This special issue focuses on a trend that appears to run counter the recent fascination with scaled-down solutions world problems. From predictive powers of Big Data in Kenya market-driven humanitarian attempts tackle world’s ills, dreams massive biometric identification India and visions health care ‘for all’, we are seeing return ostensibly, sometimes self-avowedly, ‘utopian’ imaginations sc...

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 ...

This address explores a broad framework for thinking sociologically about emancipatory alternatives to dominant institutions and social structures, especially capitalism. The framework is grounded in two foundational propositions: (1) Many forms of human suffering and many deficits in human flourishing are the result of existing institutions and social structures. (2) Transforming existing inst...

At a time of “private equity oil rush,” this essay explores how industry entrepreneurs with ambitions setting up their own oil-production companies are encouraged to “dream big”—yet ultimately disciplined and let down—by private finance in the state Colorado United States. Motivated by desire “do differently,” these start-ups articulate utopian visions that draw on inequalities extractive econo...

World history is often written as a series of wars, large conflicts that stem from leaders who imagine that the world would be a better place " if I owned that land, " " if they used our political policy, " or " if only the superior race existed. " Jay Winter has termed these events " major utopias, " ideas that " uproot, cleanse, transform, exterminate. " In Dreams of Peace and Freedom, Winter...