Utopianism and Radicalism in a Reforming America

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Author :
Publisher : Praeger
ISBN 13 : 0313303797
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (133 download)

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Book Synopsis Utopianism and Radicalism in a Reforming America by : Francis Robert Shor

Download or read book Utopianism and Radicalism in a Reforming America written by Francis Robert Shor and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1997-08-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopianism and radicalism achieve greater prominence when economic and social crises render the dominant moral and political universe open to question. The essays in this book examine how utopianism and radicalism informed the literary expressions, political discourse, communal experiments, and cultural projects in the U.S. from 1888 to 1918. In particular, these essays track how socialism, anarchism, syndicalism, feminism, and black nationalism contested the ideological terrain during a period when reform ideas and movements were beginning to reshape that terrain. The degree to which utopianism and radicalism were involved in that reformulation, either in its expanse or its constraint, is of prime interest throughout the book. Teachers and students interested in utopian studies, American studies, and the cultural/intellectual history of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era will find this book highly useful.

Paradise Now

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Author :
Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 0812983890
Total Pages : 514 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (129 download)

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Book Synopsis Paradise Now by : Chris Jennings

Download or read book Paradise Now written by Chris Jennings and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For readers of Jill Lepore, Joseph J. Ellis, and Tony Horwitz comes a lively, thought-provoking intellectual history of the golden age of American utopianism—and the bold, revolutionary, and eccentric visions for the future put forward by five of history’s most influential utopian movements. In the wake of the Enlightenment and the onset of industrialism, a generation of dreamers took it upon themselves to confront the messiness and injustice of a rapidly changing world. To our eyes, the utopian communities that took root in America in the nineteenth century may seem ambitious to the point of delusion, but they attracted members willing to dedicate their lives to creating a new social order and to asking the bold question What should the future look like? In Paradise Now, Chris Jennings tells the story of five interrelated utopian movements, revealing their relevance both to their time and to our own. Here is Mother Ann Lee, the prophet of the Shakers, who grew up in newly industrialized Manchester, England—and would come to build a quiet but fierce religious tradition on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Even as the society she founded spread across the United States, the Welsh industrialist Robert Owen came to the Indiana frontier to build an egalitarian, rationalist utopia he called the New Moral World. A decade later, followers of the French visionary Charles Fourier blanketed America with colonies devoted to inaugurating a new millennium of pleasure and fraternity. Meanwhile, the French radical Étienne Cabet sailed to Texas with hopes of establishing a communist paradise dedicated to ideals that would be echoed in the next century. And in New York’s Oneida Community, a brilliant Vermonter named John Humphrey Noyes set about creating a new society in which the human spirit could finally be perfected in the image of God. Over time, these movements fell apart, and the national mood that had inspired them was drowned out by the dream of westward expansion and the waking nightmare of the Civil War. Their most galvanizing ideas, however, lived on, and their audacity has influenced countless political movements since. Their stories remain an inspiration for everyone who seeks to build a better world, for all who ask, What should the future look like? Praise for Paradise Now “Uncommonly smart and beautifully written . . . a triumph of scholarship and narration: five stand-alone community studies and a coherent, often spellbinding history of the United States during its tumultuous first half-century . . . Although never less than evenhanded, and sometimes deliciously wry, Jennings writes with obvious affection for his subjects. To read Paradise Now is to be dazzled, humbled and occasionally flabbergasted by the amount of energy and talent sacrificed at utopia’s altar.”—The New York Times Book Review “Writing an impartial, respectful account of these philanthropies and follies is no small task, but Mr. Jennings largely pulls it off with insight and aplomb. Indulgently sympathetic to the utopian impulse in general, he tells a good story. His explanations of the various reformist credos are patient, thought-provoking and . . . entertaining.”—The Wall Street Journal “As a tour guide, Jennings is thoughtful, engaging and witty in the right doses. . . . He makes the subject his own with fresh eyes and a crisp narrative, rich with detail. . . . In the end, Jennings writes, the communards’ disregard for the world as it exists sealed their fate. But in revisiting their stories, he makes a compelling case that our present-day ‘deficit of imagination’ could be similarly fated.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Utopianism and Radicalism in a Reforming America

