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Dystopia

About: Dystopia is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2146 publications have been published within this topic receiving 15163 citations. The topic is also known as: cacotopia.


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Dissertation
01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: Counter-utopias appeared as a literary genre long before the dystopias of the twenty-first century as mentioned in this paper, and they were conceived as humanist alternatives to the Terrestrial Paradise of the Christian tradition Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Johann Valentin Andreae, Tommaso Campanella and others.
Abstract: Counter-utopias appeared as a literary genre long before the dystopias of the twentieth century Our aim is to document the emergence of classical dystopias between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries We start from the idea that Renaissance utopias were conceived as humanist alternatives to the Terrestrial Paradise of the Christian tradition Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Johann Valentin Andreae, Tommaso Campanella and many other thinkers and writers sought to recover the Garden of Eden for humankind, to replace the city of God with a city of Man Nevertheless, utopian optimism was soon challenged by several theoretical critiques and institutional attacks, formulated under three important doctrines: Counter-Reformation theology, Cartesian rationalism and English empiricism Throughout the pre-modern age, these ideologies raised a series of decisive arguments against the hope that mankind could by itself establish a perfect society and a paradise on earth Starting with Joseph Hall (Mundus alter et idem, 1605) and Artus Thomas (L'Isle des Hermaphrodites, 1605), an important number of authors took on official and public censorship and reshaped their fiction into critiques of utopian visions Instead of imagining ideal places, they began to conceive counter-utopian societies and terrestrial infernos

1 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: The authors argue that implicit comparisons with a notional happier past are themselves problematic, and that the multiplicity of funding sources now underwriting academic research has created greater contestability in the market for ideas.
Abstract: Many scholars in the Social Sciences today are concerned that growing pressures for applied or policy-relevant research, and the importance placed on external research funding, are having systemically negative influences upon academic life. Academics generally are expressing concern that reduced public funding, more reliance on student fees as the mainstay of revenue and a rise in ‘managerialism’ in response to closer regulatory scrutiny, divert universities from their core business and traditional values. Our view is more positive. We make three arguments to this effect. First, we believe implicit comparisons with a notional happier past are themselves problematic. Secondly, the multiplicity of funding sources now underwriting academic research has created greater contestability in the market for ideas – something we believe is strongly positive. Thirdly, while there are certainly unwelcome constraints on researchers at the margins of casual employment (a growing portion of the academic population), we do not see increasing marketisation and the rise of new technology as necessarily oppressive – indeed, they can generate new modes of academic practice. In this chapter, we offer a preliminary sketch of our main contentions, rather than a detailed elaboration and defence.

1 citations

01 Oct 2010
TL;DR: Gorbis et al. as discussed by the authors conducted a year-long study, "Baby Boomers: The Next 20 Years," that was conducted with colleagues at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit research group in Palo Alto, California.
Abstract: The aging of baby boomers is well underway, but envisioning future scenarios allows us to better plan for multiple challenges. In the fall of 2005, a spate of articles appeared in magazines and newspapers across the country under headlines that read something like: "First Boomers About to Turn 60!" This impending event, slated for January 1, 2006, was presented as startling news, but it shouldn't have been. Demographic factors are among the most predictable of trends: any living person who was 50 years old in 1996 would inevitably reach age 60 ten years later. Nor should there have been any news in the fact that a lot of Americans would begin turning age 60 in 2006. (When I looked for the first coverage about a spike in the post-World War II birthrate, I found a cover story of Newsweek called "The Boom in Babies: What It Means to America." The issue date was August 9, 1948.) Besides hyping a non-event, the articles that appeared in late 2005 offered little substantive analysis of the implications of the arrival of the baby boomers at later life. Frustrated with the dearth of serious attention to a truly important story, I developed an idea for a research project. The result was a year-long study, "Baby Boomers: The Next 20 Years," that I conducted with colleagues at the Institute for the Future (IFTF), a nonprofit research group in Palo Alto, California.1 The "map" inserted into this issue of Generations was the first product of this project. Now, as we approach the moment at which the first baby boomers reach age 65, it seems like a good time to give serious attention to the future of aging. From Predictions to Scenarios One of the first things I learned about futures thinking is that no one can make accurate predictions about the future, and that anyone who claims to do so is either deluded or a charlatan. But that does not mean it is impossible to think about the future in a disciplined and productive way. As Executive Director of IFTF Marina Gorbis explains in her contribution on page 12, the Institute was founded in 1968 by a group of established researchers who were interested in developing new methodologies for anticipating the future. Today, the Institute describes its mission as providing foresight about the future that leads to new insights that can guide effective action. If we cannot predict the future with any degree of confidence, then how can we provide foresight? The answer, developed and refined over many years, is to generate a set of scenarios- plausible stories about possible futures that are distinctly different from the present, and that provoke useful thinking about a current course of action for an individual, for an organization, or even for a state or nation. The following excerpt from recent report by the National Intelligence Council (2008) explains that scenarios: . . . do not attempt to predict the future based on linear extrapolations of the past. Scenarios do not seek to project the future. Instead, they focus on the identification of discontinuities and how these could potentially develop . . . over time. Scenario analysis allows us to anticipate future developments, and to evaluate strategies for responding to these events or conditions through an exploration of alternative futures.2 Some scenarios may be positive, even utopian; others may be distinctly dystopian. Much of futures thinking about population aging tends to fall into these two extremes: either a rosy future in which elders, aided by science, a robust economy, and sensible public policies are able to remain active, productive, and independent for much longer than previous generations; or a gloomy scenario that envisions a catastrophe in which a growing tide of demanding elders, compounded by a weak economy, growing health challenges, and ever-worsening ecological crises, puts an intolerable strain on our social institutions. (H. R. Moody, in his article on page 23, dramatizes these two extremes and considers the forces that may favor each of these alternatives. …

1 citations

01 Jan 2013
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide an answer to the question "What is the meaning of meaningless sex in Dystopia?" They show that meaningful concepts such as sexual satisfaction, pleassure, passion, love, bonding, procreation and family are handled as threats in dystopian societies described in well-known novels such as We, Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-four.
Abstract: The aim of this essay is to provide an answer to the question "What is the Meaning of Meaningless sex in Dystopia?". It will show that meaningful concepts such as sexual satisfaction, pleassure, passion, love, bonding, procreation and family are handled as threats in dystopian societies described in well-known novels as We, Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four . It will explain how the conflict between the collective and the individual influences peoples' sexuality. It will also show how leading powers in the three dystopian societies use different methods to remove the significanse and functions of sex. It will suggest meaningless sex is a means to control the masses in a collective and that meaningful sex is an act of rebelion against the state.

1 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20241
2023244
2022672
202192
2020142
2019141