The debate about utopias from a sociological perspective

Abstract

This article provides a sociological perspective on the study of utopias and utopian thinking by focussing on the disciplinary assumptions of various major writers on the subject. The historians deploy astatic and theory less narrative code lacking a dynamic sense of social structure. Futurologists have made specific, but limited and risky, statistical predictions of future social trends. Sociologists have shown how modern socialist utopias presuppose that society is malleable and amenable to secular control. Others have speculated about the catalytic function of utopias in the face of the repressive Soviet regime. The social philosophers of the ‘Critical Theory’ school have justified the possibility of the socialist utopia through evermore complex transcendental arguments. The article doubts the cognitive value of the results and warns of the costs of striving to achieve the unachievable