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Overview
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.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691236681 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/10/2024 |
| Pages: | 608 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Preface xiii
Acknowledgements xv
Part I Towards a Theory of Utopian Sociability 1
1 Redefining Utopianism for a Post-consumer society 3
The History of Utopianism 13
The Historiography of Utopianism 18
Defining Utopianism: Some Components 26
Utopia as Literary Text 26
Utopia as Religion 27
Utopia as Mental State 33
Utopia as Progress 38
Utopia as Pleasure 39
Two Further Problems 40
Luxury, Consumerism, and Sustainability 40
Enhanced Sociability and Belongingness 41
Degrees of Association 47
Family 47
Friendship 48
Groups 55
The Sociology of Community 63
Utopia, the City, and Belongingness 68
Utopianism Restated 70
2 The Mythical Background: Remembering Original Equality 74
The Golden Age 75
Sparta 77
The Christian Paradise 82
Utopia and Millenarianism 85
The Origins of Secular Millenarianism: Thomas Müntzer, Revolution, and Republicanism 90
3 Theories of Realised Utopianism 99
Michel Foucault and Heterotopia 99
Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner, and Liminality 101
Ernst Bloch and the Concrete Utopia 107
Part II Utopian Sociability in Fiction and Practice 127
4 The Varieties of Utopian Practice 129
Festivals as Utopian Spaces 129
Pilgrimage as a Utopian Activity 141
Intentional Communities 145
Christian Intentional Communities 150
Secular intentional Communities 157
Twentieth-Century Communitarianism 186
On the Possibility of Everyday Utopia 190
5 Luxury, Sociability, and Progress in Literary Projections of Utopia: From Thomas More to the Eighteenth Century 192
Thomas More 192
Utopian Fiction after More 201
The Eighteenth Century 205
Luxury, Simplicity, and Utopian Satire 212
The Transformation Problem 218
6 The Triumph of Unsocial Sociability? Luxury in the Eighteenth Century 222
Regulating Luxury: Sumptuary Laws 223
Mandeville's Paradox 235
Rousseau and Utopia 246
After Rousseau 253
A Consuming Passion: Novelty and the Desire for Things 263
The Progress of Novelty 268
The Fate of Imitation 275
Part III Luxury and Sociability in Later Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Utopianism 277
7 The Later Eighteenth Century and the French Revolution 279
Spartans, Neo-Harringtonians, and Utopian Republicans 279
The Utopian Turn towards the Future 284
The French Revolution 289
8 Simplicity and Sociability in Nineteenth-Century Utopianism 302
Early Nineteenth-Century Literary Utopianism 303
Utopian Social Theory 306
Karl Marx 306
John Stuart Mill and the Stationary State 310
Anarchism and Luxury 313
Luxury and Simplicity in Later Nineteenth-Century Literary Utopianism, 1880-1917 317
Edward Bellamy and the Shift to Public Luxury 330
William Morris's News from Nowhere (1890): Beauty and Creativity 334
H.G. Wells 343
Summary of the Historical Argument concerning Utopia and Luxury to the 1930s 349
Part IV Modern Consumerism and its Opponents 353
9 Twentieth-Century Consumerism and the Utopian Response 355
Explaining Waste: Veblen and Conspicuous Consumption 363
Modern Consumerism Defined 365
Branding 368
The Ideology of Choice 373
Things Take Over 376
Narcissism as the Consumerist Personality Type 377
Consumerism and Identity: Summarising the Pros and Cons 381
Counter-ideals: The Soviet Response to Consumerism 383
Eastern Europe 398
A Note on China 405
Twentieth-Century Literary Utopiamsm: Green Shoots 406
Aldous Huxley 409
Ernest Callenbach 414
10 Counterculture and Consumerism: The 1960s 420
Prelude 420
The Counterculture: A New Model of Sociability 422
Origins 426
The 1960s 429
Legacies and Relevance 434
11 Life after Consumerism: Utopianism in the Age of Sufficiency 440
The Spectre of Extinction 440
Compensatory Sociability in the Twenty-First Century: Some Hindrances 447
Neither Sybaris nor Sparta: Envisioning a Post-consumerist Society 452
No More Billionaires: The Rationale for Equality 455
I Am Not Your Servant 460
The Great Change: The Sustainability Paradigm 462
Voluntary Simplicity 463
Political Implications 465
The Green New Deal 469
A Radical Green New Deal 474
1 Energy 478
2 Reforestation, Water Management, and Species Protection 481
3 Food 482
4 Avoiding Waste and Restraining Demand and Consumption 483
5 Population Restraint 487
6 Work 488
7 Public Service 490
8 Wealth and Inequality 491
9 Urban Renewal 494
The Neighbourhood Model 496
Urban Sociability: Towards Neo-Fourierism 500
What You Can Do 505
Pitfalls and Paradoxes 506
Conclusion: The Great Change: Creating Enhanced Simplicity 508
Afterword: Covid-19 and Sociability 514
Bibliography 517
Index 561
What People are Saying About This
“When self-styled ‘realists’ respond to looming environmental collapse by defending business as usual, utopian thinking becomes itself a form of realism. Dispelling the illusions of those who have not understood the magnitude of the social and personal changes needed to confront our current crisis, Claeys presents a forceful account of the twenty-first-century utopia we must embrace as a condition of planetary survival.”—Kate Soper, emeritus professor of philosophy, London Metropolitan University“A timely rethinking of the usefulness of the utopian tradition in the light of climate change and the consequent necessity to add in sustainability as one of its essential components.”—Gareth Stedman Jones, author of Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion“Original, punctiliously researched, and erudite, Utopianism for a Dying Planet suggests a possible and potentially effective way of responding to what is increasingly and universally seen as the gravest crisis ever faced by humanity.”—Artur Blaim, University of Gdańsk