Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Book in excellent unread/unused condition. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> In 1906 H. G. Wells argued that ‘the creation of Utopias – and their exhaustive criticism – is the proper and distinctive method of sociology!! Wells’s claim may seem counter-intuitive in terms of common under- standings of utopia and of sociology. But although sociology may as he says have sought to distance itself from utopia both conventional sociology and critical social theory have unavoidable utopian character- istics increasingly recognized in recent discussions. A utopian method relevant to the twenty-first century may be somewhat different from that which Wells envisaged but is both appropriate and necessary. It provides a critical tool for exposing the limitations of current policy discourses about economic growth and ecological sustainability. It facilitates genu- inely holistic thinking about possible futures combined with reflexivity provisionality and democratic engagement with the principles and prac- tices of those futures. And it requires us to think about our conceptions of human needs and human flourishing in those possible futures. The core of utopia is the desire for being otherwise individually and collectively subjectively and objectively. Its expressions explore and bring to debate the potential contents and contexts of human flourishing. (LL)