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The cooperative emission of interacting nanocrystals is an exciting topic fueled by recent reports of superfluorescence and superradiance in assemblies of perovskite nanocubes. Several studies estimated that coherent coupling is localized to a small fraction of nanocrystals (10−7–10−3) within the assembly, raising questions about the origins of localization and ways to overcome it. In this work, we examine single-excitation superradiance by calculating radiative decays and the distribution of superradiant wave function in two-dimensional CsPbBr3 nanocube superlattices. The calculations reveal that the energy disorder caused by size distribution and large interparticle separations reduces radiative coupling and leads to the excitation localization, with the energy disorder being the dominant factor. The single-excitation model clearly predicts that, in the pursuit of cooperative effects, having identical nanocubes in the superlattice is more important than achieving a perfect spatial order. The monolayers of large CsPbBr3 nanocubes (LNC = 10–20 nm) are proposed as model systems for experimental tests of superradiance under conditions of non-negligible size dispersion, while small nanocubes (LNC = 5–10 nm) are preferred for realizing the Dicke state under ideal conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts a critical pragmatist perspective to investigate how the union cooperative movement promotes transformative change. The study describes how 1worker1vote.org network leaders enact “pragmatic utopianism” by articulating an ambitious counter-narrative to extractive capitalism grounded in worker ownership, sustainability, and solidarity. This project expands the concept of pragmatic utopian organizing, describing how the movement mobilizes realistic hope for this idealistic vision by creating “plausibility structures.” First, leaders’ dialectical framing of perceived values-viability tensions rooted in the status quo contributed to innovations that served as reasons to believe. Second, advocates engaged improvisational strategic capacity building to manage doubts resulting from ongoing disorganizing forces. The conclusion discusses the implications for critical theorizing, alternative economy organizing, and transformative change from below. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The genre of fiction portraying worlds without men is over a century old – and growing. It reaches back to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1910 Herland, through scores of utopias from second wave feminist writers like Joanna Russ and Suzy McKee Charnas to contemporary examples from Lauren Beukes and Sandra Newman. This article asks: if it were in fact possible to create a world without men, for what reasons should we pursue or forgo such a world? Those who have endured patriarchy’s cruelty have good reasons to want to institute such a world. However, I present a biblical warrant for rejecting that utopian vision derived from 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul writes that there is “no woman without man” (χωρὶς ἀνδρὸς, choris andros), and “no man without woman.” At the crux of a text that emphasizes the interdependence of God’s creatures, Paul reminds us that interdependence obtains across lines of sexual difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the tractor is undertaking the forestry carrying operation, due to the complex road conditions in the forest, it mostly runs at a low speed, has a high steering demand, and often has a load unit, so it pays more attention to its driving stability and steering sensitivity. In this paper, CarSim software is used to build the physical model and load unit model of the tractor, the control strategy of the tractor is designed based on Simulink software combined with the two-degree-of-freedom dynamic model, and the two-degree-of-freedom model of tractor is established. The braking torque feedback control is carried out by combining the yaw rate and the side deflection angle of centroid with the fuzzy control theory. In addition, the proportional control strategy of front and rear wheel angle is introduced according to the four-wheel steering mode of the tractor. Under the CarSim-Simlulink co-simulation platform, combined with the complex road conditions of forestry operations, the low-speed driving and steering experiments of tractor under different control strategies are carried out. The results show that the control strategy adopted in this paper can effectively reduce the steering radius of the tractor under complex road conditions, increase the steering speed, and limit the side deflection angle of centroid to a small range. The tractor has high stability, the steady state value of yaw rate is closer to the ideal state, and the steering is more sensitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the manifestation of a revival of a collective revolutionary imaginary is more pronounced in social movements, we see it evidenced in a renewed interested in utopian curriculum and pedagogy. This article advances this trend by following José Esteban Muñoz's methodology, returning an early Paulo Freire formulation of utopian pedagogy as a dialectic of denouncing and announcing, and building on Darren Webb's project of reasserting the centrality of direction in utopian imaginations. Contending that our inability to imagine a radically different world results from the dominant temporality in our conjuncture, we mine cartographic processes as both archaeological and architectural to disrupt the perceptual and ideological restraints that muzzle our ability to not only image and sense alternative