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This paper aims to assess the contemporary paradigm of urban utopia’s ability to fulfil its goals and to evaluate its attainability in the first place. Its main question is: are contemporary urban utopias achievable? If not, is there an alternative?

In light of modern urban utopia’s failure to achieve the “good city/society,” skepticism regarding utopianism has prevailed. However, many scholars stress the significance of utopianism, calling for its revival. Recently, a new paradigm of urban utopia has emerged; one that stems from present capitalist urban conditions and requires resolving its ills. It puts great emphasis on rights as a means to accomplish the good society and the just city. This research critically examines contemporary urban utopia to evaluate its ability to fulfill its goals. It poses questions such as: Does capitalism facilitates achieving its goals? Could rights as a means achieve the good city/society? If not, is there an alternative? To answer these questions, a substantially different perspective, that of Islam (as a societal system), is used as a utopic paradigm that could open up new paths for developing an alternative utopia.

It is found that despite the focus of both the Islamic societal system and mainstream contemporary urban utopia is on the concept of rights, vital dissensions exist between the two models regarding the concept of rights per se. Hence, the urban utopia of the good city and society is achievable, yet, it cannot transpire within the capitalist kaleidoscope.

Recently, discussions on what constitutes the future city and the alternative conceptions to the (Western) post-Enlightenment approaches generally offered in the English language planning literature have been on the rise. Therefore, this paper contributes to this debate through critically assessing Western contemporary urban utopias from a non-Western perspective, that of Islam. It introduces an alternative model based on Islamic urbanism that could open doors for deeper thinking regarding the alternative future/good city.

The main focus of this chapter is to explore whether ecological utopias are capable of providing a useful contribution to our quest for an ecologically responsible future and sustainable society, and in what specific ways. I shall develop a model of ecological utopias as a distant point of orientation, or as a ‘navigational compass’. In this model ecotopias may gradually influence the course of concrete decision making in the direction of a future sustainable society. In this context, a strategic issue to be confronted by the green movement is to look for an eco-friendly view on ‘the good life’ and the ‘art of living’. The basic dimensions of a sustainable lifestyle and an utopian inspired ecological ‘art of living’ are that society's focus should be shifted from ‘having’ to ‘being’, and to find a balanced configuration of the vita activa: action, work and labour. It is also vital to find forms of hedonism which are independent of mass consumerism, to relate our material consumption to our ecological footprints in systematic ways, and to cultivate ecological virtues and moral character.

Nietzsche's and Freud's views of guilt provide a useful theoretical context for understanding the relationship between guilt and Utopia we have outlined in Utopia and Those Who Walk Away From Omelas. Both of them speak of guilt as the internalization of cruelty or the instinct of aggression, and see it as an inward turn that reflects a historical context. Nietzsche views guilt and “bad conscience” as a kind of illness. In The Genealogy of Morals (1887/trans. 1989) he writes, “[I] regard the bad conscience as the serious illness that man was bound to contract under the stress of the most fundamental change he ever experienced – that change which occurred when he found himself finally enclosed within the wall of society and of peace” (Nietzsche, 1989, p. 84). In Nietzsche's view, when faced with peace (the absence of an enemy upon whom one might inflict cruelty) and social mores (proscriptions against being cruel to one's fellow citizen) a civilized human is left with only one subject upon whom he may express his aggression and satisfy his appetite for cruelty: himself. “[He] turns himself into an adventure, a torture chamber, an uncertain and dangerous wilderness” (Nietzsche, 1989, p. 85). Deprived of the possibility of expressing his aggressiveness externally, man turns inward and expresses it internally, upon himself. Thus begins the age – and for Nietzsche it is our age – of “man's suffering of man, of himself” (Nietzsche, 1989, p. 85).

Green intentional communities are easily dismissed as irrelevant to wider academic and political debates. In the first instance, they comprise small vanguards, fringes or minority groups. Surely then they interest only the readers of rarefied anthropological journals or viewers of voyeuristic television shows?¹ Secondly, they are part of the green movement, itself often cast (derogatorily,² positively,³ or otherwise⁴ as ‘utopian’). Are they not excessively idealist and romantic: wishful day-dreamers? Drawing on the literal meaning of the word utopia, which combines eu (good), ou (non) and topos (place), this chapter explores the idea that green intentional communities are indeed utopias, whereas challenging two common interpretations of that term. The first views it negatively (as unrealistic, unrealisable, excessively wishful thinking) and can be found on the pages of English Dictionaries and in colloquial parlance. The second views utopias as perfectionist: seeking to provide perfect blueprints that map the road to the good life. I shall explore some of the key ways in which these groups perform key utopian functions, suggesting that they are indeed utopian but that their utopianism is deeply imperfect and pragmatic, rooted in the real concerns and material limitations of the now.

This paper brings a fresh contribution to the role of space and places in Consumer Culture Theory. Investigating the context of tattooing, it conceptualizes the various articulations that link the body as a topia and a utopia, and the street shops (as “other” places or heterotopia) where consumers’ identity projects are undertaken.

Our approach is based on an ethnographic work, that is, the observation of the shop and interviews conducted with its two managers, three male tattooists, and a young female apprentice.

We show how the changes that affect heterotopic places in the world of tattooing impact the way body identity projects are taken care of. We highlight the material and symbolic exchanges that “take place” and “make place” between the shop as a heterotopia and people’s utopias of the body.

The research involves a single fieldwork and deliberately focuses on the female apprentice as the main informant of this study.

This paper draws attentions to the emergence of women in the world of tattooing and their transformative role of highly gendered meanings and practices.

In articulating the links between bodies, their utopias and heterotopic places where these are carried out, we contribute not only to the understanding of the meaning that consumers attribute to the transformation of their body, but also to the role played by spaces – sites as well as gendered bodies – in our understanding of these phenomena.

This chapter explores collective information processing among black-hat hackers during their crises events. The chapter presents a preliminary study on one of Tor-based darknet market forums, during the shutdowns of two cryptomarkets. Content and network analysis of forum conversations showed that black-hat users mostly engaged with rational information processing and were adept at reaching collective solutions by sharing security advices, new market information, and alternative routes for economic activities. At the same time, the study also found that anti-social and distrustful interactions were aggravated during the marketplace shutdowns. Communication network analysis showed that not all members were affected by the crisis events, alluding to a fragmented network structure of black-hat markets. The chapter concludes that, while darknet forums may constitute resilient, solution-oriented users, market crises potentially make the community vulnerable by engendering internal distrust.