Table Of ContentUtopia: Social theory and the FUtUre
classical and contemporary
Social theory
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iSBn 978-1-4094-2969-2
Utopia: Social theory
and the Future
Edited by
Michael hviid JacoBSen
Aalborg University, Denmark
Keith teSter
University of Hull, UK
© Michael hviid Jacobsen and Keith tester 2012
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Michael hviid Jacobsen and Keith tester have asserted their right under the copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
published by
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Utopia : social theory and the future. -- (classical and
contemporary social theory)
1. Utopias. 2. Social sciences--philosophy.
i. Series ii. Jacobsen, Michael hviid, 1971- iii. tester,
Keith, 1960-
301-dc23
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Utopia : social theory and the future / [edited] by Michael hviid Jacobsen and Keith
tester.
p. cm. -- (classical and contemporary social theory)
includes bibliographical references and index.
iSBn 978-1-4094-0699-0 (hbk) -- iSBn 978-1-4094-0700-3 (ebk)
1. Utopias. 2. Utopian socialism. 3. Sociology. i. Jacobsen, Michael hviid, 1971-
ii. tester, Keith, 1960-
hX806.U79165 2012
335'.02--dc23
2012016620
iSBn 9781409406990 (hbk)
iSBn 9781409407003 (ebk)
iSBn 9781409484820 (epub)
II
printed and bound in Great Britain by the
MpG Books Group, UK.
Contents
List of Contributors vii
Introduction: Utopia as a Topic for Social Theory 1
Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Keith Tester
Part I theoretIcal MusIngs
1 Utopia and the End of History 7
Henk de Berg
2 What Is Concrete about Ernst Bloch’s ‘Concrete Utopia’? 33
Peter Thompson
3 Dreams, Visions and Utopias – Romantic and Realist
Revolutionaries and the Idyllic 47
Arpad Szakolczai
4 Liquid Modern ‘Utopia’ – Zygmunt Bauman on the Transformation
of Utopia 69
Michael Hviid Jacobsen
5 Houellebecq’s Dystopia – A Case of the Elective Affinity between
Sociology and Literature 97
Anders Petersen and Michael Hviid Jacobsen
Part II theorIes In MotIon
6 Utopia and Criminology 123
Peter Young
7 Utopianism, Dystopianism and Ecological Thought 141
Kate Rigby
8 Social Movements as Utopian Practice 161
Andrew Jamison
vi Utopia: Social Theory and the Future
9 Virtual Utopias and Dystopias – The Cultural Imaginary of
the Internet 179
Majid Yar
10 Utopias of Mobilities 197
Ole B. Jensen and Malene Freudendal-Pedersen
Index 219
List of Contributors
Henk de Berg is Professor of German at the University of Sheffield, United
Kingdom. His most recent books are Freud’s Theory and Its Use in Literary and
Cultural Studies (2003), which received a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
Award and has been translated into three European languages as well as Chinese,
and Das Ende der Geschichte und der bürgerliche Rechtsstaat, a comparative
study of Hegel, Kojève and Fukuyama (2007). His Modern German Thought from
Kant to Habermas: An Annotated German-Language Reader is forthcoming from
Camden House.
Malene Freudendal-Pedersen is Assistant Professor at the Department of Environ-
mental, Social and Spatial Change at Roskilde University, Denmark. She is the author
of the book Mobility in Daily Life – Between Freedom and Unfreedom (2009).
Michael Hviid Jacobsen is Professor of Sociology and Head of School of
Sociology and Social Work at Aalborg University, Denmark. His most recent
edited books in English include: Public Sociology (2008), The Sociology of
Zygmunt Bauman (2008), Encountering the Everyday (2009), The Contemporary
Goffman (2010), An Introduction to Sociology: Scandinavian Sensibilities (2012)
and The Social Thought of Erving Goffman (2013).
Andrew Jamison is Professor of Technology, Environment and Society at the
Department of Development and Planning, Aalborg University, Denmark.
