SLIDE 1
What is a Utopia? Dr Mark Featherstone Senior Lecturer Sociology
1
What is a Utopia? Dr Mark Featherstone Senior Lecturer Sociology - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
What is a Utopia? Dr Mark Featherstone Senior Lecturer Sociology - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
What is a Utopia? Dr Mark Featherstone Senior Lecturer Sociology 1 Part 1 What is Utopia? Sociology and Utopias What is the point of sociology? The aim of sociology is to think creatively about social problems and to try to solve
SLIDE 2
SLIDE 3
Sociology and Utopias
- What is the point of sociology?
- The aim of sociology is to think creatively about
social problems and to try to solve them.
- In
this way there is a ‘utopian’ dimension to sociology.
- As a discipline, sociology is concerned with thinking
about how we could make a good society.
3
SLIDE 4
What is Utopia?
- In 1516 Thomas More wrote about a
perfect society that was everything the real world was not.
- There was no money or inequality in
More’s society and there was little or no crime.
- More called his society Utopia.
4
SLIDE 5
Ever since More wrote about utopia, and perhaps long before he put pen to paper, people have tried to design perfect worlds….
5
SLIDE 6
Real and Imagined
These perfects world have been both real and imagined and some have been much more realistic than others.
6
SLIDE 7
Part 2
Utopian Themes
SLIDE 8
Utopias
- Let’s think about four utopias:
– Plato’s Republic (Ancient Greece) – Marquis De Sade’s Society of Crime (French Revolutionary France) – Karl Marx’s Communist Society (19th Century Britain) – Steve Jobs’ Hi-Tech World (Today).
8
SLIDE 9
Plato’s Republic
- The first utopia was Plato’s Republic.
- Plato
wrote his Republic sometime around 380BC.
- He imagined a perfectly ordered society of
reason and discussion.
- The Republic is a utopia of education, where the
best (his Philosopher Kings) people make the rules.
9
SLIDE 10
10
The Myth of the Cave
SLIDE 11
Other Key Themes
- Plato also thought that the family was a bad
idea, so he abolished family childcare.
- In
his utopia children would be raised by nurseries run by people who are skilled at producing good people.
- In Plato’s view all that matters is the well
structured society.
11
SLIDE 12
The Marquis De Sade
2000 years after Plato wrote his Republic the infamous French writer and libertine of the 18th century the Marquis de Sade invented a utopia of sorts, a utopia of total freedom.
12
SLIDE 13
13
SLIDE 14
Crime
- De Sade’s utopia was a utopia of complete
freedom and consequently crime.
- There are no rules in Sade’s utopia.
- Apart from the rule to do exactly what you want
with whom you want!
- This was a utopia of complete individualism.
14
SLIDE 15
Marx’s Communism
Soon after De Sade, the 19th century German writer Karl Marx began to write about communism.
15
SLIDE 16
16
SLIDE 17
Cog in a Machine
- For
Marx the problem with work was boredom.
- He wanted to create a society where people
could be creative and find work that would allow them to express themselves.
- In Marx’s society nobody would be turned
into a mindless workhorse, a cog in a machine.
17
SLIDE 18
Apple’s Utopia
150 years after Marx the American company, Apple, and particularly its boss, Steve Jobs, imagined a world where technology would make the world a better place (a media communication utopia).
18
SLIDE 19
19
SLIDE 20
Jobs’ Hi-Tech World
- After communism failed in the 1980s we entered a
period academics talk about in terms
- f
globalisation.
- In a globalised world we are all connected through
new media technologies, such as the iPhone.
- Steve Jobs’ company, Apple, imagines a world
where everybody in better off and more creative because they are connected by new technologies. Is this true?
20
SLIDE 21
So what is the purpose of utopia?
What does utopia do and why is it important?
21
SLIDE 22
What is Utopia For?
The purpose of utopia is to challenge the way the world currently works. Utopian writers and thinkers have always imagined what the world would look like if it is was set up differently.
22
SLIDE 23
Imaginations
In this way utopias encourage us to use critical skills to think about the problems
- f
today and use
- ur
imaginations to think about how we might solve these problems.
23
SLIDE 24
Social Problems
- Utopian writers try to solve problems of:
– Disorder – Insecurity – Regulation – Unhappiness – Inequality – Boredom – (Mis-)Communication
24
SLIDE 25
Utopian Ideals
- Core Themes:
– Law, Order, Socialisation of good people – End of the Family – Education – Desire, Freedom, Enjoyment, Pleasure – End of Money – Equality – Creativity – Communication
25
SLIDE 26
Part 3
Design Your Own Utopia
SLIDE 27
Design Your Own Utopia
- Now
you take
- n
the role
- f
the utopian designer.
- In
small groups produce a spider chart explaining what principles you want to underpin your perfect world.
- What are the problems with today’s world and
what would you do to solve them?
- Remember, the sky is the limit. Utopia is about
imagination.
27
SLIDE 28
Feed Back
- Now feedback about your perfect society.
- What problems have you tried to solve?
- What have you made central to your new
world?
- Finally, what problems do you think your
new world might suffer from?
28
SLIDE 29
Part 5
Why Utopia?
SLIDE 30
Utopia and Sociology
- The idea of society, and the question of the way society
should be organised, are key to the discipline of sociology.
- The
idea
- f
utopia is all about addressing these fundamental questions:
– What is wrong with society? – How could society be better? – What would the best possible society look like?
- For this reason the study of utopias and dystopias is
arguably fundamental to the study of sociology.
30