TL5 – Utopias and Alternative Futures

Coordination: Gianfranco Ferraro

The current forms globalization make increasingly evident the importance of utopias and global utopian spiritualities as phenomena that encompass different domains, such as religion, philosophy, politics, ethics, the formation of new generations, the arts and technology. Climate emergencies, the crises that have a global impact on old geopolitical balances, institutions, organizations and value paradigms, and finally, the rapid development of digital technologies and A.I. reveal once again the dynamic horizon of history and, therefore, the role of the spirit of utopia as a motor for reconfiguring and imagining forms of existence, individual and collective.

Within the framework of the most recent epistemology of global studies, and based on a comparative and genealogical methodology, this thematic line intends to explore and delineate a scope of studies focused on the analysis of global utopian forms, which appeal to forms of conversion and of imagining future ways of living. The objectives of this LT include the following:

1. To promote and systematize, within the scope of the human and social sciences, a paradigm for analyzing different utopian models of global reach;
2. To analyze the roots and impact of the phenomenon of conversion in the definition of different models of utopian spirituality;
3. To study utopian spiritualities of a religious nature that intersect global and local dynamics;
4. To understand the innovative utopian dynamics of a technological and political nature, which reconfigure forms of life in the current global context and which appeal to the imagining of forms of future human existence.

Achieving the main objective and the partial research areas mentioned above implies articulation with the research work of CEG’s different research groups, particularly with regard to the study of forms of ecological and environmental conversion and utopian models of contemporary ecology (G1 ); the study of global pedagogical models (G2); the study of contemporary governance techniques, with particular regard to economic utopias (G3); the analysis of the pedagogical model of the Jesuit movement and other utopian paradigms (G4); the critical analysis of literary utopias (G5); the analysis of political models of global utopia (G6); the analysis of forms of utopia and religious conversion in the modern and contemporary world; and the exploration of the life techniques of religious spiritualities in the contemporary world.