CFP: Work in Utopia

Contact: Dr Sam Clark, [email protected]

Ideals aren’t enough: we need realistic assessments of possibilities and immediate tactics too. But ideals are necessary, because without them we can’t evaluate possibilities or form goals for our tactics. This one-day workshop at Lancaster University will consider ideals for work (what we do to make a living): what work would or will or should be in utopia. Should there be any work, or is it a curse from which we should free ourselves? How should work be distributed? How should appealing, autonomous, high-status work, or menial, grim, low status work, be distributed? How should our working lives be organised - in hierarchies, democracies, by individual contract? What is the ideal of craftsmanship worth? What is the right relationship between work and education? between work and self-development? between work and play? between work at home and work outside it? Speakers will consider representations of utopian work, real-world prefiguring of utopian work, normative argument about the goods and evils of work, and the uses of utopianism for thinking about these issues.

Graduate students and others are invited to submit proposals for short pieces of up to 20 minutes (academic talks, reports of personal experience or work in progress, visual presentations, performances...) for a workshop on ‘Work in Utopia’ (description below) to take place at Lancaster University on Thursday 4 July 2013. The idea is that these short pieces on our topic will fit in between the four main speakers over the day.

Send proposals to Dr Sam Clark, [email protected]