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eBook details
- Title: Grounded Utopian Movements: Subjects of Neglect (1) (MEANING-MAKING IN SOCIAL Movements) (Essay)
- Author : Anthropological Quarterly
- Release Date : January 01, 2008
- Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 264 KB
Description
The Ghost Dance movement in the United States, the Rastafari of Jamaica and the Maya Movement of Guatemala, and other movements like them have been widely referred to in the anthropological literature as "revitalization," "cult," and "nativistic" movements (Barrett 1977; England 2003; Linton 1943; Wallace 1956; Warren 1998). Although these ascriptions have been debated, central to these movements has been innovative use of cultural resources such as religious beliefs, the creation of new cultural formations and meanings, and the manifestation of culturally-embedded movement practices. We refer to these movements and others like them as grounded utopian movements. Grounded utopian movements, such as the Ghost Dance, Rastafari, and Maya are thoroughly modern movements; they are not "archaic" or "pre-modern" formations. They have emerged, persisted, disappeared, and reemerged across decades, even centuries. These movements are "utopian" in that they point to a "ideal place" (utopia)--like the new world of the Ghost Dance or Mount Zion for the Rastafari--and by implication, to a better time and more satisfying social relationships and identifications. "Utopian," however, also connotes impracticality, romanticism, and for some observers, irrationality and flightiness. Although all movements have a utopian dimension because they imagine alternative futures (Gusfield 1994:69) and their interest in utopia points to a commonality across movements, grounded utopian movements have been distinctive in that their visions of strong utopias have formed to counteract conditions of racist imperial oppression (e.g., slaughter, ethnocide, displacement), and have focused on group integrity and identity instead of on instrumental action with respect to states and capitalism. In this sense, they might be deemed "impractical."