possibilities but to organize for the power required for their actualization. We thread this through a concrete example of an architectural utopian curriculum that demonstrates how archaeology and architecture can be blocked together or held in dialectical tension, which entails emphasizing that utopian pedagogy emerges from and as part of concrete struggles. We look at the Warsaw Palace, a still-existing socialist utopian architectural project, that can serve as a cartographic node in combining the openings of utopian longings with the political direction needed for their realization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aristotle and utopia may seem an odd combination. Anthologies of utopian texts do not contain passages from Aristotle's writings. He also typically does not feature in histories of utopia. Nonetheless, a close reading of the Politics reveals that Aristotle had an extensive and rather distinctive interest in the enterprise of imagining utopias or ideal cities. The peculiarity of his exploration of utopia lies in its multifaceted approach. He combines critical assessments of some of his predecessors' ideal cities with the creation of several of his own. This article explores the hypothesis that Aristotle's lengthy and varied analysis of ideal cities plays a crucial, though not obvious, role in the history of utopia. The relevance of his speculation lies in identifying (i) distinct ways of conceptualizing the activity of imagining a utopia and (ii) themes and concerns fundamental to designing it. However, the importance of Aristotle's place in the history of utopia is not primarily due to his direct impact on later utopists – his major influence is limited to a handful of Renaissance authors. Instead, his significance lies predominantly in the fact that he was one of the very first thinkers to recognize and articulate key elements of the utopian endeavour. This study examines the points of contact between Aristotle's utopias and representative modern/contemporary utopias and dystopias. It aims not to institute strict parallelisms between these works and the Politics but to show how they share some of the 'essential ingredients' of utopian literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political orientations are increasingly relevant to romantic relationships. Self-categorization theory suggests that individuals prefer partners with the same political views. However, few studies have identified the factors associated with willingness to date or not to date across the political divide. Using survey data from 416 single participants from Hong Kong, the study found that older, female, and participants who were politically neutral or yellow were less willing to date across the political divide. Furthermore, a greater belief in politics–morality equivalence (i.e. regarding people from the opposite political camp as morally different from themselves) was associated with less willingness to date across the divide; this association was more negative among people with higher communication competence. At the same time, among people with a higher level of communication competence, utopianism (i.e. believing ideal worlds may exist) was positively associated with such willingness. The results demonstrate that communication competence has a paradoxical influence on willingness to date across the political divide, which challenges the assumption that communication can bridge the divide between people who hold different views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few scholars study light efficiency of solar-cell arrays in theory, while it is difficult to experimentally determine the maximum capacity of a photovoltaic panel to collect solar radiation. This paper proposes a solar energy comparison model (SECM), considering the sunshine duration changes every day to optimize the solar radiation collection model in an ideal state for a whole year, which is easy to use, and can quickly obtain the optimal tilt angle of photovoltaic panels and the solar radiation collecting efficiency enhancement of intelligent light tracking photovoltaic panels. The results show that the sunshine duration is an important factor affecting the solar radiation received by photovoltaic panels. In regions from 66°34′N to 66°34′S, intelligent light tracking photovoltaic panels can increase the collected solar radiation by at least 63.55%, up to 122.51% compared to stationary photovoltaic panels during the effective light time, which is much higher than what most people generally thought. And the advantage of intelligent light tracking photovoltaic panels is more obvious in high latitudes, with a longer and more variable sunshine duration. These findings provide a theoretical basis for the solar radiation collection and photovoltaic panels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postcolonial Macau is keen to celebrate its colonial legacy to preserve its cultural distinctiveness. This study explores the reordering of a Portuguese colonial site, the Village of Our Lady in Ka Ho, into an architectural heritage in the broader postcolonial context. Employing the Foucauldian concept of 'other spaces', specifically 'utopia' and 'heterotopia', the study argues for the heterotopic nature of heritage. It identifies the discourses and material representations of heritage, their construction and their mirroring of mainstream social ideals. Heritage as heterotopia is a conceptual entity that informs and is realised with material objects. The discourse takes heritage spaces as mediums for performances through symbolic loading on material objects to demonstrate the space's otherness. In addition, colonial nostalgia emerges