Duke University Press
  • Like this title? Start a Reading List with others like it!

  • Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces

    Author(s): Davina Cooper
    Published: 2013
    Pages: 296
    Illustrations: 12 photographs
  • Paperback: $24.95 - Forthcoming in December 2013
    978-0-8223-5569-4
    1. Interested in this item?
  • Cloth: $89.95 - Forthcoming in December 2013
    978-0-8223-5555-7
    1. Interested in this item?
  • Acknowledgments  ix
    1. Introduction  1
    2. Toward a Utopian Conceptual Attitude  24
    3. Casting Equality and the Touch of State Governance  45
    4. Public Nudism and the Pursuit of Equality  73
    5. Unsettling Feminist Care Ethics through a Women's and Trans Bathhouse  100
    6. Normative Time and the Challenge of Community Labor in Local Exchange Trading Schemes  129
    7. Property as Belonging at Summerhill School  155
    8. Market Play at Speaker's Corner  186
    9. Conclusion  217
    Notes  229
    References  251
    Index  277
  • "Exploring a wide variety of projects with more or less radical agendas, from nudist colonies to alternative schools to official equality rights bureaus, Davina Cooper's brilliant work shows us nothing less than a new way to do theory. Everyday Utopias is itself an everyday utopian theoretical space, showing the fruitfulness of eschewing tired polemics in favor of close analyses of the myriad social experiments going on around us."—Mariana Valverde, author of Everyday Law on the Street: City Governance in an Age of Diversity

  • Permission to Photocopy (coursepacks)

    If you are requesting permission to photocopy material for classroom use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at copyright.com;

    If the Copyright Clearance Center cannot grant permission, you may request permission from our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

    Permission to Reprint

    If you are requesting permission to reprint DUP material (journal or book selection) in another book or in any other format, contact our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

    Images/Art

    Many images/art used in material copyrighted by Duke University Press are controlled, not by the Press, but by the owner of the image. Please check the credit line adjacent to the illustration, as well as the front and back matter of the book for a list of credits. You must obtain permission directly from the owner of the image. Occasionally, Duke University Press controls the rights to maps or other drawings. Please direct permission requests for these images to permissions@dukeupress.edu.
    For book covers to accompany reviews, please contact the publicity department.

    Subsidiary Rights/Foreign Translations

    If you're interested in a Duke University Press book for subsidiary rights/translations, please contact permissions@dukeupress.edu. Include the book title/author, rights sought, and estimated print run.

    Disability Requests

    Instructions for requesting an electronic text on behalf of a student with disabilities are available here.

    Rights & Permissions Contact Information

    Email: permissions@dukeupress.edu
    Email contact for coursepacks: asstpermissions@dukeupress.edu
    Fax: 919-688-4574
    Mail:
    Duke University Press
    Rights and Permissions
    905 W. Main Street
    Suite 18B
    Durham, NC 27701

    For all requests please include:
    1. Author's name. If book has an editor that is different from the article author, include editor's name also.
    2. Title of the journal article or book chapter and title of journal or title of book
    3. Page numbers (if excerpting, provide specifics)
    For coursepacks, please also note: The number of copies requested, the school and professor requesting
    For reprints and subsidiary rights, please also note: Your volume title, publication date, publisher, print run, page count, rights sought
  • Description

    Everyday utopias enact conventional activities in unusual ways. Instead of dreaming about a better world, participants seek to create it. As such, their activities provide vibrant and stimulating contexts for considering the terms of social life, of how we live together and are governed. Weaving conceptual theorizing together with social analysis, Davina Cooper examines utopian projects as seemingly diverse as a feminist bathhouse, state equality initiatives, community trading networks, and a democratic school where students and staff collaborate in governing. She draws from firsthand observations and interviews with participants to argue that utopian projects have the potential to revitalize progressive politics through the ways their innovative practices incite us to rethink mainstream concepts including property, markets, care, touch, and equality. This is no straightforward story of success, however, but instead a tale of the challenges concepts face as they move between being imagined, actualized, hoped for, and struggled over. As dreaming drives new practices and practices drive new dreams, everyday utopias reveal how hard work, feeling, ethical dilemmas, and sometimes, failure, bring concepts to life.

    About The Author(s)

    Davina Cooper is Professor of Law and Political Theory at Kent Law School at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. She is the author of Challenging Diversity: Rethinking Equality and the Value of Difference; Governing Out of Order: Space, Law and the Politics of Belonging; and Power in Struggle: Feminism, Sexuality and the State.
Explore More

Sign-in or register now to opt-in to receive periodic emails about titles within this subject.

Share

Create a reading list or add to an existing list. Sign-in or register now to continue.