Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after Consumerism PDF
Preview Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after Consumerism
utopianism for a dying planet Utopianism for a Dying Planet life after consumerism gregory claeys prince ton university press princet on & oxford Copyright © 2022 by Prince ton University Press Prince ton University Press is committed to the protection of copyright and the intellectual property our authors entrust to us. Copyright promotes the pro gress and integrity of knowledge. Thank you for supporting free speech and the global exchange of ideas by purchasing an authorized edition of this book. If you wish to reproduce or distribute any part of it in any form, please obtain permission. Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to permissions@press . princeton . edu. Published by Prince ton University Press 41 William Street, Prince ton, New Jersey 08540 99 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6JX press . princeton . edu All Rights Reserved ISBN 978-0-691-17004-6 ISBN (e- book) 978-0-691-23669-8 British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available Editorial: Ben Tate and Josh Drake Production Editorial: Jenny Wolkowicki Jacket design: Lauren Smith Production: Danielle Amatucci Publicity: Alyssa Sanford and Charlotte Coyne Copyeditor: Maia Vaswani Jacket image: From woodcut in Thomas More’s Utopia, 1516. Lebrecht M usic & Arts / Alamy Stock Photo This book has been composed in Arno Pro Printed on acid- free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of Amer i ca 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Greta Thunberg, who proves the power of one person with empathy and to Cara Amal Claeys-Roberts, b. 24 January 2022, the future contents Preface xiii Acknowledgements xv part i: towards a theory of utopian sociability 1 1 Redefining Utopianism for a Post- consumer society 3 The History of Utopianism 13 The Historiography of Utopianism 18 Defining Utopianism: Some Components 26 Utopia as Literary Text 26 Utopia as Religion 27 Utopia as Mental State 33 Utopia as Pro gress 38 Utopia as Plea sure 39 Two Further Prob lems 40 Luxury, Consumerism, and Sustainability 40 Enhanced Sociability and Belongingness 41 Degrees of Association 47 Family 47 Friendship 48 Groups 55 The Sociology of Community 63 Utopia, the City, and Belongingness 68 Utopianism Restated 70 vii viii contents 2 The Mythical Background: Remembering Original Equality 74 The Golden Age 75 Sparta 77 The Christian Paradise 82 Utopia and Millenarianism 85 The Origins of Secular Millenarianism: Thomas Müntzer, Revolution, and Republicanism 90 3 Theories of Realised Utopianism 99 Michel Foucault and Heterotopia 99 Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner, and Liminality 101 Ernst Bloch and the Concrete Utopia 107 part ii: utopian sociability in fiction and practice 127 4 The Va ri e ties of Utopian Practice 129 Festivals as Utopian Spaces 129 Pilgrimage as a Utopian Activity 141 Intentional Communities 145 Christian Intentional Communities 150 Secular Intentional Communities 157 Twentieth- Century Communitarianism 186 On the Possibility of Everyday Utopia 190 5 Luxury, Sociability, and Pro gress in Literary Projections of Utopia: From Thomas More to the Eigh teenth Century 192 Thomas More 192 Utopian Fiction after More 201 The Eigh teenth Century 205 Luxury, Simplicity, and Utopian Satire 212 The Transformation Prob lem 218 6 The Triumph of Unsocial Sociability? Luxury in the Eigh teenth Century 222 Regulating Luxury: Sumptuary Laws 223 Mandev ille’s Paradox 235 contents ix Rousseau and Utopia 246 After Rousseau 253 A Consuming Passion: Novelty and the Desire for Things 263 The Pro gress of Novelty 268 The Fate of Imitation 275 part iii: luxury and sociability in later eighteenth- and nineteenth-c entury utopianism 277 7 The Later Eigh teenth Century and the French Revolution 279 Spartans, Neo- Harringtonians, and Utopian Republicans 279 The Utopian Turn towards the F uture 284 The French Revolution 289 8 Simplicity and Sociability in Nineteenth- Century Utopianism 302 Early Nineteenth- Century Literary Utopianism 303 Utopian Social Theory 306 Karl Marx 306 John Stuart Mill and the Stationary State 310 Anarchism and Luxury 313 Luxury and Simplicity in Later Nineteenth- Century Literary Utopianism, 1880–1917 317 Edward Bellamy and the Shift to Public Luxury 330 William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890): Beauty and Creativity 334 H. G. Wells 343 Summary of the Historical Argument concerning Utopia and Luxury to the 1930s 349 part iv: modern consumerism and its opponents 353 9 Twentieth- Century Consumerism and the Utopian Response 355 Explaining Waste: Veblen and Con spic u ous Consumption 363 Modern Consumerism Defined 365
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