as a dominant narrative in shaping urban identity. The primary proposition of this research is that heritage is made through othering, and the otherness of heritage is presented through performing. Heritage‐making transforms the site from a 'heterotopia of deviation' to a 'heterotopia of performance', which reveals the societal transition from early modernity that advocates for scientific knowledge to postmodernity that embraces neoliberalism, and then to the arriving era of post‐postmodernity based on performatism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Martha Nussbaum's approach to ethical and political philosophy — unlike that of certain of her notable contemporaries — is neither ahistorical nor concerned with augmenting or refining the historical record. Rather, its aim is learning what the deepest philosophical minds of the past have proposed as the fairest organisation of society, in terms of a balance between autonomy for individuals and communities, and an equitable distribution of global resources. Whilst she argues fundamentally for cosmopolitanism — hence prioritises the latter — she struggles, in her later work, to accommodate the former within such a global socio-political model. I suggest this is because she presupposes that patriotism is antecedent to, and generative of, a cosmopolitan outlook, when in fact each of these political values is irreducible, and antithetical, to the other. Nussbaum supposes this, I propose, because her work focuses on the conceptual subtleties of intellectual history, which are sadly seldom mirrored in the brutal history of facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the asymptotic growth of the entanglement entropy of ground states of non-interacting (spinless) fermions in R 3 subject to a constant magnetic field perpendicular to a plane. As for the case with no magnetic field we find, to leading order L 2 ln (L) , a logarithmically enhanced area law of this entropy for a bounded, piecewise Lipschitz region L Λ ⊂ R 3 as the scaling parameter L tends to infinity. This is in contrast to the two-dimensional case since particles can now move freely in the direction of the magnetic field, which causes the extra ln (L) factor. The explicit expression for the coefficient of the leading order contains a surface integral similar to the Widom–Sobolev formula in the non-magnetic case. It differs, however, in the sense that the dependence on the boundary, ∂ Λ , is not solely on its area but on the "surface perpendicular to the direction of the magnetic field". We utilize a two-term asymptotic expansion by Widom (up to an error term of order one) of certain traces of one-dimensional Wiener–Hopf operators with a discontinuous symbol. This leads to an improved error term of the order L 2 of the relevant trace for piecewise C 1 , α smooth surfaces ∂ Λ . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most consequential distinction Habermas draws between Marx's and his own utopia of emancipation is that societal differentiation, in the former, is dissolved into the lifeworld, whereas in the latter it is preserved as an accomplishment of and necessary for the reproduction of modern complex societies. Despite Habermas's intention and arguments, his radical democratic utopia entails lifeworldization—in which the primacy of communicative reason is affirmed in all spheres of action as well as societal integration, which, however, can take a variety of modi operandi ranging from external influence to direct communicative coordination. This article makes a case for the lifeworldization thesis with the following arguments. First, contrary to Habermas's intention, "influence" and "countersteering," if successfully asserted, result in an ontological condition that amounts to lifeworldization. Second, Habermas's defense of differentiation and critique of dedifferentiation, which is predicated on his critique of society as a totality, is discredited by his own argument for the need of (re)integration of complexities of modern society and its necessary normative grounding. Third, the prescription of keeping the "internal logic" of steering media intact as constitutive of radical democracy is problematic both empirically and normatively. Fourth, for the functional coherence of radical democracy, "efficiency," conceived systems-theoretically, must be abandoned and, instead, be reconceived postmetaphysically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of how the ups and downs in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) since its inception can be explained. It focuses on the development of artificial intelligence in Germany since the 1970s, and particularly on its current dynamics. An assumption is made that a mere reference to rapid advances in information technologies and the various methods and concepts of artificial intelligence in recent decades cannot adequately explain these dynamics, because from a social science perspective, this is an oversimplified, technology-centred explanation. Drawing on ideas from social scientific innovation research, the hypothesis is rather that artificial intelligence should be understood as a "promising technology". Its various stages of development have always been driven by technological promises about its special powers and capabilities when applied to solving economic and societal challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exotic quantum states arise from the interplay of various degrees of freedom such as charge, spin, orbital, and lattice. Recently, a short-ranged charge order (CO) was discovered deep inside the antiferromagnetic phase of Kagome magnet FeGe, exhibiting close relationships with magnetism. Despite