Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Half Title -- Series Information -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Epigraph -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- 1 A Finalistic Theory of Social Action -- The End of Disenchantment? -- Clarity and Consciousness -- Coherence and Adequacy -- Values, Ends, Means -- Time and Meaning -- Project of Action -- Notes -- 2 Political Culture -- Political and Civic Culture -- Civic Culture and Quality of Democracy -- Immanent and Non-Immanent Analysis -- Political Theory, Political Cultures, and Political Traditions -- Common Sense and Social Representations -- Symbols, Values, Options -- Notes -- 3 Social Imaginaries -- Science and Common Sense -- Bridging Ideologies -- Integration and Solidarity -- Modern Social Imaginaries -- Social Imaginaries -- Identity Without Politics -- Notes -- 4 Ideology -- Ideology and Unmasking -- End of Ideology -- Enlightenment and Ideology -- Theory of Ideology -- Project of Action and the Process of Valourization -- Politicizing Society -- Notes -- 5 Utopia -- A Brief History of Utopia -- The End of Utopias? -- Real Utopias -- Everyday Utopias -- Freely Feasible Utopias -- The European Utopia -- Notes -- Conclusions -- Bibliography -- Index.

The permanent shift of modernity, the epistemological crisis, and the politicization of all social spheres determine an atmosphere of global political anxiety. The ever-expanding security deficit becomes an attribute of modernity, as a fragmentation as a response to globality and the emergence of alternative ways of political genesis reflects new socio-cultural semantic nodes. Existential threats raise a persistent appeal to religion. The loss of epistemological certainty in political constructions contributes to the theoretical confusion about the future. The diffusion of political and value contexts forces people to turn to religion while developing projects and setting the goals of modernity. This creates cognitive and political- instrumental difficulties in using legitimizing and, at the same time, mutually exclusive religious meanings. The simultaneous truth in different types of discourses and in theory makes it impossible to find a common denominator. We argue that the projects and goal settings of modernity, claiming to be universal, but not achieving it, are structured primarily based on the logic of alarmism and eschatology. A positive project, trying to overcome the limitations of politicization, moves to the value plane. We consider three perspectives of the teleology of modernity, including religious meanings: theoretical, metaphysical, and instrumental. The research methodology is based on the problems of political goal setting in the logic of, traditional/ modern, explaining the religious coloring of political strategies and the splitting of future visions. The othering based on religious differences as a tool of political goal setting, the political instrumentalization of religious identities, simultaneously with religious creation of the world, puts two possible projects of modernity at opposite poles - the World of Religions and the World of Faith. Among the possible projects arising at the intersection of religion and politics, the author suggests three large clusters: alarmism, political expediency, and utopia.

Project Alternative Future is funded by the Norwegian parliament, and its aim is partly the construction of a model for an alternative society It is a Utopian project in the best meaning of the concept. Like Plato's ideal society, the project attempts to combine ambitious visions and concrete thinking. This paper is a discussion of feminist principles on which to base a model for a fundamentally different society. Feminism, as distinct from womanism, is seen as a political ideology criticizing the sexist, patriarchal social structures as well as general structures of domination, competition and violence. A feminist Utopia involves new principles for allocating values; a new ethics based on the principle of reproduction. Feminist theory is criticized for us dualist tradition, and the paper argues for the rationality of aesthetics in addition to the rationality of utility and the rationality of care. Several suggestions as to how to approach a feminist Utopia are made.

Writing a positive account of utopias has always been a difficult and risky task. Utopias have always already been out of fashion and outside of time. Since 1989 at the latest, visions of utopia appear to have come to an end. Twenty years after Fukayama's 'end of history', this article re-assesses the potentially fruitful roles for utopia's out-of-timeness. Focusing on the critical potential of utopias through the concept of tension, it argues that utopian thought must be conceptualized through its tensile connections both to the status quo of a given society and to its possible futures.

This article explores the change in meaning of the term `utopia' between 1968 and today. It proposes an interpretation of 1968 based on the connection between utopia and desire; the emergence of subjectivity in history meant a new way of becoming subjects of one's own history, and a new understanding of socio-political change, as including daily life and personal emotions.

Villanueva, E. F. (1995). Tecnología y utopía. Redes: revista de estudios sociales de la ciencia 2(5), 163-167.

This paper aims to increase our knowledge on the political trust of immigrants' in established democracies. Utilising Swedish survey data, based on a large oversample of respondents with a foreign background, we show that immigrants from countries more plagued by corruption place significantly higher trust in political institutions in Sweden in comparison with both immigrants from more auspicious institutional settings and with the native population. However, we also find that an initially bright view of the Swedish institutional qualities tend to attenuate over time, as immigrants from countries of high corruption develop more critical viewpoints. In con-trast to reasonable expectations, we nonetheless find that this decrease in trust is not explained by experiences of discrimination. Overall, the hypotheses elaborated and tested in this paper may be regarded as a more general contribution to a theory on how political trust is related to experiences and expectations of political institutions.

Perhaps there are never too many different theories about the organization of society, ideas about the normative framework of life in a political community and suggestions on how to institutionalize the political system. Perhaps they go out in public too early. This could also apply to those reflections on society and to those political philosophies that bear the label of utopia. There is no doubt about the importance of such human investigations of what is and what should be. And there is no doubt about the usefulness of constantly imagining what it should be. However, analytical and explanatory caution is required when the word utopia is used to suggest the utopian nature of an idea. In other words, what looks like a utopia can already be presented to us as a provable and tangible fact, only that too many people do not perceive it for too long, and therefore it remains unfulfilled in social practice. Is this really a utopia? On the other hand, what may seem completely understandable, feasible or even self-evident can appear extremely utopian when it comes to the normative approaches to social regulation and the conditions for achieving a "better society." The deviation of political practice and legal practice from what should be understandable or even self-evident according to the text of the constitution and international law, the findings of jurisprudence, philosophical insights and common sense in political decision-making and in the drafting and implementation of the applicable law is so great that, paradoxically, precisely that which is understandable, feasible or even self-evident appears utopian. And how can utopianism be combined with the realization that so many major and persistent social problems can be solved so easily and quickly - even if only by rethinking the legal system and social realm? How can a human being efficiently oppose neoliberal politics and unbridled capitalist practice, the poor functioning of the rule of law, the low quality of the welfare state, the excessive threat to fundamental human rights and freedoms, the inadequate protection of social rights, the insufficient commitment to the value of solidarity and the inadequate role and weakness of morality in social practice? Can the answers to fundamental social questions and solutions to the greatest problems only be found in a real and literal utopia? I do not believe so. I believe that communitarianism can be a good political alternative. Understood as social liberalism and as a social democracy based on the rule of law, morally founded on social solidarity as a fundamental value. I am convinced that the constitutions of the EU Member States and the EU legal order enable it. A strong and interventionist state is needed to realize the constitutional possibilities of a high-quality welfare state, effectively protected social rights, the realized social function of property and a society based on solidarity. Ideas are needed. Even if they seem so crazy, even if they seem utopian. In these times when the devil has taken the joke away, when people are again protesting massively in the streets, when they protest (unsuccessfully, of course), when it is difficult to know exactly what is happening and why, when more and more people are increasingly confused and frightened, when systemic violence increasingly turns into physical violence, when it is difficult to remain calm and thoughtful, when it is difficult to tame anger and rage..., it is necessary to step out of the existing coordinate system, out of the cube, to form and communicate ideas that seem crazy, utopian... Now, right now, ideas are needed, crazy ideas. We need a utopia. And faith and hope in it. Faith and hope, which will be the driving force of active action, of striving for realization – of a utopia.