Collection
Special Issue: Envisioning Post-Capitalist Utopias via Simulation
In this Call for Papers we invite contributions critically assessing different forms and/or practices of utopian transformation studies from an evolutionary political economy perspective. We thus welcome models, simulations as well as theoretical and critical discussions from respective fields (economic sociology, media and cultural studies, complexity economics, evolutionary economics/political economy, institutional economics), debating the nexus of critique, utopia and simulation as well as setting forth a process of mutual engagement in such endeavours.
The latest phase of capitalist development brought a series of critical processes to the foreground, drastically reshaping economic conditions of reproduction, social strata of identity and class as well as the planetary biosphere and its climate. Serious vulnerabilities and contradictions have emerged around the core institutions of capitalist development: the state, the market and the money form of capital. The current global political economic configuration demands strong proposals engaging in interdisciplinary debates about long-run futures of societal evolution, thereby reflecting and going beyond current transition and transformation studies.
Utopianism has always been a controversial topic. The recent decades however have seen a revival of scientific utopianism, ranging from treating it as a distinct and powerful methodological strategy to the envisioning of real utopias. The idea of developing a theoretical apparatus radically negating the core institutions in political economy is not a novel one for the study of utopias.
Specific to this SI is the methodological approach. The call for this special issue asks explicitly for contributions that are treating utopian transformational evolution with social simulation methods (top-down or bottom-up models), in order to enrich and sharpen counterfactuals through concrete models in large-scale in-silico experiments.
Editors
-
Hanno Pahl
-
Manuel Scholz-Wäckerle
-
Jens Schröter
