I’ve also just submitted the following paper proposal for consideration at the International Studies Association‘s next annual convention to be held in San Francisco in April 2024.
Power and Enacting Real Utopias
Since the Cold War’s end in 1991, the politico-economic ideology called neoliberalism has dominated Western societies. The sub-field and the social theory of Utopics challenges this neoliberal hegemony. Now that geopolitical wild cards like the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russo-Ukrainian War; and a looming global recession have begun to erode neoliberalism’s microfoundations and its public consent, new postcapitalist and post-liberal visions are beginning to emerge. This paper critically examines, contrasts, and compares three different approaches: (1) the late Marxist sociologist Professor Erik Olin Wright’s advocacy of real utopias; (2) Shrii Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar’s progressive utilisation theory (PROUT) seen via the macrohistorical and futures studies work of Professor Sohail Inayatullah; and (3) the Dissident Right white nationalist futures of Counter-Currents.com publisher Greg Johnson, his critics, and his deplatforming by influential companies like Amazon. How does each approach envision both individual and collective power? What kind of utopia does each approach seek to come into being in the world, and by what means? How can relationality help us to understand, envision, and to enact the kinds of utopias that we normatively desire in the world as preferable?