Earth Perfect? Nature, Utopia and the Garden is an eclectic, yet rigorous reflection on the relationship--historical, present and future--between humanity and the garden. Through the lens of Utopian Studies--the interdisciplinary field that encompasses fictions all the way through to actual political projects, and urban ideals; in a nutshell, addressing the human natural drive towards the ideal--Earth Perfect? brings together a selection of inspiring essays, each contributed by foremost writers from the fields of architecture, history of art, classics, cultural studies, farming, geography, horticulture, landscape architecture, law, literature, philosophy, urban planning and the natural sciences. Through these joined voices, the garden emerges as a site of contestation and a repository for symbolic, spiritual, social, political and ecological meaning. Questions such as: "what is the role of the garden in defining humanity's ideal relationship with nature?" and "how should we garden in the face of catastrophic ecological decline?" are addressed through wideranging case studies, including ancient Roman Gardens in Pompeii, Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, the Gardens of Versailles, organic farming in New England and Bohemia's secret gardens, as well as landscape in contemporary architecture. Issues relating to the utopian garden are explored thematically rather than chronologically, and organised in six chapters: "Being in nature", "inscribing the garden", "green/house", "The garden politic", "economies of the garden" and "how then shall we garden?". each essay is both individual in scope and part of the wider discourse of the book as a whole, and each is lusciously illustrated, bringing to life the subject with diverse visual material ranging from photography to historical documents, maps and artworks.

Central to the idea of a perfect society is the idea that communities must be strong and bound together with shared ideologies. However, while this may be true, rarely are the individuals that comprise a community given primacy of place as central to a strong communal theory. This volume moves away from the dominant, current macro-level theorising on the subject of identity and its relationship to and with globalising trends, focusing instead on the individual’s relationship with utopia so as to offer new interpretive approaches for engaging with and examining utopian individuality. Interdisciplinary in scope and bringing together work from around the world, The Individual and Utopia enquires after the nature of the utopian as citizen, demonstrating the inherent value of making the individual central to utopian theorizing and highlighting the methodologies necessary for examining the utopian individual. The various approaches employed reveal what it is to be an individual yoked by the idea of citizenship and challenge the ways that we have traditionally been taught to think of the individual as citizen. As such, it will appeal to scholars with interests in social theory, philosophy, literature, cultural studies, architecture, and feminist thought, whose work intersects with political thought, utopian theorizing, or the study of humanity or human nature.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. This innovative book explores the role of utopian thinking in law and politics, including alternative forms of social engineering, such as technology and architecture. Building on Levitas’ Utopia as Method, the topic of utopia is addressed within the book from a multidisciplinary perspective.

The Palgrave Companion to North American Utopias is a fascinating virtual catalogue of utopian societies and communes from past to present. The authors assert that the formation of a utopian society is both possible and feasible and give examples of how to create one of our own.

Excerpt from Perfecting the Earth: A Piece of Possible History This is a Utopian book, but its Utopia is not, as Utopias generally are said to be, in the clouds; on the contrary it is worked out with much detail in accordance with a natural order of sequence from existing conditions, with every point definite in time and place, true in all fundamental physical features to the best maps, true also to the law of cause and effect and duly regarding the limitations of nature. Some to whom this book, in manuscript, has been shown, Object that it is too scientific; perhaps it is the most scientific of Utopian books. That Utopias, fro-m Bellamy back to Plato, are in cloudland. Unscientific, out of touch with reality and unattainable, is the charge which these critics make, while the logical steps required to make Utopia scientific and plant it on the rocks are the features which, when presented, they most object to. This book, however, is written in the belief that these steps are needed. The aim has been to limit the narra tive to the possible, and, following the steps related, to the practicable, while each consequence stated must necessarily follow from the measures preceding. -if these details had been omitted, then my Utopia, like the other Utopias, would have been in the clouds and the purpose of the book could not have been attained. If the earth is ever to be perfected, such meas ures as are here detailed must be taken, and as in the order of nature first things must be done first, so in the plan of this book first things are first related. In necessary sequence from these measures, from a condition natural and probable as things are going, the purpose is to evolve the conduct of a world as it is conceived that the world ought to be conducted, and to plant in the minds of readers a better ideal than that which usually animates mankind. In building an edifice the foundation must first be laid, but, while the steps in that part of the structure are not without a certain interest in themselves, the interest felt there is mainly reflected from the superstructure and the purposes which it is to serve. In this book the first twelve chapters may be re garded' as the laying of a foundation. The building of the superstructure is comprised in the twelve chapters following, while nine chapters at the conclusion of the book portray the life and conditions prevailing in the perfected earth after the work is practically completed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Routledge Library Editions: Utopias (6 volume set) contains titles, originally published between 1923 and 1982. It includes volumes focusing on Utopian fiction, both as a genre in its own right and also from a feminist perspective. In addition, there are sociological texts that examine the history of Utopian thought, from the writings of Plato and beyond, as well as specific examples of people who have tried to create Utopian communities.