Utopia: a category of social analysis?

Abstract

Utopia was the name given by Thomas More to an island discovered by Raphael Hythloday, the Portuguese navigator who is the main character of his book. Since the 16th century, other islands and ideal societies were created by writers who were unhappy with the world in which they lived. However, a change occurred in the 19th century. Utopia was no longer just the name of More’s island, but it became a concept which was going to be widely used by philosophers and social scientists. The aim of this paper is to follow the process of transforming utopia into a category of social analysis. We would like to emphasize the limitations that the indiscriminate use of this category imposes on the study of texts and phenomena considered “utopian”. Finally, we will briefly investigate the case of Jesuit missions in the former Province of Paraguay, reputed as “utopias” since the middle of the 19th century