This collection examines contemporary artist and activist-inspired utopian projects and DIY communities of interest. Throwing into relief the immense difficulty of thinking beyond the current system of consumer capitalism, coupled with the powerful desire to do just that, this anthology explores what our ideals and desires tell us about ourselves.

At first glance, contemporary popular culture, filled with bleak images of the future, seems to have given up on the possibility of positive collective change. Below the surface, however, alternative culture is rife with artist-led projects, activist movements, and subcultural communities of interest that seek to spark the collective imagination and to encourage hunger for alternatives. More playfully self-conscious than past utopian movements, today’s are often whimsical or ironic, but are still entirely earnest. Artists invite us to re-author city maps, or archive individual ideas for the future, while maker collectives urge us to rethink our relationship to consumer goods. All seem to have grown out of a similar do-it-yourself ethos and alternative culture. One of the central conflicts informing these case studies is that while it remains immensely difficult to envision anything outside of the current system of consumer capitalism, there is nevertheless a powerful desire to take it apart in piecemeal ways. We see the longing for new social and political narratives, new forms of communion and sociability, and new imaginings of the possible, longings that are currently unmet by mainstream culture, but that are taking expression in myriad ways at the local level. Taken as a whole, this collection examines what our grand ideals and playful daydreams tell us about ourselves.

Protracted economic crises, accelerating inequalities, and increased resource scarcity present significant challenges for the majority of Africa's urban population. Limited state capacity and widespread infrastructure deficiencies common in cities across the continent often require residents to draw on their own resources, knowledge, and expertise to resolve these life and livelihood dilemmas. DIY Urbanism in Africa investigates these practices. It develops a theoretical framework through which to analyze them, and it presents a series of case studies to demonstrate how residents invent new DIY tactics and strategies in response to security, place-making, or economic problems. This book offers a timely critical intervention into literatures on urban development and politics in Africa. It is valuable to students, policymakers, and urban practitioners keen to understand the mechanisms and political implications of widespread dynamics now shaping Africa's expanding urban environments.

This book contains 15 essays which are the result of the 7th International Conference of Utopian Studies held in Spain in 2006, either debating the subject, or suggesting alternative readings to some of the theoretical ideas raised within utopian studies.

Culture is one of the most important elements for explaining individuals' behaviors within the social structure. It meets the various social needs of members of a society by directing how individuals must react to various events and how to act in specific circumstances. A planned and systematic process is required for disseminating this cultural accumulation as a policy, which is produced collectively by all members within their everyday life practices. The Handbook of Research on Examining Cultural Policies Through Digital Communication provides emerging research on this aspect of cultural policy, which is formed within the framework of this systematic process in a strategic manner and can be defined as various activities of the state intended for art, human sciences, and cultural inheritance. Creating such cultural policies involves the establishment of measures and organizations required for the development of each individual, providing economic and social facilities, all of which are actions intended for directing society. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as long-distance education, digital citizenship, and public diplomacy, this book is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, advanced-level students, sociologists, international and national organizations, and government officials.

As DIY digital maker culture proliferates globally, research on these practices is also maturing. Still, particular terminologies dominate beyond their Western contexts, and technocultural histories of making are often rendered as over-simplified technomyths that render invisible diverse local practices. This special issue brings together contributions that highlight how historicising plays a role in mythmaking and the creation of social imaginaries. The peer-reviewed articles present cultural-historical perspectives, technology and design histories and historiographies, and alternative histories related to postcolonial resistance. The contributions illustrate the relevance of craft to making as a reparative practice after the Salvadoran Civil War and as a leisure activity to spark »innovation« in mid-century corporate culture; the political-economic background to the diffusion and differentiation of community workshops in contemporary Spain and post-war Germany; and the various aesthetics and politics of technology culture manifestos over the years. The issue features an interview with Peter Harper of the Alternative Technology movement by Simon Sadler, as well as an interview with Felix Holm and Suné Stassen on the antecedents of making and design in South Africa. The special issue is rounded off with six short alternative (hi)stories of DIY making including multiple practices, geographies and temporalities.

How popular culture is engaged by activists to effect emancipatory political change One cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like. Civic imagination is the capacity to conceptualize alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions; it also requires the ability to see oneself as a civic agent capable of making change, as a participant in a larger democratic culture. Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination represents a call for greater clarity about what we’re fighting for—not just what we’re fighting against. Across more than thirty examples from social movements around the world, this casebook proposes “civic imagination” as a framework that can help us identify, support, and practice new kinds of communal participation. As the contributors demonstrate, young people, in particular, are turning to popular culture—from Beyoncé to Bollywood, from Smokey Bear to Hamilton, from comic books to VR—for the vernacular through which they can express their discontent with current conditions. A young activist uses YouTube to speak back against J. K. Rowling in the voice of Cho Chang in order to challenge the superficial representation of Asian Americans in children’s literature. Murals in Los Angeles are employed to construct a mythic imagination of Chicano identity. Twitter users have turned to #BlackGirlMagic to highlight the black radical imagination and construct new visions of female empowerment. In each instance, activists demonstrate what happens when the creative energies of fans are infused with deep political commitment, mobilizing new visions of what a better democracy might look like.