extensive investigations, the CO mechanism remains controversial, mainly because the short-ranged behavior hinders precise identification of CO superstructure. Here, combining multiple experimental techniques, we report the observation of a long-ranged CO in high-quality FeGe samples, which is accompanied with a first-order structural transition. With these high-quality samples, the distorted 2 × 2 × 2 CO superstructure is characterized by a strong dimerization along the c-axis of 1/4 of Ge1-sites in Fe3Ge layers, and in response to that, the 2 × 2 in-plane charge modulations are induced. Moreover, we show that the previously reported short-ranged CO might be related to large occupational disorders at Ge1-site, which upsets the equilibrium of the CO state and the ideal 1 × 1 × 1 structure with very close energies, inducing nanoscale coexistence of these two phases. Our study provides important clues for further understanding the CO properties in FeGe and helps to identify the CO mechanism. By improving the sample quality of FeGe, the authors observe a long-ranged charge order accompanied with a first-order structural transition. They determine the distorted superstructure and show that occupational disorder is the origin of short-ranged charge order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital influencers who spread information about pop divas approach the deglamorization of their lives by paratextualizing activities carried out by them in their daily routines. Accordingly, this current study advocates that this deglamorization process points towards the “topification” of divas’ bodies, since it highlights their urgency to distance themselves from the utopianism required to keep their bodies as glamorized bodies. Thus, its aim is to analyze how Brazilian digital influencers paratextualize pop divas deglamorization process by subjecting influencers’ discourse to Foucault’s Discourse Analysis. The herein analyzed research file comprised news reports published on gossip blogs about pop divas. Results have evidenced two discursive formations: the first one refers to the formation and promotion of pop divas’ image and the second one reveals the support given to them. This result has shown that influencers paratextualize the deglamorization of pop divas by humanizing them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of voluntary and grassroots relief initiatives during the recent 'refugee crisis' in Europe brought renewed attention to the feelings, desires, and motivations that prompt aid workers and volunteers to engage in humanitarian actions. The article expands on this interest in 'the need to help' and in the care of the self that humanitarian engagements involve by looking at another layer of humanitarian affectivity – the need to hope – that bears on the helpers and on their aid activities in an intimate and yet impersonal way. I demonstrate how the helpers' experience of living in an impasse and their tentative coping with political stuckness and paralysis find expression in their humanitarian subjectivities and relief programs, and how their humanitarian encounters and the affects they trigger are entangled with the crisis of the future that their own political communities face. The analysis focuses on two refugee relief projects that were carried out by civil society organizations from Israel in Europe since 2015, in which the resonance between the refugees' predicament and the crisis of hope that the Jewish helpers from Israel confronted was mobilized as an affective and an operational resource. I show that the normalization of the Israeli occupation and its view as an intractable condition had contrasting effects upon the helpers' political and humanitarian expectations, fostering both a minor humanitarianism that reaffirmed resilience as a prime political virtue, and a visionary humanitarianism that sought to leverage the humanitarian exception as a platform for practical utopianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1906, Ismail Gasprinsky (1851–1914), a Crimean Tatar intellectual with ties to the Russian and the Ottoman intelligentsia published his novel The Muslims of the Land of Serenity [Darürrahat Müslümanları], one of the earliest utopian texts in a Turkic language. The narrative uncovers a secret land beyond the Sierra Nevada in Andalusia where some Muslims, having fled after the fall of Grenada in 1492, set up the ideal Muslim state preserving the memory of Islamic Spain over the centuries. This paper discusses factors in the Ottoman literary context that influenced the broad reception of the novel beyond Muslim communities and highlights influences on Gasprinsky from the Ukraine and Russia. After examining the complexities surrounding the religious 'other' and its relationship with the external world in Gasprinsky's utopia, the paper concludes with reflections on the religious 'other' contributing to discussions on religious pluralism and freedom within utopian societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Fredric Jameson's and Monika Kaup's work, this article analyzes some aspects of utopian and dystopian thinking about religion in contemporary science fiction, taking as an example Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series (2016–2021). In these novels set in the twenty-fifth century, religion is restricted to individual counseling with so-called 'sensayers', a future equivalent of scholars-of-religion\s-cum-spiritual-advisors. In exploring these visions of future religion, utopia and dystopia prove to be important concepts. Centering religion's ambivalence as both a centripetal and centrifugal societal force, Palmer presents a continuum of