Doom or Salvation? Utopian Beliefs in Contemporary Development Discourses and Environmentalism

Abstract

In the first part of this article I argue that utopian (as well as dystopian) ideas are vital for contemporary global discourses on development and for environmentalism. The utopian element of these discourses – which include mainstream and alternative ones - is deeply rooted in European philosophical, literary and socio-critical traditions, but in its ecotopian form also relates to non-western spiritual and moral thoughts. In the second part I concentrate on the “environmentalism of the poor”, predominant in Third World countries and fundamentally related to livelihood struggles and local ideas of social advancement. I argue that such grass root forms of environmentalism are less involved in imagining a global ecotopia but have become appropriated, interpreted and represented by intellectual elites, media and globally operating activists subsuming them into their own ecotopian imaginaries.