Utopianism and the Cultivation of Possibilities: Grassroots Movements of Hope

Abstract

Following the anti-capitalist demonstrations at Seattle, representatives of the most powerful Western states and corporations -Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and corporate executives such as Bill Gates and Nike CEO Phil Knight -met in Davos, Switzerland, to outline a 'Third Way' that was to give global capitalism a new conscience. The 'third way' went something like: 'Globalization is the wave of the future. But globalization is leaving the majority behind. Those voices spoke out in Seattle. It's time to bring the fruits of globalization and free trade to the many' (Bello, 2000:6). So if we are to believe our state and corporate leaders, the answer to the devastating effects of globalization on the most disenfranchised is to throw in more globalization and free trade (Körten, 1995). It is as if no amount of protest about the wreckage caused by market liberalism can shake off the faith in its promise, or at least in its inevitability. We, or at least some of us, seem to have become unable to conceive of anything other than global capitalism as the solution to everything, including the problems it itself creates. This sense of closure is maybe best captured by Fukuyama's (1992) end of history thesis. According to Fukuyama, the collapse of the Berlin Wall has shown us the true path and paved the way for the triumph of capitalism and liberal democracy, 'We cannot picture to ourselves a world that is essentially different from the present one, and at the same time better' (Fukuyama, 1992:46, see also Grey and Garsten, this volume).This inability to conceive of anything different seems indeed to be spreading like a disease among the political class, the media and intellectuals (Derrida, 1994). And if one looks at the field of organization studies specifically, one may be forgiven for thinking that there aren't many alternatives to capitalist corporations. Thus even the 'radical' visions of self-declared 'management revolutionaries' reveal a rather atrophied imagination in breaking away from the historically contingent principles underpinning modern organizations (eg waged labour, corporations, hierarchism) (Blaug, 1998; Jacques, 1996, Reedy, this volume). The deployment of the vocabulary of radicalism by corporate executives and proponents of neoliberalism seems to have sucked up from under our

The possibilities for university-based public-good professional education: a case-study from South Africa based on the ‘capability approach’

“…Furthermore, a comparative approach allows for combinations of motivations in professional work: it disallows the construction of a 'perfect' public-good professional who sacrifices all for the good of clients and communities. Guarding against absolutism avoids the impossibilities and illiberalities of classical utopianism (Fournier 2002). Sen describes as 'public reasoning' the discussions that arise from such comparative evaluations.…”

Sucking, Bleeding, Breaking: On the Dialectics of Vampirism, Capital, and Time

“…In relation to time, Levinas (1987) offers a reminder that the possibility of a future rests on the chances of a time that is fundamentally different from the present. Without difference, without the possibility of a different world, there would be a continuity of the present, but no future, and hence no time (see also Fournier, 2002). As Levinas (1987: 76) puts it, 'The future is what is in no way grasped.…”

The ambivalence of creative activism as a reorganization of critique

“…They should rather be understood as an investigation of alternative principles of organization and social order. I therefore, like Valérie Fournier (2002), use utopianism to emphasize movement over static visions of a better order as I focus on its critical, transgressive and transformative functions rather than its form and content (as do Levitas 1990;Sargisson 1996;Harvey 2000). It is exactly the decentralized and project based nature of this multiplicity of activists' cadres, the inconsistency of the movement that makes them effective vehicles for utopianism.…”