Utopias And The Environment

Author : Lisa Garforth
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745684777
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Green Utopias written by Lisa Garforth and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-11-10 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmentalism has relentlessly warned about the dire consequences of abusing and exploiting the planet's natural resources, imagining future wastelands of ecological depletion and social chaos. But it has also generated rich new ideas about how humans might live better with nature. Green Utopias explores these ideas of environmental hope in the post-war period, from the environmental crisis to the end of nature. Using a broad definition of Utopia as it exists in Western policy, theory and literature, Lisa Garforth explains how its developing entanglement with popular culture and mainstream politics has shaped successive green future visions and initiatives. In the face of apocalyptic, despairing or indifferent responses to contemporary ecological dilemmas, utopias and the utopian method seem more necessary than ever. This distinctive reading of green political thought and culture will appeal across the social sciences and humanities to all interested in why green utopias continue to matter in the cultivation of ecological values and the emergence of new forms of human and non-human well-being.

Author : Robert Brownstein
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 146158597X
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Environment and Utopia written by Robert Brownstein and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: to imagine and innovate with our ability to comprehend and manipulate natural and social forces. We must produce constructive contact between our visions of hope and our scientific knowledge of the physical and social environment. This work is an effort to further that contact. We seek to focus upon the future relationship between man and his environment. Specifically, we attempt to synthesize two distinct approaches to this issue: environmental theory and utopian speculation. These two perspectives have rarely, if ever, been deliberately focused upon one an other. We believe that each suggests new questions and hopefully new an swers that would not normally be revealed through the separate insights of the other discipline. Both perspectives have existed in one form or another for centuries. Yet today, there is an increased urgency for their mutual development and interaction. This century, to its loss, has tended to abandon utopian specu lation. We witness "a retreat from constructive thinking about the future in order to dig oneself into the trenches of the present. It is a ruthless elim ination of future-centered idealism by today-centered realism. We have lost the ability to see any further than the end of our collective nose. " 2 At the same time, contemporary research on the environment suggests an urgent need for change in basic patterns of human behavior, for the for mation of new institutions and social structure.

Author : Geoffrey Berry
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317383699
Total Pages : 118 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Utopias and the Environment written by Geoffrey Berry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopias and the Environment explores the way in which the kind of ‘dreaming’, or re-visioning, known as the ‘utopian imaginary’ takes environmental concerns into account. This kind of creative intervention is increasingly important in an era of ecological crisis, as we witness the failure of governments worldwide to significantly change industrial civilization from a path of ‘business as usual.’ In this context, it is up to the artists – in this case authors – to imagine new ways of being that respond to this imperative and immediate global issue. Concurrently, it is also up to critics, readers, and thinkers everywhere to appraise these narratives of possibility for their complexities and internal conflicts, as well as for their promise, as we enter this new era of rapid change and adaptation. Because creative and critical thinkers must work together towards this goal, the idea of the critical utopia, coined by Tom Moylan in response to the fiction of the 1970s, is now ingrained in the common argot and is one of the key ideas discussed in this book. This development in the genre, which combines self-reflexivity and multiple perspectives within its dreaming, represents the postmodern spirit in its most regenerative aspect. This book is testament to such hopes and potential realities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Green Letters.

Author : Lisa Garforth
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745684750
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Green Utopias written by Lisa Garforth and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmentalism has relentlessly warned about the dire consequences of abusing and exploiting the planet's natural resources, imagining future wastelands of ecological depletion and social chaos. But it has also generated rich new ideas about how humans might live better with nature. Green Utopias explores these ideas of environmental hope in the post-war period, from the environmental crisis to the end of nature. Using a broad definition of Utopia as it exists in Western policy, theory and literature, Lisa Garforth explains how its developing entanglement with popular culture and mainstream politics has shaped successive green future visions and initiatives. In the face of apocalyptic, despairing or indifferent responses to contemporary ecological dilemmas, utopias and the utopian method seem more necessary than ever. This distinctive reading of green political thought and culture will appeal across the social sciences and humanities to all interested in why green utopias continue to matter in the cultivation of ecological values and the emergence of new forms of human and non-human well-being.

