ABSTRACT
In order to put more recent utopian proposals into an historical context, it is necessary to understand what the concept of a utopia means, how it has historically been defined, and what the criteria are for something to be called a utopia. Earlier utopias by Thomas More (1478-1535), Charles Fourier (1772-1837), William Morris (1834-1896) and others, outline social systems and new ways of organizing society to address the problems that were endemic at those time periods. The term “utopia” itself is taken from the creation of the term by Thomas More in 1516, when he wrote about a society on an island called Utopia (the word originates from the Greek meaning “no place”).3 The society More wrote about is often referred to as an ideal one, but it is not clear that More intended for it to be viewed as such; rather, he wrote Utopia as a critique of the societal order at the time and as a proposal for a better future. A re-imagining of the social order is a fundamental attribute of utopias, as well as the idea that the proposed social order is a critique of the current social order at the time of writing. In general, utopian visions are proposing new social orders intended to relieve the human suffering that is viewed as a fundamental problem of the time and improve quality of life overall. Utopias have re-emerged in writing in various time periods and are usually in response to a societal crisis.
