Co-existing alongside the solid and collective utopian consumption of interest to prior research, these emergent forms of liquid consumer utopias articulate a re-imagining of the present (rather than the future), have an emphasis on individual (rather than communal) experiences of betterment, and an orientation toward temporary re-framings of the experienced reality (rather than a pursuit of permanence and long-lasting change). Three key characteristics of liquid utopias are outlined-immediacy, transience and hyper-individualization––each pointing to liquid consumer utopias’ function to facilitate present-oriented and short-lived re-imaginings of reality. This conceptual lens illuminates previously untheorized consumption phenomena, which are socially constructed, and often critical, efforts to enact an alternative way of being in an increasingly uncertain and unpredictable world.
This paper introduces liquid consumer utopias, defined as market-mediated expressions of individuals’ desires to re-imagine and re-construct reality, and to re-frame the present. They manifest utopian impotence to imagine the future beyond the ideological closure of the currently dominant socioeconomic system. On closer examination, however, visions of future second-generation biofuels are limited by the necessity of cost-effectiveness that underpins market competitiveness. The article demonstrates that sociotechnical imaginaries of advanced biofuel technology superficially project the illusion of utopian potential. The analysis is guided by two objectives: first, to identify and illuminate visions of future advanced biofuels by implementing the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries second, to scrutinize these imaginaries using a critical and diagnostic utopian method to determine whether the projected visions entail the promise of radical change and hope for socioeconomic transition to a “green” future, or instead manifest an ideological stranglehold striving to perpetuate the status quo. This paper critically examines the sociotechnical imaginaries of second-generation bioenergy technology in the global debate, exemplified by the deliberations of international organizations specializing in food and agriculture, energy security, and climate change. In this work, some reflections on the political aspects involved in the process of implementing these narratives, will be presented, in light of the relationship that emerges between the cultural and the political. Consequently, they avoid valuing the political process that always produces partial solutions. Political utopias, those that seek to be implemented through the exercise of political power, are characterized in this proposal not by their fantasy character or their future dimension opposed to the present, but by the search for the end of the antagonisms that obstruct their discourse. However, the transition from the imaginative dimension to the political implementation of utopias, transforms them into projects that provoke adherence but also rejection from ideal to ideological. En este trabajo se van a presentar algunas reflexiones sobre los aspectos políticos que implica el proceso de implementación de estos relatos, a la luz de la relación que surge entre lo cultural y lo político.Ībstract: Utopias, as a guiding story, contain future projects through which societies imagine the transition to a better life. En consecuencia, esquivan valorar el proceso político que siempre produce soluciones parciales. Las utopías políticas, aquellas que buscan implementarse mediante el ejercicio del poder político, se caracterizan en esta propuesta no por su carácter fantasioso o su dimensión futura opuesta al presente, sino por la búsqueda del fin de los antagonismos que obstruyen su discurso.
Sin embargo, el paso de la dimensión imaginativa a la implementación política de las utopías, las transforma en proyectos que suscitan adhesiones pero también rechazos de ideales a ideológicas. Resumen: Las utopías como relato orientador, encierran proyectos de futuro mediante los cuales las sociedades imaginan el tránsito a una vida mejor.
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