utopian, dystopian, anti-utopian, and anti–anti-utopian religion(s). Nevertheless, in Terra Ignota religion remains conceptualized as an anthropological necessity, limiting the radical difference of her unknown world. In conclusion, drawing on Gayle Salamon and Richard M. Zaner, I argue that speculative fiction's 'acts of possibilizing' can be generative of theoretical insight, providing occasion for fertilizing our 'ability to fantasy'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This response argues that 'utopia' and 'utopianism' are useful conceptual tools for analysing and comparing social practices in different historical and geographical contexts. It also suggests that the theoretical interventions put forward in this special issue can be developed further by bringing them in dialogue with cases and theories from East Asia. The response introduces the example of Tenri City in Japan, conceived in the early postwar period as a physical realisation of the Tenrikyō Church's utopian vision, which today comes across as an outdated urban planning project. It asks how groups such as Tenrikyō reconcile their utopian promises with the inherent imperfections that characterise any real-world social project, focusing on two key themes: theodicy and ritual action. The insights from this approach contribute to broader discussions in the study of religion\s, underscoring the interplay between temporal imagination, materiality, and everyday ritual practices in sustaining community life and social identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages with utopian studies as an interdisciplinary field, scrutinizing the contested, yet prevailing bifurcated conceptualization of 'utopia' as either an ideal or praxis. Drawing upon Leonard N. Primiano's notion of 'vernacular religion' as a comprehensive approach for overcoming epistemologically problematic models in theorizing religion, I propose the concept of vernacular utopia as a methodological tool for the comparative study of utopian worldmaking beyond conceptual binaries, such as blueprint versus practice, or religious versus secular. My case example is New Harmony, one of the most famous 19th-century emigrant settlements in the US, where pietists and early socialists encountered and implemented their respective blueprints at the same geographical locale. Focusing on the historiographical roots of Primiano's concept, my objective is to substantiate the vernacular perspective within historical methodology by illustrating how the approach fosters alternative perspectives on source materials and integrates new sources into the historical study of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the intertwining of religion and politics in utopian imaginaries against the backdrop of Robert Yelle's recent theoretical reflections on the relationship between the 'sacred' and Carl Schmitt's idea of a 'state of exception.' It argues that in utopian imaginaries, the convergence of the religious and political domains becomes apparent in the postulation of an antinomian 'Archimedean point of view' that provides a foundation from which the new social reality can be represented and legitimized. To illustrate this thesis, the article compares the utopian imaginaries put forward in the Long Sixties by three academic psychologists – B.F. Skinner, Timothy Leary, and Abraham Maslow – who provided visions of the ideal future to the Baby Boomer generation. The article shows that despite their different understandings of both the nature of the human psyche and the ideal social order, all three authors base their projects on a form of antinomian sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we understand the concept of utopia when looking at a religious social utopia in practice? To unpack this question, the article retraces the motif of the 'Christian Town' or 'Salem' in the Apenkwa congregation of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana through more than a century of narratives and practices. Drawing on historical and ethnographic data, the article demonstrates how the utopian religious ideal can function as a powerful symbol for the self-identification of a religious group in practice. It shows how this motif is perpetuated by actors across different cultural and religious backgrounds and over several generations. Most significantly, it shows that all this is quite independent of the 'success' or 'failure' of the utopian social project itself. Based on these observations, the paper proposes to theorize utopia, in the case of lived social utopias, as both a vision and a process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late 1980s was a chaotic period in Soviet Estonia. The liberalization process of the Soviet Union brought about a sense of freedom and the possibility that Estonian people would finally have a say in the future of Estonia. This unexpected feeling of freedom formed the basis for various attempts to narrate a better society, including religious visions of a new Estonia. Several of the new religious movements that emerged during this period developed their own ideas about the future of Estonia, with some incorporating utopian perspectives. Although these movements had distinct views on the identity and independence of Estonia, their ideas have not yet been thoroughly researched. The aim of this article is to show how one of the movements, Word of Life, addressed these times of change, and to elaborate on what kind of utopias about Estonia are construed in the discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a notable scarcity of reference data on the thermal conductivity of orthohydrogen in both vapor and liquid phases within the open