Utopianism in the Work of Zygmunt Bauman - Sociologi - Aalborg ...

ground that the ideas and ideals which they ventured to espouse were ‘Utopian’
(Hacker 1955:135).
As a consequence, utopianism has frequently been linked to inferior kinds of
scientific thought and has been relegated to the outskirts of sociological theory
by derogatory descriptions and comparisons to useless activity or irrational
waste of time. Actually, utopianism and the idea of an ideal state informs and
motivates most human and even animal life (cf. Hufschmid 2001) and utopian
thinking and theorising used to point to the noblest and most valued aspects of
abstract philosophy as well as practical political statements, as was seen in the
works of Plato and Aristotle, but this ancient understanding has in recent dec-
ades fallen entirely into disrepute. ‘Utopia’, a term that in today’s usage has lost
almost any positive meaning, was in fact originally derived from the Greek by
Sir Thomas More meaning ‘nowhere’ (outopia) at the same time as this no-
where offers something ‘good’ (eutopia)(Kumar 1990:1). Thus, it semantically
refers to a non-place where things are good but simultaneously it connotes
many different meanings of such as a land of milk and honey, a Shangri-La, a
Garden of Eden never to be reached, always irritatingly and intriguingly beyond
human touch but always lurking in the back of our minds and at least some of
our actions. Whether located in an idyllic past, as Romanticists tend to do with
their utopian ideals, or in a stage of future development towards which we can
only strive through social reforms or revolutions, as Futurists have been known
to do, utopia is never here and now. It is apparently a dream we hope only to
dive into in order to escape the nightmare of reality.
Ever since its ancient Greek embryo, utopianism has been a key concern in
political, philosophical and literary thought. Defining utopia or capturing it in
one sentence is almost impossible. According to Karl Mannheim, one of the
most prominent analysts of utopia within the discipline of sociology, utopia
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