The Concept of Utopia

Abstract

Like other fields of inquiry, the social sciences have attempted to move with the times, even to the point of developing new descriptors for familiar social phenomena. The study of utopian societies is a case in point; a number of related components must be clarified at the outset of this discussion. First of all, it is important to note that not all utopian experiments are communal in nature, although the tendency to believe that they are is fairly common. Neither are utopian communities necessarily religious in philosophy, nor are they necessarily antiestablishment or delusional gatherings. It is true that many of them originated in response to the dreams or visions of a particularly charismatic individual, but others emerged as a result of rational group action or as what might be termed extended forms of social antithesis.

To dismiss utopia as a foolish and discredited notion without relevance to the world today would be to dismiss an ideal which has an irresistible attraction for large numbers of people and which helps to explain behavior that otherwise would seem incomprehensible.

—Peyton E. Richter (1971a:1)