Author : Michael Harvey
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429859562
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Utopia in the Anthropocene written by Michael Harvey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-03 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopia in the Anthropocene takes a cross-disciplinary approach to analyse our current world problems, identify the key resistance to change and take the reader step by step towards a more sustainable, equitable and rewarding world. It presents paradigm-shifting models of economics, political decision-making, business organization and leadership and community life. These are supported by psychological evidence, utopian literature and inspirational changes in history. The Anthropocene is in crisis, because human activity is changing almost everything about life on this planet at an unparalleled pace. Climate change, the environmental emergency, economic inequality, threats to democracy and peace and an onslaught of new technology: these planetwide risks can seem too big to comprehend, let alone manage. Our reckless pursuit of infinite economic growth on a finite planet could even take us towards a global dystopia. As an unprecedented frenzy of change grips the world, the case for utopia is stronger than ever. An effective change plan requires a bold, imaginative vision, practical goals and clarity around the psychological values necessary to bring about a transformation. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the environmental humanities, sustainability studies, ecological economics, organizational psychology, politics, utopian philosophy and literature – and all who long for a better world.

Author : Paul V. Stock
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317657721
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Food Utopias written by Paul V. Stock and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-01-09 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Food is a contentious and emotive issue, subject to critiques from multiple perspectives. Alternative food movements – including the different articulations of local, food miles, seasonality, food justice, food knowledge and food sovereignty – consistently invoke themes around autonomy, sufficiency, cooperation, mutual aid, freedom, and responsibility. In this stimulating and provocative book the authors link these issues to utopias and intentional communities. Using a food utopias framework presented in the introduction, they examine food stories in three interrelated and complementary ways: utopias as critique of existing systems; utopias as engagement with experimentation of the novel, the forgotten, and the hopeful in the future of the food system; and utopias as process that recognizes the time and difficulty inherent in changing the status quo. The chapters address theoretical aspects of food utopias and also present case studies from a range of contexts and regions, including Argentina, Italy, Switzerland and USA. These focus on key issues in contemporary food studies including equity, locality, the sacred, citizenship, community and food sovereignty. Food utopias offers ways forward to imagine a creative and convivial food system.

Author : Douglas A. Vakoch
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000376354
Total Pages : 137 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dystopias and Utopias on Earth and Beyond written by Douglas A. Vakoch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caught as we are in a grave climate crisis that seems more irreversible with every passing year, our literary portrayals of the future often feature the dystopian collapse of the world as we know it. Science fiction explores how we got here, while pointing toward a more hopeful path forward. From an ecofeminist perspective, a core cause of our current ecological catastrophe is the patriarchal domination of nature, playing out in parallel with the oppression of women. As an alternative to dystopian futures that seem increasingly inevitable, ecofeminist science fiction helps us conjure utopias that promote environmental sustainability based on more egalitarian human relationships. Dystopias and Utopias on Earth and Beyond: Feminist Ecocriticism of Science Fiction explores the fictional worlds of such canonical novelists as Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing, and Joan Slonczewski, as well as those of lesser-known science fiction writers, as they collectively probe humanity’s greatest existential threats. Contributors from five continents provide compelling analyses of far future dystopias on Earth that are all too easy to imagine becoming reality if humankind’s current trajectory continues, as well as provocative insights into science fiction utopias set on idyllic planets orbiting distant stars, which offer liberatory alternatives that might someday be actualized in the real world. By examining the links between the destruction of the environment and the domination of women, Dystopias and Utopias on Earth and Beyond provides the tools to counteract those intertwined oppressions, helping create a foundation for a truly habitable world.

