Development as Utopia? Road to a Better Future Between Fiction and Lived Utopian Practice

ABSTRACT

Development as presented in the MDGs/SDGs is a well-planned step-by-step enterprise. If we dig deeper into the development debate, it is clear that the dilemma of eradicating poverty and achieving sustainable development is still unsolved, despite all efforts. Thus, development seems to be fictional in the sense of an unreachable utopia. Against this background, it is helpful to connect the development debate with utopian studies. We learn from utopian studies that there are not only fictional utopias as a vision of a just world, which may never be realised. There are also lived utopias that unpack alternative approaches to overcoming inequality or meeting ecological challenges, and which can be realised at least within a limited space. This applies to concepts from in the Global South, such as swaraj, buen vivir and ubuntu, or ecovillages and solidarity economies that present themselves as models for alternative development. As lived utopias, they follow future practice in a defined area in which the desired future becomes part of the present. These concepts are new models in the critical development debate. They are particularly successful in communities that share a common vision and common values. At the same time, there are doubts whether these models may be realised at the national or global. With regard to the fictional character of development goals, it is obvious that we still lack a feasible global strategy with a vision for the future that is attractive enough to gain global support and that can really be accomplished.

KEYWORDS:

• alternative development
• development goals
• SDGs/MDGs
• utopian studies
• lived utopias and future

1. Introduction

Despite growing criticism, in many countries of the Global South development continues to be associated with the hope of a comprehensive improvement in living conditions. Against the backdrop of classical and mainstream developmental theory and practice, the concept of development is an expression of the promise to be part of a (Western or global) ‘modernity’ and to benefit through science and technology from globalised capitalist economic progress. This is linked with the expectation of further growth with improving material living conditions in the Global North and in the Global South. Development also aims at overcoming global disparities and poverty. In short, development should lead to a better future for all. Even though ‘modernity’ has produced a variety of different political systems, including authoritarian regimes and dictatorships, freedom and democracy are still associated with an idealised ‘modernity’ (Eisenstadt, 2000; Preyer and Sussmann, 2016). Hopes with regard to democracy lead far too often to disappointment, an issue which has been raised in critical development studies (e.g. Bendix et al., 2020.; for a critique of liberal democracy from a radical position of grass-roots democracy see: Kothari, 2021). In addition, among scholars in the field of critical social theory and in critical development studies there is a growing critique of the capitalist idea of modernity with its resulting inequalities (Dörre et al., 2009; Stiglitz, 2002; Weiss and Cattaneo, 2017). The current fundamental critique of ‘modernity’ and capitalism has left its niche existence and has become an integral part of academic debates (Delanty, 2019). This critique of capitalism points to the failure of ‘modernity’,¹ in general and goes beyond the classic Marxian position(s) and sees capitalism as cause for a variety of social phenomena, inequalities and discrimination. This links with social movements that increasingly criticise capitalism and its belief in technology-based growth, along with international trade, globalisation and intensified industrialisation (Della Porta and Tarrow, 2005).² For example, environmental movements such as Extinction Rebellion and, to a certain extent, Fridays for Future, argue, in relation to the ecological-economic dilemma (see Dörre et al., 2009; Daniel et al., 2020), that a sustainable, and thus better future can only go hand in hand with a fundamental change of capitalist economic structures. In the frame of development theories, for instance with reference to post-colonial or post-development approaches, scholars argue that we need ‘alternative’ imaginaries of a good life and pluriverse futures (Escobar, 2020; Kothari et al., 2019; Noxolo, 2016). There are also voices from the Global South that demand an alternative to the ‘Western’ notion of development. Gandhi’s concept of swaraj and its followers strictly criticise industrialism and promote of a kind of self-contained village life (Patil and Sinha 2022). The Latin American concept of buen vivir, developed against the background of post-development critique (to be discussed later) and the Southern African concept of ubuntu refer to a good life, beyond or complementary to ‘modernity’. The recent book by Farwine Sarr with the title Afrotopia (2019) underlines this critique and argues that the ‘Western’ notion of development needs to be criticised and African alternatives should be developed.

Despite this debate on alternative developments, the World Bank and the United Nations (UN), still promote the liberal globalised capitalist economy, addressed by its critics as neoliberal. Thus, the cleavage between academic critics and civil society engagement for alternatives, on the one hand, and the dominant economic development model with its supporters from science, powerful politics and companies on the other hand, is easy to grasp. One side promotes technology-based growth within the framework of a globalised capitalist economy with a greater or lesser degree of welfare-state cushioning. The other side criticises this belief in growth and technology and sets the goal of ecological and social sustainability, a fair distribution of goods based on self-reliance and local self-governance. Critics of the dominating capitalist economic model – academics and social movements – focus on the preservation of nature and/or on holistic understandings of the relationship between humans and nature. This goes along with appreciation of social relationships, solidarity, including recourse to supposed traditions, and trust in humanity, instead of boundless growth. They argue that this change should start by showcasing that alternatives to a simple outdated growth model are feasible although they might remain spatially limited. While critical social theory and post-colonial theory are focussing on critical reflections on the mainstream model of development, recent post-development research presents ‘alternative’ visions and practices. This research overlaps with the interdisciplinary field of utopian studies. Here, social, economic or ecological criticism is the starting point for imagining a socially just future, which can be fictional in the sense of unreachable (for an overview see Claeys and Sargent, 1999; Levitas, 2011) or may lead to lived utopian practices (see Cooper, 2014; Daniel, 2022; Wright, 2010). Although the debates in both disciplines, utopian studies and development studies, seek to define a desirable future, these academic fields remained separated.