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Author :
Publisher : Praeger
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Utopianism and Radicalism in a Reforming America by : Francis Robert Shor

Download or read book Utopianism and Radicalism in a Reforming America written by Francis Robert Shor and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1997-08-30 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopianism and radicalism achieve greater prominence when economic and social crises render the dominant moral and political universe open to question. The essays in this book examine how utopianism and radicalism informed the literary expressions, political discourse, communal experiments, and cultural projects in the U.S. from 1888 to 1918. In particular, these essays track how socialism, anarchism, syndicalism, feminism, and black nationalism contested the ideological terrain during a period when reform ideas and movements were beginning to reshape that terrain. The degree to which utopianism and radicalism were involved in that reformulation, either in its expanse or its constraint, is of prime interest throughout the book. Teachers and students interested in utopian studies, American studies, and the cultural/intellectual history of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era will find this book highly useful.

Tinkering toward Utopia

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Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674044525
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Tinkering toward Utopia by : David B. TYACK

Download or read book Tinkering toward Utopia written by David B. TYACK and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over a century, Americans have translated their cultural anxieties and hopes into dramatic demands for educational reform. Although policy talk has sounded a millennial tone, the actual reforms have been gradual and incremental. Tinkering toward Utopia documents the dynamic tension between Americans' faith in education as a panacea and the moderate pace of change in educational practices. In this book, David Tyack and Larry Cuban explore some basic questions about the nature of educational reform. Why have Americans come to believe that schooling has regressed? Have educational reforms occurred in cycles, and if so, why? Why has it been so difficult to change the basic institutional patterns of schooling? What actually happened when reformers tried to reinvent schooling? Tyack and Cuban argue that the ahistorical nature of most current reform proposals magnifies defects and understates the difficulty of changing the system. Policy talk has alternated between lamentation and overconfidence. The authors suggest that reformers today need to focus on ways to help teachers improve instruction from the inside out instead of decreeing change by remote control, and that reformers must also keep in mind the democratic purposes that guide public education.

In Search of the Utopian States of America

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Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030602796
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis In Search of the Utopian States of America by : Verena Adamik

Download or read book In Search of the Utopian States of America written by Verena Adamik and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book endeavours to understand the seemingly direct link between utopianism and the USA, discussing novels that have never been brought together in this combination before, even though they all revolve around intentional communities: Imlay’s The Emigrants (1793), Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance (1852), Howland’s Papas Own Girl (1874), Griggs’s Imperium in Imperio (1899), and Du Bois’s The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911). They relate nation and utopia not by describing perfect societies, but by writing about attempts to immediately live radically different lives. Signposting the respective communal history, the readings provide a literary perspective to communal studies, and add to a deeply necessary historicization for strictly literary approaches to US utopianism, and for studies that focus on Pilgrims/Puritans/Founding Fathers as utopian practitioners. This book therefore highlights how the authors evaluated the USA’s utopian potential and traces the nineteenth-century development of the utopian imagination from various perspectives.

Utopia Drive

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Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374710759
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (747 download)

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Book Synopsis Utopia Drive by : Erik Reece

Download or read book Utopia Drive written by Erik Reece and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Erik Reece, life, at last, was good: he was newly married, gainfully employed, living in a creekside cabin in his beloved Kentucky woods. It sounded, as he describes it, "like a country song with a happy ending." And yet he was still haunted by a sense that the world--or, more specifically, his country--could be better. He couldn't ignore his conviction that, in fact, the good ol' USA was in the midst of great social, environmental, and political crises--that for the first time in our history, we were being swept into a future that had no future. Where did we--here, in the land of Jeffersonian optimism and better tomorrows--go wrong? Rather than despair, Reece turned to those who had dared to imagine radically different futures for America. What followed was a giant road trip and research adventure through the sites of America's utopian communities, both historical and contemporary, known and unknown, successful and catastrophic. What he uncovered was not just a series of lost histories and broken visionaries but also a continuing and vital but hidden idealistic tradition in American intellectual history. Utopia Drive is an important and definitive reconstruction of that tradition. It is also, perhaps, a new framework to help us find a genuinely sustainable way forward. " ... an engaging exploration -- and example -- of the fruitful tunnel-visions of dreamers turned doers." - Publishers Weekly