literature, compared to parahydrogen and normal hydrogen. An improved corresponding states principle (CSP) model is proposed to predict the thermal conductivity of orthohydrogen by employing an optimized shape factor, which is expressed as a correlation with respect to pressure and temperature from the triple point to 300 K and at pressures up to 20 MPa. Critical parameters, ideal state thermal properties, and eccentricity factor are involved in the calculation as input parameters. The feasibility and accuracy of the proposed CSP model is verified by using experimental data of parahydrogen and some theoretical data of orthohydrogen. The estimated uncertainty of the model against high-precision experimental data of parahydrogen is within ±2.82 %. When the model is applied to dilute gas orthohydrogen, the predictions exhibit a deviation of less than ±5 % compared to other methods found in the literature. In addition, a correlation for thermal conductivity of parahydrogen, presented as a single function of temperature, is also proposed along the vapor-liquid equilibrium at temperatures from the triple point to the critical point, with an uncertainty of ±3 %. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scholarship on green state transformation has harnessed debates on the empirical and ideal transformations of the state in the Anthropocene, but central banks have thus far been elided from analysis. In this article, we draw into focus central banks as pronounced, if ill-considered, features of green state transformations in both theory and practice. Central banks exemplify the intractability, incrementalism and limitations of actually existing green state transformations. Yet simultaneously, these institutions of economic governance are, at least theoretically, vital constituents of fully fledged green states. In addressing the central bank lacuna in the analysis of green state transformation, we propose a research agenda at the intersection of environmental and monetary politics that centres on (i) the institutional variation and convergence of central banks across the global economy, (ii) the political-economic and institutional constraints on green institutional transformation, and (iii) the theoretical constituents and operations of a truly 'green' central bank. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The space age has generated a profound uncertainty of experience between technology and utopianism. This essay makes a critical intervention in this uncertainty by examining a historically constructed tension between dwelling at and departing from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Attention to this tension that underwrote the Soviet colonial project of conquering the cosmos and the terrestrial environment exposes the utopian vision of space travel and the ontology of a deflating present as a dialectic that questions the space age as a state of soon-to-be-leaving Earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to analyse how social movements build alternative futures, this article explores the relationship between prefigurative politics and utopianism. A case study of the 'Indigenous Women's Movement for Buen Vivir' in Argentina will reveal how movement members shape alternative futures, while taking into account how everyday life influences their approaches to the future. Empirical data collected in 2019 shows that members define the present day as a crises-ridden dystopian age, exemplified by the conflicts they face which emerge from the resource-based development model of global capitalism. Extractivist activities are understood as destroyers of the planet and therefore are viewed as an imminent threat to human existence. Hence, the members aim to make the future possible by (re)constructing a reciprocity with nature as well as one between humans and other-than-human beings, in short, to realize Buen Vivir. To unravel how prefigurative practices and utopian imaginations intersect and co-constitute each other, I focus on how Buen Vivir is experienced in the movement through horizontality, spirituality, and autonomy. These experiences are framed by the actors as pre-colonial practices that are reconstructed in the present, as they seek to decolonise capitalist modernity 'so that there is a future'. This understanding reflects a cyclical temporality that inspires a processual, non-linear view of social change, which accompanies the indigenous women's 'prefigurative walking'. Thus, the linking of prefiguration with utopianism helps us in grasping the role of imagination, hopes, and visions for future transformations in the process of building alternative futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Simone de Beauvoir's early essay Pyrrhus et Cinéas (1944) can be read as an articulation of a critically utopian ethics. It suggests that the ontology of action developed in Pyrrhus et Cinéas is an early case of Beauvoir's critical engagement with Hegel and, in particular, the Kojèvian reading popular among her existentialist contemporaries. Unlike Kojève, whose Marxist reading of Hegel suggested that he was theorising a teleological model of History, Beauvoir develops a critique of utopian models of History wherein freedom is an ultimate finality, arguing instead that freedom is to be found in action, and thus must be persistently renewed. This article closes by suggesting that the existential ethics Beauvoir develops from this model of freedom implies an account of utopia which is critical of orthodox socialist philosophies of history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the intersectional dimensions of gendered trauma and its implications for civil war studies, emphasizing the need for a nuanced understanding of how women's experiences in war are represented and analyzed. It argues for an intersectional approach that integrates feminist, queer, postcolonial, and decolonial perspectives to reframe trauma and envision generative utopias, while also critiquing traditional narratives of war through women's storytelling.

