee scholars. Others were more intrigued, more open-minded, or perhaps just holding their fire until this book was finally published. As it at least has the virtue of originality, why not judge the proposal for yourself? Read it and craft your own critique. The authors have initiated an openly pro-refugee vision that all can help to shape. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to scholars, students, practitioners and an informed public ready to engage with this pressing issue.
Download or read book The Politics of Thomas More s Utopia written by Silvia Stamenova and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2018-01-15 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Literature - Comparative Literature, grade: 5.50, Cardiff Metropolitan University, language: English, abstract: The question posed in this essay concerns the politics in the book of Thomas More's Utopia. The book is a precursor of the utopian literary genre that describes in detail ideal societies and perfectly arranged cities. Although utopianism is a typical Renaissance movement, which combines classical concepts of ideal societies of Plato and Aristotle with Romanesque rhetorical finesse (Cicero, Kvintiliyan), it continues to develop in the age of the Enlightenment as well. Moreover, the author criticizes the social mores of his time. To today’s system he opposes the island “Utopia” where there is no private property. Earth and all means of production belong to the state, which is a federation of cities. All people are busy with work. From physical labor are exempt only those persons possessing exceptional mental ability and dealing with scientific work. Thus, the essay has a lot to say and a lot to deal with – from politics to pure utopia.
Download or read book The Post Soviet Politics of Utopia written by Mikhail Suslov and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 700 'utopian' novels are published in Russia every year. These utopias – meaning here fantasy fiction, science fiction, space operas or alternative history – do not set out merely to titillate; instead they express very real Russian anxieties: be they territorial right-sizing, loss of imperial status or turning into a 'colony' of the West. Contributors to this innovative collection use these narratives to re-examine post-Soviet Russian political culture and identity. Interrogating the intersections of politics, ideologies and fantasies, chapters draw together the highbrow literary mainstream (authors such as Vladimir Sorokin), mass literature for entertainment and individuals who bridge the gap between fiction writers and intellectuals or ideologists (Aleksandr Prokhanov, for example, the editor-in-chief of Russia's far-right newspaper Zavtra). In the process The Post-Soviet Politics of Utopia sheds crucial light onto a variety of debates – including the rise of nationalism, right-wing populism, imperial revanchism, the complicated presence of religion in the public sphere, the function of language – and is important reading for anyone interested in the heightened importance of ideas, myths, alternative histories and conspiracy theories in Russia today.
Download or read book Over the Rainbow written by Michelle Ann Abate and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Significant essays on LGBTQ topics in children's literature
Download or read book Living in the Future written by Victoria W. Wolcott and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-04-21 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Living in the Future reveals the unexplored impact of utopian thought on the major figures of the Civil Rights Movement. Utopian thinking is often dismissed as unrealistic, overly idealized, and flat-out impractical—in short, wholly divorced from the urgent conditions of daily life. This is perhaps especially true when the utopian ideal in question is reforming and repairing the United States’ bitter history of racial injustice. But as Victoria W. Wolcott provocatively argues, utopianism is actually the foundation of a rich and visionary worldview, one that specifically inspired the major figures of the Civil Rights Movement in ways that haven’t yet been fully understood or appreciated. Wolcott makes clear that the idealism and pragmatism of the Civil Rights Movement were grounded in nothing less than an intensely utopian yearning. Key figures of the time, from Martin Luther King Jr. and Pauli Murray to Father Divine and Howard Thurman, all shared a belief in a radical pacificism that was both specifically utopian and deeply engaged in changing the current conditions of the existing world. Living in the Future recasts the various strains of mid-twentieth-century civil rights activism in a utopian light, revealing the power of dreaming in a profound and concrete fashion, one that can be emulated in other times that are desperate for change, like today.
