Real Utopia Proposal Sessions, 2012 ASA meetings

Each of these sessions revolves around a proposal for a real utopian institutional design to resolve some domain of problems. Examples include such things as: democratic education, unconditional basic income, market socialism, equality-sustaining parental leaves, participatory budgets, random-selection democratic assemblies, worker cooperatives, stakeholder corporations, democratic media, etc. For each of these sessions a person who has worked extensively on formulating such real utopia designs (rather than simply a person who has thought critically about the theme)  has agreed to write an essay laying out the rationale and core elements of the institutional proposal. While of course these essays will include some discussion of what is wrong with existing structures and institutions, the goal is for the essay to sketch the central contours of alternatives. This does not generally mean a detailed “institutional blueprint”, but rather a careful elaboration of the core principles of an institutional proposal. At the session there will be a brief – around 20-25 minutes – presentation of the proposal and generally one other presentation. This can be a commentary, a critique, or, if appropriate, a contrasting proposal. These sessions are meant to to be built around debate and discussion from the floor, so the formal presentations should take no more than 45-minutes. This will leave about an hour of general discussion. Since people interested in the topic can read the proposals ahead of time, audience members are encouraged to come with prepared comments which they can present from the floor.  While of course we want to avoid long-winded speeches from the floor, somewhat longer than usual interventions from the audience could be constructive.       

1.    Janet Gornick (CUNY Graduate Center), "Work-Family Reconciliation Policies and Gender Equality"    Version: January 3, 2012

2.    Michael Fielding and Peter Moss (Institute of Education, University of London, UK),  "Radical Democratic Education"    Version: April, 2012  EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

3.    Robert McChesney (University of Illinois), "A Real Media Utopia"   Version: January 4, 2012

4.    William A. Gamson and Heather McIntosh, Boston College, "An Ideal Media System"   Version: February 17, 2012        EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

5.    Philippe Van Parijs & Yannick Vanderborght  (University of Louvain), “Basic Income in a Globalized Economy”  Version: January 13, 2012

6.    Barbara J. Risman, Judith Lorber, and Jessica Holden Sherwood,  “Toward a World Beyond Gender: A Utopian Vision" Version: January 27, 2012

7.    Fred Block (UC Davis), "Democratizing Finance"     Revised Version: May 21, 2012

8.    John Gastil and Robert Richards (Penn State), "Making Direct Democracy Deliberative through Random Assemblies"   Version: February 13, 2012   EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

9.    Michael Albert (Z Magazine), "Beyond Class Rule Is Parecon" Version: February 1, 2012

10.  Michael Brie and Mario Candeias (Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Berlin) "Postfossil Conversion and Free Public Transport" Version: February 15, 2012  EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

11.  Bruce Ackerman (Yale Law School) "Reviewing Democractic Citizenship" Version: February 26, 2012  ABSTRACT

12.  Joseph Blasi & Douglas Kruse (Rutgers),  "Broad-based Worker Ownership and Profit Sharing: Can These Ideas Work in the Entire Economy?" Version: March 7, 2012  ABSTRACT

13.  Uriel Leviatan (Western Galilie College and Haifa University), "Lessons from the Kibbutz as a Real Utopia" Version: April, 2012

14.  Gerald F. Davis (University of Michigan), "Re-imagining the Corporation" Updated version: April 24, 2012  ABSTRACT

15.  Gar Alperowitz and Steve Dubb (University of Maryland), "The Pluralist Commonwealth and a community-sustaining economy,"  Version: June, 2012  ABSTRACT

16.  Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (Duke), "Race, Racism & Utopia For Real." Version: June, 2012 

17.  Gianpaolo Baiocchi (Brown) and Ernesto Ganuza (IESA), "Participatory Budgeting as if Emancipation Mattered."  Version: June, 2012 

18.  Rob Reich (Stanford), "Philanthropy and Real Utopia."  Version: July, 2012 

19. Harriet Friedman (Toronto), "Reinhabiting our Earthly Home: Ways to Reshape an Urban Foodshed"   Version: July, 2012 

20. Harry Brighouse and Jaime Ahlberg (Wisconsin), "Education: not a real utopian design"   Version: July, 2012 

21. Joel Rogers (Wisconsin), "Productive Democracy"   Version: July, 2012

22. Archon Fung (Harvard), "Infortopia"    Version: July, 2012