Our aim is to connect these debates and ask what understanding of future transformations do development studies (mainstream and post-development) and utopian studies (fictional and lived utopia) have? For this purpose, we use the term utopia in two ways, according to the terminology in the field of utopian studies. First, fictional utopia is the imagination of a potentially non-realisable, but desirable, just world located in an undefined future. Second, lived utopia is a practice which realises the desirable conditions, not in an undefined future, but in the here and now, in a limited spatial area. Against this backdrop we will ask: How utopian (in a fictional or unrealisable sense) are conventional and mainstreamed development concepts and practices, and do lived (not fictional) utopias contribute to development? How do lived utopias overlap with critical post-development approaches? With these questions, we will show that using a utopian lens can help to provide a new perspective on development.

From a historical perspective, we analyse how a better future has been imagined in the context of classical mainstream and post-development studies and practices (section 2). We investigate utopian studies and their future imaginaries with regard to fictional and lived utopias (section 3). Particularly lived utopias present practices which constitute a critique of the notion of development and are in line with post-development studies (section 4). We call them ‘lived utopias of developmental practice’. Lived utopias not only offer an alternative to the fictional, ideal utopias of development, but also pave the way for new developmental understandings beyond mainstream concepts of development.³

In a recent article, Teppo Eskelinen (2021) has provided empirical evidence that development programmes include a utopian element. Our conclusion (section 5) goes a step further. We argue that the notion of development is utopian because it is structurally unable to fulfil its contradictory promises of poverty eradication and materially improved living conditions at the one hand and ecological sustainability at the other hand.⁴ In addition, we go beyond the fictional concept of utopia and discuss the lived utopias that present themselves as alternatives to development, including its inherent structural limitations. We analyse systematically what differences and commonalities there are between two debates that both deal with a socially just future. Thus, we unpack the peculiarities of envisioning the future in utopian studies and development studies, and show that the concept of utopia is finding its way into development research.

2. Future visions in development studies

‘Development’ as a political goal for the Global South existed already during the era of colonialism.⁵ The development offered the promise of improved living conditions, and later also for freedom and democracy (understood as the antithesis of communism), made possible by the capitalist model of economic and industrial growth, guided by science and technology.⁶ A core element of all development ideas was an international economic system with division of labour and international trade, which decades later has been labelled as ‘economic globalisation’. Development combines basic notions of ‘modernity’, such as the creation of the future of humankind according to the visions of human beings and no longer given by God, an efficient technically developed and bureaucratically administered capitalism (Giddens, 1990), and the vision of a free democratic society. This combination is typical of the promises of ‘modernity’ (Wittrock, 2000). Different theories of modernitsation (Inkeles and Smith, 1974; Rostow, 1971; Smelser, 1973) have shared the idea that the ‘West’ is ‘the’ model to be followed by the ‘rest’. In a way, ‘modernity’ represents the endpoint of development and reflects a conviction that this development will be realised in the near future.⁷

Despite the general optimism, the hope put in economic growth has been disappointed. Even where the economy has grown, a real overall structural development has not been realised, and the improvement of livelihoods and general human development such as health education, gender equality has failed. There were sceptical voices already in the 1950s, which criticised the on-going expropriation of the Global South (then referred to as the ‘Third World’) by Northern capitalism. Terms were used such as dependency theory (Prebisch, 1962; Singer, 1949) or ‘the development of underdevelopment’ (Frank 1966). Despite growing scepticism (Menzel, 1992), these classical and mainstream theories of modernisation and dependence are the foundation for the still on-going development debate.

At the same time development studies turned towards development policy (Jolly, 2002; Kirkpatrick et al., 2002). The goals became more tangible, with the eradication of poverty and the improvement of living conditions for people in the Global South. The strategies and slogans changed: pro-poor-growth, structural adjustment, or participatory development (Chambers, 1997) marked radical shifts. The growing importance of ecological problems led to the inclusion of sustainability. All these ideas are expressed in the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) announced in 2000, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015 (Leal Filho et al., 2018; Sexsmith and McMichael, 2015).

Despite these changes and differences, all visions of development share the same basic features. The conviction is that development can be achieved if the right policies and measures, are consistently implemented, for instance by following the MDGs and SDGs. Thus, development is not only predictable, but achievable by planned action. This is what Eskelinen (2021) describes as the governance mode. Since the publication of the UN SDGs, development includes the whole world and applies on the global level.

