The Revival of Political Imagination: Utopia as Methodology

Provides a number of new perspectives to the practical uses of utopia, showing how social criticism, collective action and democracy will suffer, if utopias as a mode of social thought are lost.

Teppo Eskelinen is Senior lecturer in Development Studies at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. A philosopher, Eskelinen has also worked as a lecturer in social and public policy. His research interests include political economy and global justice broadly understood, and he has also done research on radical democracy, classics of heterodox economics and economic alternatives.

Part I: Diagnosis 1. Introduction: Utopias and the revival of imagination 2. Disruptive Utopianism: Opening the Present 3. The Privatisation and Recollectivisation of Hope Part II: Case Studies and Utopian Methodologies 4. Quilombist Utopias: An Ethnographic Reflection 5. Social Dreaming and Uses of Narrativity, Tellability and Experientiality in Literary Dystopia 6. Utopian Education - May the Hope Be With You Part III: Perspectives on Utopias 7. The Significance of Humour and Laughter for Utopian Thought 8. Architectural Utopias as Methods for Experimenting with the (Im)Possible 9. Democracy as Utopia: On Locating Radical Roots

'A valuable contribution to contemporary scholarly debates in both Utopian Studies and the social sciences more broadly. Its individual case studies provide a wide-ranging and engaging exploration of the contemporary relevance of the "imaginative skill" of utopian dreaming as a means of facilitating social transformation.
This vibrant collection covers the bases for a re-energized, "re-radicalized" utopian political imagination. The contributors offer a fresh and wide-ranging use of the utopian method to imagine social alternatives and shore up collective struggles against global dystopian tendencies. A timely example of the kind of social critique from a utopian point of view we desperately need.
An important contribution to contemporary scholarship on utopian and dystopian theory and practice.