Utopian Encounters

This volume is an experiment: an inquiry into the possibilities for a prospective anthropology of utopia. Through a range of ethnographic contributions, it investigates 'empirical utopias' across the world, from ecotopias to religious havens, transnational policies, retirement homes and community agriculture.

This volume is an experiment: an enquiry into the possibilities and potentialities of a prospective anthropology of utopia. With different ethnographic contributions studying «empirical utopias» across the world (from ecotopias to religious havens, transnational policies, retirement homes and community agriculture), it looks beyond the commonsense understanding of utopia as a desire, an expectation, a form of imagination stemming from Western political thought. In the process, the volume explores the dynamic dialectic between human imagination and concrete action.

Autorentext

Maïté Maskens is a lecturer in anthropology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). Her research interests include the anthropology of religion, affects, bureaucracy and mobility. She is currently working on love and its boundaries, focusing on the treatment of binational marriages by public authorities in Brussels. Ruy Blanes is a Ramon y Cajal fellow at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), and as of 2018 Senior Lecturer at the School of Global Studies of the University of Gothenburg. His research interests include the anthropology of religion, identity, politics, mobility and temporality. His current research site is Angola, where he explores ongoing activisms and revolutionary processes. He is the author of A Prophetic Trajectory (2014). He is also co-editor of the journal Advances in Research: Religion and Society.

Inhalt

CONTENTS: Maïté Maskens/Ruy Llera Blanes: Introduction: Utopian Encounters: Anthropologies of Empirical Utopias - Alicia Sliwinski: Valuing an Old-Age Trope for an Old-Age Home: Ethnographic Encounters with Utopian Configurations -Ruy Llera Blanes: Past Utopias: Religious and Political Temporalities in Contemporary Angola - Andrew Russell: «Imagine a World Without Tobacco»: Utopian Visions and Collaborative Research in Public Health - Madeleine Sallustio: Neo-Rural Communities as Heterotopias - Olga Orli: «Could This Be the End of the World as We Know It?» Community-Supported Agriculture in Croatia and the Building of Ecotopia - Christoph Brumann: The Dominance of One and Its Perils: Charismatic Leadership and Branch Structures in Utopian Communes.