The classical mainstream development theories and policies, including the notion of planned development are the subject of post-colonial and post-development critique. One of the first critics to gain an audience was Arturo Escobar (1995), and others followed (Rahnema and Bawtree, 1997; Ziai, 2004). For them, the dream of worldwide improvement of living conditions under the heading of capitalism was a nightmare. This understanding of development would make people in the Global South deficient, weak, even helpless and in need of support, ignoring their ways of living and their concepts of a livelihood. Thus, development agencies promise solutions for problems that have been invented by the development industry itself. The notion of development is seen as the continuation of colonial suppression and a hegemony of ‘Western’ thinking that leaves no space for local notions of a good life. Aram Ziai (2020, 246) summarises this critique as ‘naturalizing the norms and historical processes of the European self’. This includes ‘the problematization of the Other as deviant’ and the ‘promise of “development” as a mechanism of legitimizing intervention'. This goes hand in hand with post-colonial arguments that see a hierarchisation of different ‘types of knowledge’ and ‘depoliticization’, implying that everyone benefits from development. According to the critics, it also includes a ‘masculinism’ expressed by its rationality, implying the mastery of nature (Ziai, 2020, 246f., cf. also Lewis and Milks, 2003; Noxolo, 2016). The critics propose ‘alternatives to development’ in contrast to the mainstream capitalist understanding (Esteva et al., 2013; Kothari et al., 2019; Klein and Morreo, 2019). What is often overlooked is that their ideas are close to those of lived utopias, which will be discussed in the next section.

We should also mention radical liberals see development policy as doomed to failure. Seen from this perspective development plans, state-led development and development projects that support economic weak parts of the economy ignore the forces of the capitalistic market and thus block a successful liberal development (Bauer, 1976). More recently, also voices from Africa (Shikwati, 2004; Moyo, 2009) have argued along these radical liberal lines.

3. Future visions in utopian studies

Like development studies, research on utopia is concerned with a future worth living in. The interdisciplinary field of utopian studies (similar to critical social analysis) draws from critical diagnoses of society, but claims to go one step further by developing visions of a socially just society.⁸ This notion of a just society is the crucial commonality with the development debate. Visionary descriptions of society are found in literary studies, philosophy, political theory and sociology. Although, the notion of utopia is deeply anchored in European history, utopias exist in nearly every historical period and across cultures (Dutton and Sargent, 2013). This is the reason why Richard Saage (1991, 6) argues that the presentation of utopias is always selective. In France alone, the Enlightenment produced over forty political utopias. Two understandings of utopia – already mentioned in our introduction – have prevailed. The first is a fictional pictorial understanding of an ideal society localised in an undefined future. The second is a processual and intentional understanding of utopia which can be realised under certain conditions.⁹ Both understandings of utopia share a critique of the present and the imagination of an alternative future in an emancipatory sense (cf. Daniel, 2023). This is clearly different from the notion of development to be reached by planned action.

Thomas More’s fictional understanding of utopia emerged with his book Utopia ([1516] 2016). He explains the genesis of the notion: etymologically, it comes from Greek ou, which means not, and tópos, the word for place. Utopia is a non-place or nowhere. Since the publication of this book, the term utopia has been used to refer to an ideal but fictional society, situated in an undefined and immaterial future. A fictional utopia is thus a place that does not exist in reality, a place that is desirable but not realisable. A fictional utopia offers a detailed counter-project with a detailed description of how the private sphere, society, the economy and politics that serves to present a critical mirror image of society. Accounts of fictional utopias do not usually discuss how to realise the ideal society.

For instance, More ([1516] 2016) criticised the economic system of feudalism, the fact that citizens were not able to appropriate the products of their work, and the fact that conflicts between different parts of the political elite created poverty and social disparities. According to More, preconditions for an ideal society are the eradication of individualism and private property, and the creation of common goods. Homogeneity in architecture and even in social life would ensure that everybody has the same possibilities, and that the products of work are equally distributed. The ideal political order of More’s utopia is a mixture between an aristocracy of scholars and democracy. Following More, numerous fictional utopias emerged addressing the problems of enlightenment, industrialisation or totalitarian regimes, and developing ideal fictions of a just society (cf. Claeys and Sargent, 1999; Levitas, 2011). The counter-images discussed are emancipatory societies based on solidarity and equality, abolition of property, work, science and technology, political participation, family, sexual morality, education and religion (Saage 1991, 5f.). Other cases are socialist utopias, which critically reflect on the impoverishment of the vast majority of the population due to industrialisation, which led to class conflicts. For instance, Robert Owen ([1813] 1919) imagines a society without private property and without classes, organised not by a central state but by a cooperative. The individual and his freedoms are respected and are a prerequisite for a society in which the individual is absorbed into the collective; here, solidarity, harmony and equality overcome the alienation of industrialisation (Claeys and Sargent, 1999, 207ff.). In the twentieth century, the utopian genre expanded, for instance to feminist or post-human and technological utopias and dystopias, as in the novels of Marge Piercy ([1976] 1995), and more recently those of Nnedi Okorafor (2014). Ecological crisis scenarios and their social consciousness have given rise to ecotopias, such as those of Ernest Callenbach ([1975] 2019).