Copyright of Cahiers Elisabethains: A Biannual Journal of English Renaissance Studies is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Agora (0211-6642) is the property of Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Servicio de Publicaciones and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

As corporate social responsibility research increasingly focuses on the role of grassroots organizations in challenging business practices, there remains a gap in understanding how these organizations prefigure alternatives to the prevailing business status quo. This study addresses this gap by developing a framework of prefigurative imaginaries, drawing from a qualitative study of a grassroots organization confronting the social irresponsibility of the Kenyan banking system in serving the poor. The framework captures how grassroots organizations use imaginaries to prefigure an alternative community currency system for enacting and foreshadowing social change. However, when attempts were made to scale up the system, these actions became disjointed, resulting in cracks within the imaginaries and the eventual abandonment of the system. Our study contributes to corporate social responsibility research by broadening its scope to include grassroots organizations and unveiling how they prefigure social change in marginalized contexts. By highlighting the significant influence of imaginaries on experiences and practices, this study underscores their role in shaping the acceptance or rejection of grassroots initiatives by the communities they aim to serve. It has implications for scholars and practitioners interested in understanding the role of imaginaries in shaping community-driven initiatives and advancing social change agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, after presenting some moments in the history of the ideas of ideology and utopia, I refer to the binomial ideology-utopia in the vision of Paul Ricoeur. According to the French philosopher, ideology and utopia form a diptych, because in a certain way they respond to each other and the hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to these notions is remarkable. From Ricoeur's perspective, if the pathology of ideology manifests itself through its "affinity for illusion, dissimulation, lies", the specific of utopia manifests itself through "the loss of the real itself, in favor of perfectionistic, borderline unrealizable schemes", that replaces the logic of action aware of the elementary distinction between the desirable and the achievable. Beyond the "negative" dimensions, Ricoeur still recognizes the liberating function of utopia, because "to imagine the out of place means to keep open the field of the possible". He considers, in Kantian language, that "ideology and utopia are figures of the reproductive imagination and the productive imagination". In Paul Ricoeur's terms, as expressions of the political and social imaginary, ideology and utopia together with new symbols, rituals or mythologies are assumed by political power for the purpose of legitimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dreams are personal, while dreams of social change are wider-reaching into historical and world consciousness. The study shows that human will to dream is connected in subtle ways to human will to induce change, as a manner of being in the world and outside it, too, via purposeful contemplation, intellectual critical evaluation and either reforming or revolutionary action. Starting from the studies of L. T. Sargent and personal analysis of the topic, the research emphasizes the ontological particular paradoxical situation of the human being, situated as well within the world as being able to analyse the world from a distance, dissociating herself from the object of study, as if outside. We find a dimension of utopian thought in Foucault and Rorty and we discuss these perspectives as varieties of utopia - a vast, time-enduring and fascinating human phenomenon. Even if we do not construe utopian thought as universal, the findings are not changed neither by perceiving its quasi-universality nor by acknowledging solely its presence, persistence and widely reaching powers. In the cases of Foucault and Rorty, utopian thought is a more or less revolutionary social dreaming. Investigating Michel Foucault's "liberal utopia" and Richard Rorty's "postliberal utopia" we further assess the utopian theoretical background from these standpoints. Both "liberal utopia" and "postliberal utopia" are present and influential, to a significant extent, for our current views of good liberal societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article focuses on Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia as a significant alternative to prevailing theories of justice, including utilitarianism, Marxism, and progressive redistribution. Topics include Nozick's critique of these theories, his engagement with individualist anarchism, and the less examined aspect of his work regarding the pluralism of human nature and its implications for political philosophy.