Printed in Utopia

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Author :
Publisher : John Hunt Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1789043840
Total Pages : 307 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (89 download)

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Book Synopsis Printed in Utopia by : Ed Simon

Download or read book Printed in Utopia written by Ed Simon and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2020-07-31 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Printed in Utopia examines the bloody era of the Renaissance in all of its contradictions and moments of utopian possibility. From the dissenting religious anarchists of the 17th century, to the feminist verse of Amelia Lanyer and Richard Barnfield's poetics of gay rights. From an analysis of the rhetoric of feces in Martin Luther, to the spiritual liberation of Anna Trapnell. What is presented is the radical Renaissance too often hidden away, an age which birthed our modern world in all of its ugliness, but which still holds the latent seeds for a new and better future world.

Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction

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Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191614424
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (916 download)

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Book Synopsis Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction by : Lyman Tower Sargent

Download or read book Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction written by Lyman Tower Sargent and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-09-23 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are many debates about utopia - What constitutes a utopia? Are utopias benign or dangerous? Is the idea of utopianism essential to Christianity or heretical? What is the relationship between utopia and ideology? This Very Short Introduction explores these issues and examines utopianism and its history. Lyman Sargent discusses the role of utopianism in literature, and in the development of colonies and in immigration. The idea of utopia has become commonplace in social and political thought, both negatively and positively. Some thinkers see a trajectory from utopia to totalitarianism with violence an inevitable part of the mix. Others see utopia directly connected to freedom and as a necessary element in the fight against totalitarianism. In Christianity utopia is labelled as both heretical and as a fundamental part of Christian belief, and such debates are also central to such fields as architecture, town and city planning, and sociology among many others Sargent introduces and summarizes the debates over the utopia in literature, communal studies, social and political theory, and theology. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

American Foreign Policy and the Utopian Imagination

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Author :
Publisher : Univ of Massachusetts Press
ISBN 13 : 9781558497702
Total Pages : 190 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (977 download)

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Book Synopsis American Foreign Policy and the Utopian Imagination by : Susan M. Matarese

Download or read book American Foreign Policy and the Utopian Imagination written by Susan M. Matarese and published by Univ of Massachusetts Press. This book was released on 2010-03-02 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative look at the cultural roots of American foreign policy.

Bernie Sanders’s Democratic Socialism

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Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030696618
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis Bernie Sanders’s Democratic Socialism by : Nicolas Gachon

Download or read book Bernie Sanders’s Democratic Socialism written by Nicolas Gachon and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-05-09 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a framework for understanding and analyzing Bernie Sanders’s democratic socialism, its origins, its maturation, and its evolution between 1972, when Sanders ran for the Vermont gubernatorial election for the first time, and 2020, when he made his second presidential run. The core argument is that Bernie Sanders’s characteristic brand of socialism evolved from the mould of late 19th century utopian radicalism to radical demands for state and corporate accountability in the 21st century, turning into a social movement for reparative justice that rose to national prominence in the wake of the Great Recession in 2008 and of the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011.