Parallel to these fictional utopias, in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries an intentional understanding of utopia emerged in social sciences. In contrast to the static description of an ideal, fictional society which is unreachable, intentional utopias are process-oriented. With this understanding of utopia, intellectuals and scholars increasingly addressed the question of how to realise the desired ideal society. This shift in focus is based on the premise that utopia is not fictional in the sense of unreachable, but can be achieved with favourable constellations. Rather than defining the ideal society, intentional utopias describe how this society can be addressed, for instance by a certain consciousness (Mannheim, 1979), by desires and hopes (Bloch, 1959), or through the aspirations and practices of social movements or lived utopias (Cooper, 2014; Daniel, 2022; Wright, 2010). Lived utopias are a sub-category of intentional utopias and show how an ‘alternative’ future can be enacted in the present.¹⁰

If we now look at development policy and practice from the perspective of utopian studies, we may ask how utopian is development? We explore the meaning of utopia in development by considering its implicitly fictional content and its connection to lived utopia.

4. How utopian is development?

4.1. Development as a non-realisable (fictional) utopia?

The premise of modernistic development practice, and, to some extent, of development studies, is the idea of creating socially just, democratic and ecologically sustainable change on a global scale, as outlined in the MDGs and SDGs. They represent the idea that globally shared norms which have been legitimated by the UN will echo like a boomerang in nation states (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Khagram et al., 2002). However, the idea that these development norms can be globally implemented remains utopian, in the sense of fictional. We still face worldwide poverty and the quest for sustainable development is still ongoing.

The limits are evident, for example, with regard to the goal of halving poverty on a global scale (MDG 1). For instance, more than 1 billion people have been successfully lifted out of extreme poverty (less than $1.25 a day) since 1990. The rate of people living in extreme poverty dropped to 14 per cent between 1990 and 2015 (UN, 2021). However globally, more than 800 million people are still living in extreme poverty, far from the original goal (UN, 2021). An even more striking disparity between progress and unachieved goals is obvious with regard to sustainable development (MDG 7). Compared to the carbon emissions of 1990 there is visible progress, especially in some countries of the North, but this is far from the set goals. The Global North is responsible for the climate crisis with high emissions and they have not been able to compensate the growing emissions in the Global South and the newly industrialised countries, while the Global South suffers predominantly from the climate crisis (cf. Hickel 2019). On the one hand, we are witnessing increasing afforestation, ozone-depleting substances have been eliminated, and the proportion of people having access to water and sanitation has increased. On the other hand, between 1990 and 2012 the global emissions of carbon dioxide predominantly caused by the Global North increased by over 50 per cent. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2018) of the UN highlighted the urgent need to react, and recalled the pledge of nation states to fulfil the Paris Agreement of 2015 which ensures a global warming of not more than 1.5 degrees (UN, 2021). Thus, the realisation of global development goals has repeatedly been postponed, and after the last COP meeting 2023 at Dubai with a loud voice of fossil fuel companies it can also be assumed that the Paris Agreement will not be fulfilled by many countries (in the Global North and South) even if the planned increase from fossil fuels was discussed together for the first time in Dubai. The background to this is a dilemma: the eradication of poverty needs economic growth, at least in poor countries. Even in the frame of a ‘green economy’, with improved technology at the current stage, growth goes hand in hand with energy consumption and carbon emissions, which need to be reduced in order to attain the sustainability goals. We prefer to name it a ‘poverty-growth-ecology dilemma’ to underline the importance of poverty eradication. The critics of development draw the conclusion that an ecologically just future is not possible without a fundamental transformation of the global capitalist economy and by emphasising the need for edgrowth societies (Delanty, 2019).

Even if the fight against poverty shows at least a few results, the failed sustainability goals underline that developmental goals always face the problem of implementation and bring the vision back to reality. They reveal what is desirable, and implicitly assume that the desired vision can be realised. This is particularly evident regarding sustainability. To what extent the MDG on sustainability can be realised depends on the particular national conditions. Thus, the political will of the state and civil society are preconditions for implementing globally shared norms nationally and they often are not strong enough or even missing (cf. Keck and Sikkink, 1998).

The specific development goals which address global well-being are utopian in the sense that these goals cannot be achieved at present. Some scholars highlight the failure of the development goals but draw other conclusions, as they perceive these goals as dystopian. For them a world with strict regulations of the capitalist economy with radically reduced growth to achieve sustainability is a horror scenario of eco-dictatorship. Eco-dictatorship is a term used by those who do not see the need for a sustainable future as urgent. Some voices from Africa contest sustainability as ‘environmental colonialism’ (Nelson, 2003), while others reject sustainability, arguing that they have the right to destroy the environment to ensure economic growth (Singh, 2019).