Author : Robert Brownstein
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 9781468407754
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Environment and Utopia written by Robert Brownstein and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-09-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: to imagine and innovate with our ability to comprehend and manipulate natural and social forces. We must produce constructive contact between our visions of hope and our scientific knowledge of the physical and social environment. This work is an effort to further that contact. We seek to focus upon the future relationship between man and his environment. Specifically, we attempt to synthesize two distinct approaches to this issue: environmental theory and utopian speculation. These two perspectives have rarely, if ever, been deliberately focused upon one an other. We believe that each suggests new questions and hopefully new an swers that would not normally be revealed through the separate insights of the other discipline. Both perspectives have existed in one form or another for centuries. Yet today, there is an increased urgency for their mutual development and interaction. This century, to its loss, has tended to abandon utopian specu lation. We witness "a retreat from constructive thinking about the future in order to dig oneself into the trenches of the present. It is a ruthless elim ination of future-centered idealism by today-centered realism. We have lost the ability to see any further than the end of our collective nose. " 2 At the same time, contemporary research on the environment suggests an urgent need for change in basic patterns of human behavior, for the for mation of new institutions and social structure.

Author : Annette Giesecke
Publisher : Artifice Incorporated
ISBN 13 : 9781907317750
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Earth Perfect? written by Annette Giesecke and published by Artifice Incorporated. This book was released on 2012 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Earth Perfect? Nature, Utopia and the Garden is an eclectic, yet rigorous reflection on the relationship--historical, present and future--between humanity and the garden. Through the lens of Utopian Studies--the interdisciplinary field that encompasses fictions all the way through to actual political projects, and urban ideals; in a nutshell, addressing the human natural drive towards the ideal--Earth Perfect? brings together a selection of inspiring essays, each contributed by foremost writers from the fields of architecture, history of art, classics, cultural studies, farming, geography, horticulture, landscape architecture, law, literature, philosophy, urban planning and the natural sciences. Through these joined voices, the garden emerges as a site of contestation and a repository for symbolic, spiritual, social, political and ecological meaning. Questions such as: "what is the role of the garden in defining humanity's ideal relationship with nature?" and "how should we garden in the face of catastrophic ecological decline?" are addressed through wideranging case studies, including ancient Roman Gardens in Pompeii, Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, the Gardens of Versailles, organic farming in New England and Bohemia's secret gardens, as well as landscape in contemporary architecture. Issues relating to the utopian garden are explored thematically rather than chronologically, and organised in six chapters: "Being in nature", "inscribing the garden", "green/house", "The garden politic", "economies of the garden" and "how then shall we garden?". each essay is both individual in scope and part of the wider discourse of the book as a whole, and each is lusciously illustrated, bringing to life the subject with diverse visual material ranging from photography to historical documents, maps and artworks.

Author : Malcolm Miles
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134185758
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Urban Utopias written by Malcolm Miles and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-11-21 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopia tends to generate a bad press - regarded as impracticable, perhaps nostalgic, or contradictory when visions of a perfect world cannot accommodate the change that is necessary to a free and self-organizing society. But people from diverse backgrounds are currently building a new society within the old, balancing literal and metaphorical utopianism, and demonstrating plural possibilities for alternative futures and types of settlement. Thousands of such places exist around the world, including intentional communities, eco-villages, permaculture plots, religious and secular retreats, co-housing projects, self-build schemes, projects for low-impact housing, and activist squats in urban and rural sites. This experience suggests, however, that when planning and design are not integral to alternative social formations, the modern dream to engineer a new society cannot be realized. The book is structured in four parts. In part one, literary and theoretical utopias from the early modern period to the nineteenth-century are reconsidered. Part two investigates twentieth-century urban utopianism and contemporary alternative settlements focusing on social and environmental issues, activism and eco-village living. Part three looks to wider horizons in recent practices in the non-affluent world, and Part four reviews a range of cases from the author’s visits to specific sites. This is followed by a short conclusion in which a discussion of key issues is resumed. This book brings together insights from literary, theoretical and practical utopias, drawing out the characteristics of groups and places that are part of a new society. It links today’s utopian experiments to historical and literary utopias, and to theoretical problems in utopian thought.