Utopias and Utopians

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135947732
Total Pages : 423 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (359 download)

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Book Synopsis Utopias and Utopians by : Richard C.S. Trahair

Download or read book Utopias and Utopians written by Richard C.S. Trahair and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopian ventures are worth close attention, to help us understand why some succeed and others fail, for they offer hope for an improved life on earth. Utopias and Utopians is a comprehensive guide to utopian communities and their founders. Some works look at literary utopias or political utopias, etc., and others examine the utopias of only one country: this work examines utopias from antiquity to the present and surveys utopian efforts around the world. Of more than 600 alphabetically arranged entries roughly half are descriptions of utopian ventures; the other half are biographies of those who were involved. Entries are followed by a list of sources and a general bibliography concludes the volume.

The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures

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Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030886549
Total Pages : 721 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (38 download)

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Book Synopsis The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures by : Peter Marks

Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures written by Peter Marks and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures celebrates a literary genre already over 500 years old. Specially commissioned essays from established and emerging international scholars reflect the vibrancy of utopian vision, and its resiliency as idea, genre, and critical mode. Covering politics, environment, geography, body and mind, and social organization, the volume surveys current research and maps new areas of study. The chapters include investigations of anarchism, biopolitics, and postcolonialism and study film, art, and literature. Each essay considers central questions and key primary works, evaluates the most recent research, and outlines contemporary debates. Literatures of Africa, Australia, China, Latin America, and the Middle East are discussed in this global, cross-disciplinary, and comprehensive volume.

The Archaeology of Utopian and Intentional Communities

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Publisher : University Press of Florida
ISBN 13 : 0813072654
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis The Archaeology of Utopian and Intentional Communities by : Stacy C. Kozakavich

Download or read book The Archaeology of Utopian and Intentional Communities written by Stacy C. Kozakavich and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2023-01-24 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconstructing the past of intentional communities from across the United States Utopian and intentional communities have dotted the American landscape since the colonial era, yet only in recent decades have archaeologists begun analyzing the material culture left behind by these groups. This volume includes discussions of the Shakers, the Harmony Society, the Moravians, the Oneida community, Brook Farm, and Mormon towns. Also featured is an expanded case study of California's late nineteenth-century Kaweah Colony, offering a new perspective on approaches to the study of utopian societies. Surveys of settlement patterns, the built environment, and even the smallest artifacts such as tobacco pipes and buttons are used to uncover what daily life was like in these communities. Archaeological evidence reveals how these communities upheld their societal ideals. Shakers, for example, constructed homes with separate living quarters for men and women, reflecting the group's commitment to celibacy. On the other hand, some communities diverged from their principles, as evidenced by the presence of a key and coins found at Kaweah, indicating private property and a cash economy despite claims to communal and egalitarian practices. Stacy Kozakavich argues archaeology has much to offer in the reconstruction and interpretation of community pasts for the public. Material evidence provides information about these communities free from the underlying assumptions, positive or negative, that characterize past interpretations. She urges researchers not to dismiss these communal experiments as quaint failures but to question how the lifestyles of the people in these groups are interpreted for visitors today. She reminds us that there is inspiration to be found in the unique ways these intentional communities pursued radical social goals.

The Last Utopians

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691202869
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis The Last Utopians by : Michael Robertson

Download or read book The Last Utopians written by Michael Robertson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Last Utopians delves into the biographies of four key figures--Edward Bellamy, William Morris, Edward Carpenter, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman--who lived during an extraordinary period of literary and social experimentation. The publication of Bellamy's Looking Backward in 1888 opened the floodgates of an unprecedented wave of utopian writing. Morris, the Arts and Crafts pioneer, was a committed socialist whose News from Nowhere envisions a workers' Arcadia. Carpenter boldly argued that homosexuals constitute a utopian vanguard. Gilman, a women's rights activist and the author of "The Yellow Wallpaper," wrote numerous utopian fictions, including Herland, a visionary tale of an all-female society. These writers, Robertson shows, shared a belief in radical equality, imagining an end to class and gender hierarchies and envisioning new forms of familial and romantic relationships. They held liberal religious beliefs about a universal spirit uniting humanity. They believed in social transformation through nonviolent means and were committed to living a simple life rooted in a restored natural world. And their legacy remains with us today, as Robertson describes in entertaining firsthand accounts of contemporary utopianism, ranging from Occupy Wall Street to a Radical Faerie retreat.