Hence, while the development goal on sustainability is controversial and remains somehow fictional, other goals such as reducing poverty are less controversial and therefore more feasible, but we are still far from realising the eradication of poverty. These utopian aspects of development and development policy are consistently ignored.

4.2. Development through lived utopia

Beyond the debate on how fictional development is, development practice shows strong overlaps with lived utopia (without naming them as such). Following post-development, developmental practices have increasingly taken local imaginaries and practices into account (Esteva et al., 2013; Bhambra and Santos, 2017), leading to ‘alternative developments’ (Kothari et al., 2019; Matthews, 2004; see also Klein and Morreo, 2019; Bendix et al., 2020.). Two concepts (among many) have gained popularity, in Latin American buen vivir and in Southern African the concept of ubuntu. Thus, post-development studies and recent research on lived utopia often refer to the same phenomena. We will call them ‘lived utopias of alternative developmental practice’.

The Latin American buen vivir (living a good life) is one of the most prominent post-development concepts. It defines a good life which includes material well-being (food, housing, health) and culture-specific ideas of community emerging from indigenous philosophies, with access to resources for subsistence and smallholder production. An important element is living in harmony with nature, which links very well with current political demands for ecological sustainability. It promotes a society based on solidarity and participation in the economy and in politics. Activities that take place under the heading of buen vivir are directed at the improvement of livelihoods according to local principles, with a strong communalist element (Caria and Domínguez, 2016; Gudynas, 2011; Vanhulst and Beling, 2014). Buen vivir even has been elevated from a local strategy to the national level and is included as an overall political goal in the constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia (Altmann, 2013, 101; Caria and Domínguez, 2016, 19). However, the results have been ambivalent, for instance in Ecuador, where the constitutional rights have not been realised. In addition, buen vivir was translated into the typical logic of development plans, or neoliberal management logics, rather than being based on community-based decisions and a critique of capitalism (Lang, 2019, 178).

At least at the local level, buen vivir offers an alternative development path to improve livelihoods. For example, a small town in Ecuador studied by Lang (2019) faced the challenge of rising costs for water supply. The typical options would have been to increase the tariffs or to privatise the system to make it more efficient. The mayor decided to follow an ‘alternative’ path, and for the first time a general citizens’ assembly was called to decide on a solution. After a long deliberation, lower rates were fixed. This was possible because the mayor abstained from the usual clientelist practices. In addition, parts of the work were carried out by the people as unpaid communitarian work at the weekends. This shows that ‘real’ participation in local government offers a means of control and a motivation to contribute to the provision of common goods, with reference to local ‘traditional’ practices and the principles of buen vivir.¹¹ Due to their lived alternative practices, they can also be called lived utopias, because the desired future is part and parcel of the present.

A second popular concept, ubuntu, is based on a communitarian morality (Matthews, 2018) and serves as a guideline for policies, but is not transferred to defined developmental practices (Praeg, 2014). Nevertheless, it offers alternatives to development, which can be seen in lived utopian practices in Southern Africa that use ubuntu as a moral orientation, or alternative socio-ecological practices that are not sufficiently implemented in national policies. For instance, the ecovillage Lyndoch claims to offer technical answers for a sustainable and ecologically just way of life, and to counteract the social fragmentation of South Africa (cf. Swilling, 2006). The promised multicultural ‘Rainbow Nation’ has not been realised, and Lyndoch offers a space in which the imagined multicultural society can be combined with sustainable living in a lived utopian practice that is independent from the state and development programmes. Another example is the Green Camp Gallery Project, which performs ubuntu and a post-growth form of living by using sufficiency and permaculture as alternative practices (Daniel, 2022).

There are other cases based on a similar understanding of alternative development e.g. at least at programmatic level we find references to older Indian the notion of swaraj (e.g. Demaria and Kothari, 2017). We also find lived utopia that remind at buen vivir, ubuntu or swaraj without making a direct reference to them.¹² Bhavya Chitranshi (2019) presents the case of single women who belong to a particular ethnic group in India.¹³ They have managed to organise a radically communitarian group farming project. At first sight, they refer to local traditions with regard to agricultural practice and the ‘logic of sharing, co-labouring and co-dependence’ (Chitranshi, 2019, 120). But at the same time, they have escaped the existing gendered reality in which single women are seen as outsiders. Their post-capitalist subsistence agriculture is successful and offers the chance to sell some of their products in the local market without adapting to the overall capitalist logic.

