Everyday Utopia: In Praise of Radical Alternatives to the Traditional Family Home

(Paperback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

A practical and uplifting vision of better ways to live together, own property, have families and raise children, as pioneered by experimental communities throughout the world and across history - from the author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism.

'History is made by the dreamers ... A must-read' THOMAS PIKETTY

---

The traditional 'nuclear' family home is a problem: it places unfair and unnecessary burdens on women (and men too), it entrenches inequalities, it entraps us financially and it hinders certain kinds of child development. Also, it doesn't seem to make us very happy.

And yet throughout history and around the world today, forward-thinking communities have pioneered alternative ways of living - from the all-female 'beguinages' of medieval Belgium to the matriarchal ecovillages of contemporary Colombia; from the ancient Greek commune founded by Pythagoras, where men and women lived as equals and shared property, to present-day Connecticut, where new laws make it easier for extra 'alloparents' to help raise children not their own. Some of these experiments burned brightly and briefly; others are living proof of what is possible.

Everyday Utopia upends our assumptions and raises our sights by gathering these and many more inspiring examples together, arguing that many of the most important and effective ways of changing our lives and the world are to be found in the home. The result is a radically hopeful and practical vision of more connected - and contented - ways of living.

---

'Liberating and inspirational, a sweeping feminist history of society at its most creative' ADA CALHOUN, author of Why We Can't Sleep

'Splendid. Invigorating writing for a cheerless era' YANIS VAROUFAKIS

Reviews

History is made by the dreamers ... A must-read -- THOMAS PIKETTY
Utopia can and ought to be an everyday thing. In every home. Invigorating writing for a cheerless era -- YANIS VAROUFAKIS
Liberating and inspirational ... Kristen Ghodsee's sweeping feminist history of society at its most creative -- ADA CALHOUN, author of Why We Can't Sleep
Brilliant ... engaging ... Ghodsee is not naive [and] brings the necessary scepticism to her thesis [which] comes into sharp focus when she looks at what happened after the Wall fell ... [a] valuable record of how things were and how they could be -- ROSIE BOYCOTT on Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism
Funny, angry, urgent. Ghodsee is going to start a revolution -- DAISY BUCHANAN on Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism

Author Bio

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Kristen R. Ghodsee was travelling in Europe, and spent the summer of 1990 witnessing first-hand the initial hope and euphoria that followed the sudden and unexpected collapse of state socialism in the former Eastern Bloc. The political and economic chaos that followed inspired Ghodsee to pursue an academic career studying this upheaval, focusing on how ordinary people's lives - and women's particularly - changed when state socialism gave way to capitalism. For the last two decades, she has visited the region regularly and lived for over three years in Bulgaria and the Eastern parts of reunified Germany. Now a professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, she has won many awards for her work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has written six books on gender, socialism, and postsocialism, examining the everyday experiences of upheaval and displacement that continue to haunt the region to this day. Ghodsee also writes on women's issues for the Chronicle of Higher Education and is the co-author of Professor Mommy- Finding Work/Family Balance in Academia. Her articles and essays have appeared in publications such as Eurozine, Aeon, Dissent, Foreign Affairs and The New York Times.