America as Utopia

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis America as Utopia by : Kenneth M. Roemer

Download or read book America as Utopia written by Kenneth M. Roemer and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Dystopia

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198785682
Total Pages : 569 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (987 download)

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Book Synopsis Dystopia by : Gregory Claeys

Download or read book Dystopia written by Gregory Claeys and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dystopia: A Natural History is the first monograph devoted to the concept of dystopia. Taking the term to encompass both a literary tradition of satirical works, mostly on totalitarianism, as well as real despotisms and societies in a state of disastrous collapse, this volume redefines thecentral concepts and the chronology of the genre and offers a paradigm-shifting understanding of the subject.Part One assesses the theory and prehistory of "dystopia". By contrast to utopia, conceived as promoting an ideal of friendship defined as "enhanced sociability", dystopia is defined by estrangement, fear, and the proliferation of "enemy" categories. A "natural history" of dystopia thus concentratesupon the centrality of the passion or emotion of fear and hatred in modern despotisms. The work of Le Bon, Freud, and others is used to show how dystopian groups use such emotions. Utopia and dystopia are portrayed not as opposites, but as extremes on a spectrum of sociability, defined by aheightened form of group identity. The prehistory of the process whereby 'enemies' are demonised is explored from early conceptions of monstrosity through Christian conceptions of the devil and witchcraft, and the persecution of heresy.Part Two surveys the major dystopian moments in twentieth century despotisms, focussing in particular upon Nazi Germany, Stalinism, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and Cambodia under Pol Pot. The concentration here is upon the political religion hypothesis as a key explanation for the chiefexcesses of communism in particular.Part Three examines literary dystopias. It commences well before the usual starting-point in the secondary literature, in anti-Jacobin writings of the 1790s. Two chapters address the main twentieth-century texts usually studied as representative of the genre, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World andGeorge Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The remainder of the section examines the evolution of the genre in the second half of the twentieth century down to the present.

Radicalism, Revolution, and Reform in Modern China

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 0739165747
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis Radicalism, Revolution, and Reform in Modern China by : Catherine Lynch

Download or read book Radicalism, Revolution, and Reform in Modern China written by Catherine Lynch and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2011-03-31 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume illuminates the relationship of China's radical past to its reformist present as China makes a way forward through very differently conceived and contested visions of the future. In the context of early twenty-first century problems and the failures of global capitalism, is China's history of revolutionary socialism an aberration that is soon to be forgotten, or can it serve as a resource for creating a more fully human and radically democratic China with implications for all of us? Ranging from the early years of China's revolutionary twentieth-century to the present, the essays collected here look at the past and present of China with a view toward better understanding the ideas, ideals, and people who have dared to imagine radical transformation of their worlds and to assess the conceptual, political, and social limitations of these visions and their implementations. The volume's chapters focus on these issues from a range of vantage points, representing a spectrum of current scholarship. The first half of the book brings new insights to understanding how early-twentieth century intellectuals interpreted ideas that allowed them to break with China's past and to envision new paths to a modern future. It treats of Chen Duxiu, a founder of the Communist party, Mao Zedong, and Mao in relation to the non-Communist Liang Shuming and with the Dalai Lama. With continuing threads of nation and nationalities, of peasants, utopias and dystopias linking the chapters, the book's second half looks broadly at the consequences of the implementations of radical ideas, at the same time critiquing our accepted frameworks of analysis. Moving up to the present, the book investigates the effects of the reforms since the 1980s on long-term environmental degradation and on the emergence of a capitalist rural economy. It gives an unsparing view into contemporary rural China through independent films. The book concludes with an analysis of the unshakable persistence of the shibboleth, 'the rise of China,' in popular and academic imagination and argues for the importance instead of taking seriously the twentieth-century history of radicalism in China and its significance for understanding China's present and its future potentials.