These alternative development initiatives or lived utopias can develop a broader regional relevance and either be incorporated into national policies, as in the case of buen vivir, or lead to the development of autonomous structures, as illustrated by the Zapatistas in Mexico or the Rojava communities in Syria. They practise alternative forms of production beyond the dominant growth doctrine, and in the case of Rojava also direct democratic forms of political regulation resulting in post-national ideas of federation. In contrast to the regionally limited projects mentioned above, they manage entire communities and territories, and create alternative solutions for social needs (Inclán, 2012; Nordhag, 2021). Rojava, in particular, goes beyond the territorially limited initiatives of typical post-development initiatives and lived utopias that are implemented within the framework of existing states. Rojava shows alternative forms of political regulation beyond the state, in particular in relation to the ‘Kurdish question’.¹⁴ The Kurds suffer as a minority in Syria and Turkey. Rojava can be understood as an experiment for a democratic confederation, which is non-statist and which has used the political vacuum in Syria during the ongoing civil war. Inspired among others by anarchist philosophy and Marxism, since 2012 three areas in Northern Syria, Cizȋre, Kobanȋ and Afrȋn decladed their autonomy organising themselves in democratic-autonomous administration structured by confederalism. This process was aided by the withdrawal of the Syrian Government and accomplished under the leadership of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) (Rojava, 2015, 1).¹⁵ Today about 1 million people are involved predominantly living from farming and of exploitation of petroleum and gas. Confederation means that decision-making lies with the communities, and every higher administrative level serves the will of the communities. The smallest unit of decision-making is realised by people’s houses, consisting of 15–30 people deciding about on the basis of consensus about food, energy or social problems. People’s houses are coordinated at different levels of the district, city to cantons (Rojava, 2015,2f.). Thus, confederalism means democratic grass-roots participation, which is combined with women’s liberation and post-growth ecological production based on cooperatives.¹⁶ Women’s liberation is ensured by a gender quota at every level. Thus, the administration of Rojava is not bound to a territory or national unity, but consists of a network of communities which forms the basis for regulating life and ensures heterogeneity (Nordhag, 2021, 15–19).

All these different post-development initiatives or lived utopias show that there are citizens who are not willing to wait for government or development agencies to solve their socio-economic and ecological problems. They can be described as ‘lived utopias of developmental practice’.¹⁷ However, they all face limitations: some are spatially limited; others are struggling with internal and external tensions. In Rojava, the context of civil conflict leads to the necessity of using violence as a means of defence, and sometimes to conflicts regarding state sovereignty (cf. Galvan-Alvarez, 2020; Nordhag, 2021).

None of these lived utopias question basic rights and needs, such as poverty reduction, but they develop alternatives. Most prominent and obvious features are that they build on different social norms, such as collective rights or communitarianism, rather than individual rights, as promoted by the SDGs. Above all, ‘lived utopias of development practice’ are based on social norms which shape and create alternative forms of economic production or political regulation. ‘Lived utopias of development practice’ show that there are viable alternatives, and that there is no need to wait for the accomplishments of the development agencies in a distant future. Especially those projects conducted by small and limited groups are often more successful than large development projects. However, they remain utopian in the sense that it is unclear how their practices can be implemented in society as a whole, or even globally, especially when they deny concepts such as the nation state – like the Rojava. An important element in the success of these ‘lived utopias of development practices’ is their close relation to local knowledge, communal practices and resources, which, especially in the Global South, are usually subsistence resources. Whether these utopian solutions are feasible on a larger societal or global level is still open. Setting these questions aside, the community of insiders, bound together by their form of communalism, has no need to find solutions beyond their community. At the same time, this limits the potential for the development of the whole society or region. This challenge is even bigger if these visions should become national. The activists either need to convince potential sceptical groups, or they need to be politically strong enough to make their model a national binding policy, as in the case of buen vivir. However, buen vivir, despite having a national dimension in Ecuador and Bolivia, has often failed in implementation. At this point, it is important to realise that an alternative vision of development, if it is to be recognised as politically attractive and legitimate, will become subject to negotiation. Then it risks losing its visionary power. In some cases, such as Rojava, the alternative constitutes a threat to the state, so that the question arises whether it is just an alternative form of development or a serious political threat. Not at least, unintended resonances emerge from lived utopias. For instance, lived utopian practices such as the Rojava or buen vivir inspire social movement activism in the Global North: While they are often romanticised, they are the impetus for many socio-ecological activism.

There have been some ‘lived utopias of development practice’ at the national level. For instance, Julius Nyerere (1968) developed a lived utopia for Tanzania which he called African Socialism. For him development started in rural areas and was based on ‘African virtues’ such as communalism and solidarity (African solidarity). The ideal place was the village, where under the Ujamaa system people worked together to sustain the community with a kind of grass-roots democracy. This system of African socialism needed to be dissociated from the world market to allow an autonomous self-reliant industrial development from below. The Ujamaa policy forced the citizens into forming Ujamaa villages. Under this pressure, African Socialism failed, lost its visionary power, and ended as an empty slogan (Freyhold, 1979). Communitarian ideas were still present but limited to the family or the local community (Hyden, 1980).

