Synopses & Reviews
Everyday utopias enact conventional activities in unusual ways. Instead of dreaming about a better world, participants seek to create it. As such, their activities provide vibrant and stimulating contexts for considering the terms of social life, of how we live together and are governed. Weaving conceptual theorizing together with social analysis, Davina Cooper examines utopian projects as seemingly diverse as a feminist bathhouse, state equality initiatives, community trading networks, and a democratic school where students and staff collaborate in governing. She draws from firsthand observations and interviews with participants to argue that utopian projects have the potential to revitalize progressive politics through the ways their innovative practices incite us to rethink mainstream concepts including property, markets, care, touch, and equality. This is no straightforward story of success, however, but instead a tale of the challenges concepts face as they move between being imagined, actualized, hoped for, and struggled over. As dreaming drives new practices and practices drive new dreams, everyday utopias reveal how hard work, feeling, ethical dilemmas, and sometimes, failure, bring concepts to life.
Review
andquot;Exploring a wide variety of projects with more or less radical agendas, from nudist colonies to alternative schools to official equality rights bureaus, Davina Cooperand#39;s brilliant work shows us nothing less than a new way to do theory. Everyday Utopias is itself an everyday utopian theoretical space, showing the fruitfulness of eschewing tired polemics in favor of close analyses of the myriad social experiments going on around us.andquot;
Review
andquot;Davina Cooper offers a careful and nuanced analysis of and#39;everyday utopias,and#39; bringing the concept of utopia back to the present to give it a future. By finding potential in unexpected places, and showing how we can be involved in the actualization of worlds, this book is as hopeful and inspired as the practices it describes.andquot;
Review
andldquo;Dr. Cooperandrsquo;s approach to considering equality law is therefore progressive, and appears to be part of a welcome trend of looking beyond the individual victim of discrimination and to society and its norms.... It allows us to redefine the limits of equality law, by forcing us to reconsider what truly drives differences in treatment.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;[H]er third chapter is a fascinating discussion of states as sensory formations. and#160;She is attentive to both feeling as a state ethos and feeling in a thinned out state....Summing up: Recommended.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Davina Cooper takes the reader on an amazing journey andndash; from an erotic bathhouse to a private school, Cooper aims to locate utopia in quotidian practice. andhellip; [T]he book has surely made important contributions to utopian studies. Cooperandrsquo;s analysis is thoughtful and meticulous. This is a well-written book that will likely join the bookshelves of many utopian hopefuls.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Everyday Utopias explores how everyday utopiasand#8212;sites enacting commonplace activities in egalitarian, democratic, or emancipatory waysand#8212;contribute to a transformative politics through the concepts they put into practice and inspire.
About the Author
Davina Cooper is Professor of Law and Political Theory at Kent Law School at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. She is the author of Challenging Diversity: Rethinking Equality and the Value of Difference; Governing Out of Order: Space, Law and the Politics of Belonging; and Power in Struggle: Feminism, Sexuality and the State.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgmentsand#160; ix
1. Introductionand#160; 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 Womenand#39;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 Speakerand#39;s Corner 186
9. Conclusion 217
Notes 229
References 251
Index 277