He has published widely in the fields of science and technology policy, social
movements and environmental politics and is the author, with Ron Eyerman, of
Social Movements: A Cognitive Approach (1991), Seeds of the Sixties (1995)
and Music and Social Movements (1998), and The Making of Green Knowledge:
Environmental Politics and Cultural Transformation (2001), Hubris and Hybrids:
A Cultural History of Science and Technology (2005), with Mikael Hård, and A
Hybrid Imagination: Science and Technology in Cultural Perspective (2011), with
Steen Hyldgaard Christensen and Lars Botin.
Ole B. Jensen is Professor of Urban Theory at the Department of Architecture,
Design and Media Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark. His research interest
is urban theory and mobilities research. He is the co-author of Making European
Space: Mobility, Power and Territorial Identity (2004) and has published in a
range of journals such as Mobilities, European Planning Studies, Space and
Culture, and Urban Studies.
viii Utopia: Social Theory and the Future
Anders Petersen is Associate Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark, and
President of the Danish Sociological Association. His most recent publications
in English include: “Authentic Self-Realisation and Depression” (2011) and “The
Demand for Flexibility as a Process of Disenfranchisement” (2011).
Kate Rigby is Associate Professor in Comparative Literature at Monash University,
Australia, and Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and of the
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Her research ranges across German Studies,
European philosophy, literature and religion, and culture and ecology, and her
publications include: Out of the Shadows: Contemporary German Feminism (1996),
Transgressions of the Feminine: Tragedy, Enlightenment and the Figure of Woman
in Classical German Drama (1996), Topographies of the Sacred: The Poetics of
Place in European Romanticism (2004) and Ecocritical Theory: New European
Approaches (2011). She is founding co-editor of the ecological humanities journal,
Philosophy Activism Nature, and was the founding President of the Association for
the Study of Literature and Environment (Australia–New Zealand).
Arpad Szakolczai is Professor of Sociology at University College Cork, Ireland.
His books include: Max Weber and Michel Foucault: Parallel Life-Works (1998),
Reflexive Historical Sociology (2000), The Genesis of Modernity (2003) and
Sociology, Religion and Grace: A Quest for the Renaissance (2007). He is currently
finishing a book manuscript entitled Comedy and the Public Sphere, which intends
to go beyond Jürgen Habermas’s rationalistic account by demonstrating the central
importance of the re-birth of comedy, from the late Renaissance onwards, in
forming the modern democratic public ‘arena’.
Keith Tester is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hull, United Kingdom,
and Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South-Korea. He is also Visiting Professor at
the School of Social Policy and Sociology, University of Leeds. He has published
widely on the sociology of moral life and is recognized as one of the leading
interpreters of the work of Zygmunt Bauman. His books include: Media, Culture
and Morality (1994), Moral Culture (1997), Compassion, Morality and the Media
(2001), Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman (2001), The Social Thought of
Zygmunt Bauman (2004), and Humanitarianism and Modern Culture (2010).
Peter Thompson is Reader in German at the University of Sheffield, United
Kingdom. He has published widely on Ernst Bloch, Ostalgie, the history of the
GDR and German thought and is co-editor with Slavoj Žižek of The Privatization
of Hope (2012).
Majid Yar is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hull, United Kingdom.
His research interests include crime and deviance, media/new media, social theory
and sexual culture. His publications include: Cybercrime and Society (2006),
List of Contributors ix
Key Concepts in Criminology (2008), The Handbook on Internet Crime (2009),
Community and Recognition (2009), and The Politics of Misrecognition (2011).
Peter Young is Professor of Criminology at the Department of Social Sciences,
University of Hull, United Kingdom. He worked also at the Centre for Law and
Society, University of Edinburgh, of which he was a founding member and then
Director; he was also Head of the School of Law. He has served on the editorial
boards of most of the main UK-based journals in criminology. His books include:
The Power to Punish (1983), Crime and Criminal Justice in Scotland (1997)
and Crime in Ireland (2002). He has also published on the development of
criminological theory, crime rates and comparative criminal justice and on the
social understanding of harm, including evil. He has a long-term interest in the
processes of judgment.