Hence, we are witnessing alternative developments at the local, or at best regional, and more seldom on the national level which we call ‘lived utopias of alternative development practices’. Some of the successful examples share important elements with participative mainstream development projects and solutions for a limited region or community.

5 Conclusion

At first sight, studies on development and utopia are radically different. They have a different backgrounds and argue from different perspectives. Nevertheless, there are some striking similarities that are often overlooked and which can be mutually beneficial for these debates. The mainstream development debate, with its focus on clearly defined political goals and programmes, sticks to the notion of ‘modernity’ with technical solutions and an active design for the future of mankind. The discussion on utopia expresses socio-philosophical and ecological ideas, but, despite its scepticism in respect of ‘modernity’, it shares the notion of an active design for the future as an important driver of a fictional or lived utopia. Such visions contribute to the intensified debates on the good life against the background of ecological challenges. The development debates around the MDGs, and especially the SDGs, involve a combination of eradication of poverty and ecological sustainability. This resembles important goals of lived utopia projects which focus on sustainability combined with communitarian ideas of equality. Some of the successful examples even share important elements with participative mainstream development projects and solutions for a limited region or community. Academic studies on lived utopias are mainly inspired by European ecovillages, or other ecological alternative ways of life and solidarity economies. Ideas of alternative development (including buen vivir and ubuntu) result from the post-development and post-colonial critique addressing the good life in the Global South and inspire debate on lived utopias. In a way, they build a bridge between the goals of global development and the practice of lived utopia and between the Global South and North.

Academic debates on development and utopia both offer the promise of a good life. These promises are a core element in motivating people to join in and follow a common path. Sharing a common conviction is obviously needed in the case of ‘lived utopias of development practices’. However, the failure of Nyerere’s African Ujamaa socialism, the dwindling support for the Cuban development model, the tensions in Israel triggered by the planned change in the political system (that started before the war), or the constant security threat to Rojava, exemplify that, on the national level, a common future vision is always an agreement for a limited time that needs to be constantly defended, reinstated and further developed.

Thus, if a vision of the future does not present a wider perspective that includes society as whole, and if it is not defended by appropriate regimes, it will be contested. This points to differences between the notion of development and lived utopias, including the alternatives for development. Development goals always focus on the national and the global. They not only face the enormous challenge of including a society, or even the whole of mankind, but they are also doomed to fail because they cannot overcome the poverty-growth-ecology dilemma. To repeat once more, despite its clearly defined goals, development is utopian in the sense of striving for what is desirable and possible, even if this is hard (or even impossible) to attain. We have learned that there are ‘lived utopias of development practice’ that are successful and sustainable. They are based on the small-scale logic of activists or on a community at regional level (Zapatistas or Rojava) with a shared conviction that offers strength and stability, combined with the idea of acting as a model for others to follow. Above all, they are places of hope, because they show that alternative development is possible. However, the exit option, the informality of decision-making, and the concentration on local solutions or subsistence, without considering their feasibility in other regions, leaves the question open whether their ideas could be a national or even a global solution. With this self-declared local (or regional) focus, their success remains limited to the members of their community and their neighbourhood and in many cases lived utopias even do not aspire to address change beyond community. It leaves the question open how to deal with challenges in large agglomerations where people live in an world based on an extreme division of labour. In addition, the inclusion of non-activists and extension to higher levels needs the development of models that are open to compromise. The alternative of intensive pressure to conform, or suppression of criticism, contradicts the basic notion of communitarism and consensual decision-making. ‘Lived utopias of development practices’ at the national, or even the global, level require processes, rules and institutions of negotiation, as well as a balance between majority wishes and the protection of minorities. This would involve abandoning the pure doctrine and admitting criticism. The outcome might be far from the original ideas of the lived utopia, with the consequence that the orthodox core activists see it as betrayal.

Studies of utopia started as a Western phenomenon with a certain Euro-centrism (cf. Daniel, 2022; 2023). What is often missing is an understanding of the vision of people in the Global South. Via the post-development debate the recent concepts of ubuntu, buen vivir or the older concept of swaraj and the notion of alternatives to development have reached the Western debate and become a place for European visions of an alternative future. Buen vivir and other concepts have been perceived as a form of confirmation of the Western utopian debate: utopias exist in other contexts. Buen vivir is stylised as an ideal, pointing to an alternative future that is different from European ‘modernity’ which faces limitations (Reckwitz, 2019). Thus, the Global South has increasingly become an inspiration for the West and interlinks with degrowth visions. Recent books presenting alternatives to development combine examples from the Global South and the Global North (Klein and Morreo, 2019; Bendix et al., 2020.).

