Utopia and Organization

Are ideas about utopia redundant? Is there any point in speculating about better alternatives to Western liberalism? This volume addresses these questions, evaluating the prospects for utopian thought and practice in a world organized by market managerialism.

The contributors to this book all treat utopia as an organizational matter. Rather than focusing on the literary, historical or political meaning of utopias, they see utopias as statements of alternative organization, attempts to put forward plans which remedy the shortcomings of a particular age. Using examples as diverse as train accidents, novels and gardening, they engage in a variety of novel and thought–provoking ways with issues of organization and disorganization, dystopia and crypto–utopia, management and anti–management.

1.Utopia and the Organizational Imagination: Outopia: Martin Parker (Keele University).

2. Organized and Disorganized Utopias: An essay on Presumption: Christopher Grey (University of Cambridge) & Christina Garsten (University of Stockholm).

3. What is a Crypto–Utopia and Why does it matter?: Roy Stager Jacques.

4. Utopia or Ideology: Karl Mannheim and the Place of Theory: Stephen Ackroyd (University of Lancaster).

5. Autonomy as Utopia or Dystopia: David Knights (University of Keele) & Hugh Willmott (University of Cambridge).

6. Local Entanglements or Utopian Moves: an Inquiry into Train Accidents: John Law (University of Lancaster) & Annemarie Mol (University of Twente).

7. Utopiary: Utopias, gardens and organization: Gibson Burrell (University of Warwick) & Karen Dale (University of Warwick).

8. The Consumption of Time and Space: Utopias and the English Romantic Garden: Rolland Munro (University of Keele).

9. Writing Utopia: Geoff Lightfoot (University of Keele) & Simon Lilley (University of Keele).

10. Keeping the Black Flag Flying: Anarchy, Utopia and the politics of nostalgia: Patrick Reedy (University of York).

11. Utopianism and the Cultivation of Possibilities: Grassroots movements of hope: Valerie Fournier (University of Keele).

12. Utopia and the Organizational Imagination: Eutopia: Martin Parker (Universiy of Keele).

Martin Parker is reader in social and organisational theory at the University of Keele. He holds degrees in anthropology and sociology from the Universities of Sussex, London and Staffordshire and previously taught sociology at Staffordshire. His writing is usually concerned with organisational theory and the sociology of culture but he engages in diettante dabbling in anything else that catches his eye. His recent books are Organisational Culture and Identity (Sage, 2000) and Against Management (Polity 2002) as well as the co–edited Science Fiction and Organisation (Routledge 2001) and The Age of Anxiety (Blackwell 2001).