A topical critical examination of the idea of social exclusion and the new political language of social cohesion, community, stakeholding and inclusion. The author examines the actions and rhetoric of the Labour Party and Labour Government under Tony Blair's leadership, and identifies three different discourses of social exclusion. Using this model, she explores views of inclusion put forward by Will Hutton and other stakeholders, by communitarians including Etzioni and Gray, and by the Labour Party from the Borrie and the Commission on Social Justice, to Blair and the Social Exclusion Unit. This work is intended for departments of politics (courses in British politics, social policy, comparative politics and political theory), sociology (courses in inequality and poverty), a more general political readership on social policy and politics of social exclusion and poverty, and politics of the Left among policymakers, think-tanks, pressure groups, and so on.

A prospective future of ecological and economic crises poses a challenge to the utopian imaginary, to conceive a better world, and alternative future. Utopia as Method does not construe utopia as a goal or blueprint, but as a holistic, reflexive method for developing what those possible futures might be. It begins by treating utopia as the quest for grace, through a hermeneutics that recovers the utopian meaning in our culture, explored through colour and music. Moving from the existential to the social, it draws on H. G. Wells's claim that the creation of utopias is the distinctive and proper method of sociology, and on the tentative reappearance of utopia in contemporary social theory. It proposes a constructive method, the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society. This fusion of explicitly normative social theory and analytic critique rehabilitates utopia as an integral part of sociology, and offers a means of collective engagement in shaping a better tomorrow.

In this major new work by one of the leading writers on Utopian Studies, Ruth Levitas argues that a prospective future of ecological and economic crises poses a challenge to the utopian imaginary. To conceive a better world, and alternative future, Utopia as Method does not construe utopia as a goal or blueprint, but as a holistic, reflexive method for developing what those possible futures might be. It begins by treating utopia as the quest for grace, through a hermeneutics that recovers the utopian meaning in our culture, explored through colour and music. Moving from the existential to the social, it draws on H. G. Wells's claim that the creation of utopias is the distinctive and proper method of sociology, and on the tentative reappearance of utopia in contemporary social theory. It proposes a constructive method, the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society. This fusion of explicitly normative social theory and analytic critique rehabilitates utopia as an integral part of sociology, and offers a means of collective engagement in shaping a better tomorrow.