Utopian Movements, Enactments and Subjectivities among Youth in the Global South

In collaboration with Susanne Bregnbæk and Dan Vesalainen Hirslund, Professor Oscar Salemink from the Department of Anthropology have edited and written the introduction to the anthology ‘Utopian Movements, Enactments and Subjectivities among Youth in the Global South. Ethnographic Perspectives’.

From the Department of Anthropology, Professor Henrik Vigh has also contributed with the chapter ‘Displaced utopia: on marginalisation, migration and emplacement in Bissau’.

The volume draws on fine-grained ethnographies from Bissau, Chile, China, Egypt, Ecuador and Nepal, exploring how politically, religiously and (sub-)culturally inspired Utopias motivate youth in the Global South to imagine, enact and embody what was missing in the past and present.

The contributions look at how divergent Utopias inspire strategies, whereby young people come together in transient communities to ‘catch’ a fleeting future, cultivate alternative subjectivities and thus assume a sense of minimum control over their life trajectories, if only momentarily.

The book was originally published as a special issue of ‘Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power’.

Read more about the book at Routledge: Utopian Movements, Enactments and Subjectivities among Youth in the Global South