ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the utopian practice of the environmental movements of the 1970s and what has happened to it in the years since. Utopias have usually been thought of as ideas, as visionary figments of the imagination that are intrinsically impractical. By using the term utopian practice, Andrew Jamison want to emphasize the visionary aspects of social movements in general, and of the environmental movements of the 1970s in particular, so that one might better understand the difference between what goes on in social movements and in more institutionalized' forms of politics and social interaction. Social movements were seen as providing an organizational dimension a public space for combining the cosmology and the technology in processes of collective learning. In the environmental movements of the 1970s, this cognitive praxis envisioned both in theory and practice a more environmentally-friendly or ecological society. Utopias have usually been thought of as ideas, as visionary figments of the imagination that are intrinsically impractical.
