ABSTRACT
With surveys in the US showing the majority of people under 30 years old favoring socialism over capitalism, the recurring stock market upheavals, and xenophobic nationalism enabled by demagogues around the world, instead of focusing on individual political leaders, it is ever more pressing to explore the ways in which we can co-construct our societies beyond capitalism. Can we imagine a world without capitalism? A society that is no longer co-created, permeated, and indeed, invaded by the social, cultural, political, ideological, and discursive enabling domains that work in tandem to co-construct, support, perpetuate, and justify a capitalist-run and -dominated economy? How is capitalism partly manifested not only in specific discourses taken up by people in their everyday lives, but also in the materialized urban spaces that we see and interact with every day? Are there glimpses of this future already in our present everyday lives and practices? This introduction chapter addresses these questions and examines the ways in which identities, discourses, and topographies of both capitalist and anti-capitalist imaginaries and realities are co-constructed, enacted, visualized, and embodied in the everyday practices of people in their manifestations in space, time, and urban domains.