Both utopia and development debates fight for social justice and equality. However, the biggest difference between the two debates, utopia and development, is the particular economic frame. The notion of development is closely related to global capitalism, with more (or less) social cushioning and with a clear worldwide division of labour, including global trade. Many fictional and lived utopias are linked to criticism of capital accumulation, and strong scepticism in respect of global trade as one of the ecological core problems. Therefore, there is an overlap between the debate on lived utopias and degrowth. Most fictional and lived utopias have a clear orientation, based on ideas of communal goods and communitarian models. Against this background, the outlook is disillusioning. In both cases, promises of national or global blueprint solutions are utopian in the sense of unrealisable. Despite some coincidences with regard to their goals and conditions of success, their answers to the pressing questions concerning the future are not only contradictory, but also insufficient because of their in-built limitations. The development debate with its SDGs leads to an on-going ‘muddling through’, coming closer to the goals without reaching them. The ‘lived utopias of development practices’ are caught in their local orientation with their small-scale logic and limited capability for societal compromises. They abstain from a global strategy with a vision of the future that is attractive enough to gain wide social and global support. Thus, they cannot and do not want to offer economic, technical and social policy solutions nor political solutions that work for sustainable development across small-scale entities in a globalised world. These solutions can and must draw from the locally successful ‘lived utopias of development practice’. At best, this seems to be a far distant future. For enacting this distant future we need a platform for joint discussions of future visions where different voices from all world regions are heard.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Antje Daniel

Antje Daniel is a substitute Professor in the Department of Development Studies at the University of Vienna in Austria. Her research interests are development, utopia, future, civil society and social movements, with a special focus on Latin America, Europe and Africa.

Dieter Neubert

Dieter Neubert is a retired Professor for Development Sociology, University of Bayreuth, Germany. Research interests are sociology of Africa, post-conflict reconstruction, sociology of development policy, risks and disasters, local knowledge, participative methods and globalisation. He has conducted research in Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Mozambique, Ghana), as well as in Vietnam and Thailand.

Notes

1 This is often addressed as ‘modernity’ without considering the on-going debate on different concepts of ‘modernity’. We will not discuss this wide field, and will only highlight the main elements targeted by the critique: capitalism, globalisation and intensified industrialisation. We therefore place the word ‘modernity’ in inverted commas.

2 Interestingly, the mainstream debate on social movements with its focus on North America and Europe mostly overlooks similar critique of social movements in the Global South (to be discussed later).

3 We are well aware that there are different programmes of development with regard to economic growth and increasing consumption possibilities, but with different understandings of freedom and democracy. E.g. the notion of an Islamic state as in Iran, Hindu nationalism in India, or post-socialist authoritarian ideas in China (Hodzi and Åberg, 2020; Naughton, 2017). We will not discuss these concepts in this paper but focus on the contradiction between the mainstream notion of development and the different utopian concepts.

4 By analysing the utopian moment of development, we are not interested in exploring the reasons for failure of development, but in arguing that the idea of global development harbors failure or the fictional in itself. Some critics underline also the links with the overall political world system and its power structures but this debate goes beyond the scope of this paper.

5 Examples are the British Development and Welfare Acts of 1940 (Hailey, 1957, 203, 1323) or Harry S. Truman’s inaugural address that placed development policy on the international agenda (Truman, 1949).

6 In the beginning the state has been seen as a core actor of economic development in the Global South either with a kind of state capitalism, with a developmental state (Haggard 2015).

7 This unified understanding of ‘modernity’ has been replaced by the notion of varieties of modernities or multiple ‘modernities’ (Eisenstadt, 2000; Preyer and Sussmann, 2016).

8 Critical social theorists do not abandon hope for a better future or utopia, but they assume that this future cannot be specified (cf. Barboza, 2010).

9 For an overview of different understandings of utopia, see Claeys and Sargent (1999) or Levitas (2011). However, there is an academic dispute as to whether the fictional understanding should be expanded to lived utopias.

10 In academic debates, different terms for lived utopias circulate, such as real utopias, everyday utopias or lived utopianism.

11 It is remarkable that the formation of buen vivir as an ‘alternative to development’ was supported by a workshop of GIZ, the German development organisation (Altmann, 2013, 102).

12 For further examples see Kothari et al. (2019). However, we should be aware that not all lived utopias represent an idealised notion of grass-roots democracy and gender equality. Extreme examples are the Jihadi governance (for Mali see: Badi and Klute 2022). Thus, the diversity of alternatives is not only a strength but also a starting point for debates about fundamental differences between them. For the diversity of self-governance see: Neubert (2021); Neubert et al. (2022).

13 It is organised by a collective of adivasi single women (Eka Nari Sanghathan, ENS).

14 Rojava got known after their successful fight against the Islamic State in 2014 and 2015.

15 The Turkish PKK was founded as communist organisation in 1978 with the aim to liberate towards a Kurdish nationalism. The PYD emerged in 2003 in Syria from PKK cells.

16 Private companies or property are forbidden. In addition, there is a war economy which follows a different logic and seeks to secure peace in the war zone.

17 Some of the cases presented would not see themselves as ‘alternative’ but simply as a local way of organizing life more or less influenced by local traditions.