As the service age of bridges increases, the degeneration of the bridge components leads to changes in the importance of corresponding state assessment indices. Employing fixed weights in bridge service condition assessments may result in inconsistent outcomes with the actual conditions. Therefore, this paper proposes an index weight updating method that aims to achieve index weight updating based on the operational status of bridges, thereby enhancing the accuracy of bridge service condition assessment results. This method utilizes the bidirectional projection of fuzzy numbers representing index state intervals and ideal targets as the technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) evaluation criteria for index importance. This paper conducts case analyses of a suspension bridge across multiple service periods which comprise three primary conditions: periods of intact bridge status, suboptimal conditions resembling expected degradation, and damaged status due to external effects. The case study results demonstrate that the updated weight using the proposed method effectively reflects the influence of actual changes in bridge status on the importance of indices. In the cases of good condition or matching the expected degradative state, the updated weights obtained could better reflect the actual service condition of the bridge compared to fixed weights provided by standards. When considering the effect of accidents or other incidental factors, the updated weights obtained through the proposed method could reflect the influence of actual component conditions on the importance of indices while the initial weights and age-dependent updated weights cannot. Thereby, the assessment results derived from this approach are more consistent with expected states and maintenance levels, validating its effectiveness and comparative advantages over alternative methodologies. The results indicate that the proposed method can significantly enhance the rationality of assessment index weights, serving as a more effective and rational approach for evaluating bridge service conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this extension to Scribbling Towards Utopia, I concentrate on two authors who make their own utopian strivings key features of their work: William Morris, the English socialist, and John Dewey, the American philosopher and liberal educator. I also borrow ideas from Jasmine Ulmer's Writing Slow Ontology to suggest that our utopian hopes will, if ever, only be attained slowly and not quickly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been much handwringing about artificial intelligence’s application to law. Much of it regards AI’s potential incompatibility with restrictions on the unauthorized interpretation of law. However, the arguments commonly offered in defence of these restrictions fail to justify curtailing a technology that promises to narrow the ‘justice gap’ and deliver us to a more egalitarian future. Despite this failure, however, I contend that utopian visions of ‘robot lawyers’ nevertheless cast a dystopian shadow, as the increased use of AI encroaches on the space of human judgement. At stake in this encroachment, I contend, is the possibility of jurisgenesis, the interpretive activity by which law’s material power and normative meaning are bound. Preserving this possibility, I conclude, requires that discussions of law and AI must include not only scholars of law and of machine learning, but also humanists, who concern themselves with the connection between our law and our humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development as presented in the MDGs/SDGs is a well-planned step-by-step enterprise. If we dig deeper into the development debate, it is clear that the dilemma of eradicating poverty and achieving sustainable development is still unsolved, despite all efforts. Thus, development seems to be fictional in the sense of an unreachable utopia. Against this background, it is helpful to connect the development debate with utopian studies. We learn from utopian studies that there are not only fictional utopias as a vision of a just world, which may never be realised. There are also lived utopias that unpack alternative approaches to overcoming inequality or meeting ecological challenges, and which can be realised at least within a limited space. This applies to concepts from in the Global South, such as swaraj, buen vivir and ubuntu, or ecovillages and solidarity economies that present themselves as models for alternative development. As lived utopias, they follow future practice in a defined area in which the desired future becomes part of the present. These concepts are new models in the critical development debate. They are particularly successful in communities that share a common vision and common values. At the same time, there are doubts whether these models may be realised at the national or global. With regard to the fictional character of development goals, it is obvious that we still lack a feasible global strategy with a vision for the future that is attractive enough to gain global support and that can really be accomplished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the cooperative control problem of multi-agent system, the fixed-time containment control of general second-order multi-agent system under mismatched disturbances is studied. Firstly, the problem of multi-agent system fixed-time containment control in ideal state is analyzed, and a distributed control protocol based on variable structure control is proposed. Then, a nonlinear fixed-time disturbance observer is designed, aiming at the mismatched disturbance, and a fixed-time control protocol based on the nonlinear disturbance observer is proposed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control protocol under switching topology and multi-source disturbance is verified by numerical simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]