Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces

296 Pages·2014·1.358 MB·English

by  Davina Cooper

EvEryday Utopias

EvEryday
U to p i a s
The ConCepTual life of promising spaCes
Davina Cooper
Duke University press Durham and London 2014
© 2014 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-f ree paper ♾
Designed by Heather Hensley
Typeset in Whitman by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Cooper, Davina.
Everyday Utopias : the conceptual life of promising spaces /
Davina Cooper.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8223-5555-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8223-5569-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Utopias—Political aspects. 2. Utopias—
Social aspects. I. Title.
hx806.c668 2014
335′.02—dc23 2013025249
For Yvonne and Peter

ConTenTs
acknowledgments ix
1. Introduction 1
2. Toward a Utopian Conceptual Attitude 24
3. Casting Equality and the Touch of State Governance 45
4. Public Nudism and the Pursuit of Equality 73
5. Unsettling Feminist Care Ethics through a Women’s
and Trans Bathhouse 100
6. Normative Time and the Challenge of Community Labor
in Local Exchange Trading Schemes 129
7. Property as Belonging at Summerhill School 155
8. Market Play at Speakers’ Corner 186
9. Conclusion 217
notes 229
reFerences 251
index 277

aCknowledgmenTs
This book started life as a research project on prefigurative com-
munity spaces. Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, its inception and
development were deeply shadowed by the deaths of two people in
November 2001 whose work and attitude to life were hugely for-
mative for this project’s imagining: my father, Charles Cooper, and
my close friend the Canadian scholar Marlee Kline.
In the twelve years since, the development of this book has bene-
fited from the time, generosity, and reflections of many colleagues,
family, and friends. I want to thank those who variously answered
my calls for help in finding relevant texts, inspired my thinking
with their thoughts and suggestions, discussed ideas over coffee,
meals, and walks, and gave me feedback on draft chapters: Lucy
Sargisson, Reina Lewis, John Clarke, Janet Newman, David Bell,
Alan Norrie, Jon Goldberg- Hiller, Stewart Motha, John Roberts,
Morag McDermont, Toni Williams, Iain Ramsay, Shona Hunter,
Marilyn Strathern, Fleur Johns, Susan Boyd, Rosemary Auchmuty,
Jon Binnie, Vikki Bell, Miranda Joseph, Judy Fudge, Lisa Herman,
Chris Newfield, Avery Gordon, Wendy Larner, Gail Mason, Yvette
Taylor, Brenna Bhandar, Lisa Adkins, Kitty Cooper, Sue Cooper,
Adi Cooper, Ruth Barcan, Christine Cocker, Alan Kanter, Vivi
Lachs, Yvonne Lawrence, Peter Levine, Eleanor Curran, Maria
Drakopoulou, Kal Michael, Antu Sorainen, Miriam David, Bonnie
Honig, Ian Stronach, Chris Beasley, Brenda Cossman, Jamie Heck-
ert, and, the late Nina Klowden Herman. A big thank you also
goes to Eve Darian-S mith and Philip McCarty for the use of their