With a passion for animal rights transforming into one for ecological issues, when I was in high school, I’ve been involved in activism research for 40+ years. Recently this has translated into an intense search for radical alternatives to ‘development’ and all the structures of inequality and unsustainability underlying it, including capitalism, state-domination, and patriarchy. I’ve been documenting many ‘living utopias’ where communities are forging pathways of well-being without trashing the earth or creating abysmal inequalities. Many groups & networks I’ve helped start, including Kalpavriksh, Vikalp Sangam, and Global Tapestry of Alternatives, focus on these issues. So it's always fascinating also to see how fictional utopias relate to these!
I edited...
Pluriverse – A Post-Development Dictionary Ashish Kothari
By
Ashish Kothari,
Ariel Salleh,
Arturo Escobar,
Federico DeMaria,
Alberto Acosta
What is my book about?
Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary contains over one hundred essays on transformative initiatives and alternatives to the currently dominant processes of globalized development, including its structural roots in modernity, capitalism, state domination, and masculinist values. It offers critical essays on mainstream solutions that ‘greenwash’ development and presents radically different worldviews and practices from around the world that point to an ecologically wise and socially just world.
When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.
The Books I Picked & Why
News from Nowhere
By
William Morris
Why this book?
Deeply engaging and bold in its vision, News from Nowhere shows how a truly egalitarian society can work without any centralised power and private property. Seen through the eyes of a socialist who wakes up one day to find himself in such a world, I particularly liked how this departs from usual socialist visions which are dependent on a central state; here, ‘public’ property truly belongs to the public! Written in the 1890s, this book spawned many other utopian writings, but perhaps none matched up to the simple sophistication of Morris’ vision.
When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.
Island
By
Aldous Huxley
Why this book?
The complete antithesis to Huxley’s much more famous book, Brave New World, this novel depicts the ideal life of an imaginary island, Pala, somewhere in South-East Asia. Huxley seems to have picked up elements from the actual life-ways of islanders in the Asia-Pacific region, rather than do a lot of futuristic fable-building. Economic production, spiritual and ethical values, nature conservation, and other aspects of life are integrated into a harmonious whole which is quite alluring! But though this was written 30 years after Brave New World, Huxley seems not to have completely shaken off that dystopian outlook. The ending of Island is disquieting, to say the least. Or perhaps he is simply reminding us that an island of utopian living is not enough, and will always be threatened if the world as a whole remains enthralled by the trappings of money-making and power-seeking.
When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.
The Telling
By
Ursula K. Le Guin
Why this book?
We live in a world where freedom of thought and expression is constantly threatened by those who would like to be unquestioned rulers. Le Guin’s Aka planet is one such, where those in power have attempted to erase history and ban books. But as in so many of Le Guin’s books, a utopian streak comes shining through here in the form of an underground movement keeping alive memory through the sacred act of telling. I loved the subversive current in the story, The Telling of which is itself an act of hope and inspiration.
When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.
Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements
By
Adrienne Maree Brown,
Walidah Imarisha
Why this book?
Anthologies of science fiction often tend to be darkly foreboding. This one takes us on a journey of 20 bold, hope-inspiring stories infused with the scent of freedom, justice, emancipation. The authors, many of them black, feminist, queer, rebel artists, and the like, all involved in some kind of social action, come up with dazzling imaginations of what a better world could look like. Like any good collection of stories, it’s the kind one can dive into every once in a while, whether one has 10 minutes to read or the whole day … and having finished it, come back to it yet again for a dose of inspiration.
When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.
The Ministry for the Future
By
Kim Stanley Robinson
Why this book?
The latest book on my list of 5 is a blockbuster in many ways. Taking the earth’s biggest crisis, climate, head-on, the author starts with a horrifying heatwave killing 20 million people in north India but then goes on to build a much more hopeful and astonishingly realistic narrative of how the world moves rapidly into tackling the crisis. It's fiction, but not fantasy, and Robinson builds a solid scientific base for the actions his characters take. As in most of the books in my list, women take a lead … and though I’m not nationalistic, I was more than a little pleased that the author puts India at the centre of many of the solutions!
