Europe’s Utopias of Peace: 1815, 1919, 1951, by Bo Stråth

Instincts of the herd in peace and war 1916–1919

PHIL BROWN, The transfer of care. Psychiatric deinstitutionalization and its afiermath, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985, 8vo, pp. xvi, 275, £19.95. This sociological overview of the impact ofdeinstitutionalization on America's mental health services is written from a perspective which is informed by debates within the history of psychiatry as well as medical sociology. In his description o...

‏‎intellectuals: utopias of dystopias‎‏

‏‎‏‎utopia has, for four centuries, accompanied that hope of progress and that striving for betterment. it now straggles against a widespread sense that this has been an illusion, or an impossible dream. the utopian idea can never entirely disappear, but utopia as a form of the social imagination has clearly weakened. if it cannot instill its vision in the public consciousness, the consequences...

Envisioning Real Utopias

A BOOK on utopias by a Marxist sociologist seems promising, perhaps even courageous. In Envisioning Real Utopias, Erik Olin Wright seeks to counter widespread cynicism about radical social transformation. To do this he offers what he calls “real utopias,” which might appear a contradiction or oxymoron. For Wright, however, utopias are not fantasies, or not only fantasies. In the current period ...

Scientific Utopias

Guidelines for Envisioning Real Utopias

This essay explores five general guidelines for discussions of democratic egalitarian alternatives to existing institutions in contemporary capitalist societies: (1) Evaluate alternatives in terms of three criteria: desirability, viability, achievability. (2) Do not let the problem of achievability dictate the discussion of viability. (3) Clarify the problem of winners and losers in structural ...