Creating an Ideal World: A Review of Work, Love, and Learning in Utopia: Equality Reimagined

Excerpt

The coronavirus pandemic has made the shortcomings of neoliberalism glaringly obvious. From the initial anemic public health response, particularly by the U.S. government, to the economic crisis resulting from the lockdown and global recession, and the disproportionate impact of COVID on marginalized members of society, from people of color to the elderly and the institutionalized, the pandemic has brought questions of social justice center stage (Branson-Potts, et al., 2020; Godoy & Wood, 2020; Hummer, 2020; Jan, 2020; Kallberg, 2020). As such, the pandemic can be a catalyst for societal transformation. Indeed, we have seen “radical experiments in housing, criminal justice, education and more,” from moratoriums on evictions, to tripling unemployment benefits, and the establishment of car-free, pedestrian friendly streets, as policy responses to the economic fallout from the pandemic (Cohen, 2021, p. 3). While such measures have been temporary, they provide fertile ground for thinking about what a more just society would look like. Critiques of neoliberalism and the inevitable limitations of a society that revolves around corporate profits, rather than an economy that addresses the needs of human communities, are not new (Yang, 2018). In Work, Love, and Learning in Utopia: Equality Reimagined, anthropologist Martin Schoenhals (2019) begins with the question, why is it “easy to criticize the world as it is, but hard to talk about the world as it should be?” (p. 1). While Schoenhals wrote this book prior to the pandemic, his approach to the subject matter makes it a useful accompaniment to these uncertain times. …