redshift
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1675
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posted 13 September 2003 07:06 PM
a n interesting piece on social inclusion and the function of utopianism in policy formulation.
"The strong programme calls for something more, and this is a utopian project in the directive or constructive sense. The 'imaginary reconstitution of society' has also a constructive or architectural mode, not so much as a goal or blueprint, but as a heuristic device. As the French sociologist Andre Gorz puts it, 'it is the function of utopias, in the sense the term has assumed in the work of Ernst Bloch or Paul Ricoeur, to provide us with the distance from the existing state of affairs which allows us to judge what we are doing in the light of what we could or should do' (Gorz 1999). Such judgements are only possible against the yardstick of an imagined good society. Social policy generally operates primarily by piecemeal ameliorative programmes. This is particularly true of 'evidence-based' policy, and the pragmatic commitment to 'what works'. These are intrinsically constrained by evidence generated within a particular social environment, and solutions that 'work' within those same constraints. A utopian approach suggests the need to focus more on the kind of society we would like to build – assessing policies and programmes in terms of the contribution they make to this end, while making the yardstick itself explicit and open to democratic debate."
http://www.ccsd.ca/events/inclusion/papers/rlevitas.htm
From: cranbrook,bc | Registered: Oct 2001
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