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Movement as utopia

Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Ottawa, pcouton{at}uottawa.ca

José Julián López

Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Ottawa, jlopez{at}uottawa.ca

Opposition to utopianism on ontological and political grounds has seemingly relegated it to a potentially dangerous form of antiquated idealism. This conclusion is based on a restrictive view of utopia as excessively ordered panoptic discursive constructions. This overlooks the fact that, from its inception, movement has been central to the utopian tradition. The power of utopianism indeed resides in its ability to instantiate the tension between movement and place that has marked social transformations in the modern era. This tension continues in contemporary discussions of movement-based social processes, particularly international migration and related identity formations, such as open borders transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. Understood as such, utopia remains an ongoing and powerful, albeit problematic instrument of social and political imagination.

Key Words: cosmopolitanism • migration • movement • utopia

History of the Human Sciences, Vol. 22, No. 4, 93-121 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0952695109337694


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