New Deal Utopias

New Deal Utopias
Author: Natasha Egan
Publisher: Kehrer Verlag
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2017
Genre: City planning
ISBN: 9783868287905

Photographs of three communities built during the Great Depression explore one of the most ambitious programs of Roosevelt's New Deal.

A People's Green New Deal

A People's Green New Deal
Author: Max Ajl
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021
Genre: TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING
ISBN: 9781786807069

The idea of a Green New Deal was launched into popular consciousness by US Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018. Evocative of the far-reaching ambitions of its namesake, it has become a watchword in the current era of global climate crisis. But its new ubiquity brings ambiguity: what - and for whom - is the Green New Deal? In this concise and urgent book, Max Ajl provides an overview of the various mainstream Green New Deals. Critically engaging with their proponents, ideological underpinnings and limitations, he goes on to sketch out a radical alternative: a 'People's Green New Deal' committed to degrowth, anti-imperialism and agro-ecology. Ajl diagnoses the roots of the current socio-ecological crisis as emerging from a world-system dominated by the logics of capitalism and imperialism. Resolving this crisis, he argues, requires nothing less than an infrastructural and agricultural transformation in the Global North, and the industrial convergence between North and South. As the climate crisis deepens and the literature on the subject grows, A People's Green New Deal contributes a distinctive perspective to the debate.

Ameritopia

Ameritopia
Author: Mark R. Levin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2012-01-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1439173281

In his acclaimed #1 New York Times bestseller, Mark R. Levin explores the psychology, motivations, and history of the utopian movement, its architects—the Founding Fathers, and its modern-day disciples—and how the individual and American society are being devoured by it. Levin asks, what is this utopian force that both allures a free people and destroys them? Levin digs deep into the past and draws astoundingly relevant parallels to contemporary America from Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia, Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, as well as from the critical works of John Locke, Charles Montesquieu, Alexis de Tocqueville, and other philosophical pioneers who brilliantly diagnosed the nature of man and government. As Levin meticulously pursues his subject, the reader joins him in an enlightening and compelling journey. And in the end, Levin’s message is clear: the American republic is in great peril. The people must now choose between utopianism or liberty. President Ronald Reagan warned, “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Levin agrees, and with Ameritopia, delivers another modern political classic, an indispensable guide for America in our time and in the future.

Utopia for Realists

Utopia for Realists
Author: Rutger Bregman
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2017-03-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0316471909

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.

Utopian Horizons

Utopian Horizons
Author: Zsolt Cziganyik
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2017-03-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9633862434

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.

Old Dreams of a New Reich

Old Dreams of a New Reich
Author: Jost Hermand
Publisher:
Total Pages: 360
Release: 1992
Genre: History
ISBN:

Old Dreams of a New Reich, the translation of Jost Hermand's comprehensive study of prefascist and fascist utopias (Der alte Traum vom neuen Reich), examines tracts and futuristic novels crucial to the development and final radicalization of German national sentiments from the second part of the eighteenth century. Scholars and propagandists used the glorified virtues of ancient German tribes to create the cult of Germanic values. These works offer a vivid insight into the public imagination between 1871 and 1945, and into the highly successful media machinations employed by the Right as it used all literary genres - including avant-gardistic works as well as pulp novels and works of science fiction - to manipulate the general public.

Everyday Utopias

Everyday Utopias
Author: Davina Cooper
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2014-02-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0822377152

Everyday utopias enact conventional activities in unusual ways. Instead of dreaming about a better world, participants seek to create it. As such, their activities provide vibrant and stimulating contexts for considering the terms of social life, of how we live together and are governed. Weaving conceptual theorizing together with social analysis, Davina Cooper examines utopian projects as seemingly diverse as a feminist bathhouse, state equality initiatives, community trading networks, and a democratic school where students and staff collaborate in governing. She draws from firsthand observations and interviews with participants to argue that utopian projects have the potential to revitalize progressive politics through the ways their innovative practices incite us to rethink mainstream concepts including property, markets, care, touch, and equality. This is no straightforward story of success, however, but instead a tale of the challenges concepts face as they move between being imagined, actualized, hoped for, and struggled over. As dreaming drives new practices and practices drive new dreams, everyday utopias reveal how hard work, feeling, ethical dilemmas, and sometimes, failure, bring concepts to life.

Main Street Ready-Made

Main Street Ready-Made
Author: Arnold R. Alanen
Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2014-05-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0870206958

The dream of the suburb is an old one in America. For more than a century, city dwellers have sought to escape the crowding and pollution of industrial centers for the quiet streets and green spaces on their fringes. In the 1930s, that dream inspired the largest migration of Americans in the twentieth century and led to the creation of Greendale, Wisconsin, one of three planned communities initially begun to resettle the rural poor hit hard by the Great Depression. This idea, though, quickly developed into a plan to revitalize cities and stabilize farming communities around the nation. The result was three “greenbelt towns” built from scratch, expressly for working-class families and within easy commuting distance of urban employment. Greendale, completed in 1938, was consciously designed as a midwestern town in both its physical character and social organization, where ordinary citizens could live in a safe, attractive, economical community that was in harmony with the surrounding farmland. “Main Street Ready-Made” examines Greendale as an outgrowth of public policy, an experiment in social engineering, and an organic community that eventually evolved to embrace a huge shopping mall, condominiums, and expensive homes while still preserving much of the architecture and ambiance of the original village. A snapshot of 1930s idealism and ingenuity, “Main Street Ready-Made” makes a significant contribution to the history of cities, suburbs, and social planning in mid-century America.

The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed

The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed
Author: Laurence Davis
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2005-11-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0739158201

The Dispossessed has been described by political thinker Andre Gorz as 'The most striking description I know of the seductions—and snares—of self-managed communist or, in other words, anarchist society.' To date, however, the radical social, cultural, and political ramifications of Le Guin's multiple award-winning novel remain woefully under explored. Editors Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman right this state of affairs in the first ever collection of original essays devoted to Le Guin's novel. Among the topics covered in this wide-ranging, international and interdisciplinary collection are the anarchist, ecological, post-consumerist, temporal, revolutionary, and open-ended utopian politics of The Dispossessed. The book concludes with an essay by Le Guin written specially for this volume, in which she reassesses the novel in light of the development of her own thinking over the past 30 years.

The Faber Book of Utopias

The Faber Book of Utopias
Author: John Carey
Publisher:
Total Pages: 531
Release: 2000-09-01
Genre: Utopias
ISBN: 9780571203178

Utopias come in every conceivable cultural and sexual shade: communist, fascist, anarchist, green, techno-fantastic, all male, all female. John Carey's anthology encompasses many noble schemes, as well as chilling attempts at social control.