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Chapter 2 looks at the various ‘thresholds’ that have been used to try to differentiate between torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, illustrating that while this might at times be necessary, it is difficult, invidious and in some ways an inherently flawed exercise. This reliance on ‘thresholds’ does not contribute much to ensuring that no-one should be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment. These fine-grained, ever-shifting and ultimately inconclusive debates shift attention away from the need to prevent violations from occurring and run the risk of downplaying the significance of ill-treatment which does not cross the higher thresholds of seriousness, despite them all being absolutely prohibited. For all these reasons, it is important to seek to prevent prohibited ill-treatment from occurring, rather than overly focusing on how precisely to categorise ill-treatment that already has.
This chapter argues that in order to prevent torture effectively, there is a need for greater honesty about the true nature and underlying causes of the problems which need to be addressed, and of the potential effectiveness of what is recommended. There is a tendency to assume – or work on the assumption – that things are the way we might like them to be, rather than the way we know they really are. This might include who in fact is exercising authority within places or detention, or over the detaining authorities; how ‘professional’ are professionals, including lawyers, medical staff and judges. In situations where things are not as they might seem, the standard ‘solutions’ are not ‘solutions’ at all, and putting then in place may offer a false reassurance, since such preventive safeguards may not be preventive at all.
Intentional communities around the world are experimenting with new paradigms for human society, including participatory political practices, cooperative economic arrangements and holistic educational modalities. As such, they are perhaps the most compelling contemporary exercise of utopianism and certainly have something to teach us about attempting to foster positive societal change. This book examines Auroville, the largest, most diverse and long-standing intentional community in the world, internationally recognized for its holistic, progressive and inclusive ideals and practices. Located in Tamil Nadu, South India, Auroville uniquely draws on spiritual ideals to enact a prefigurative utopian practice applicable to all aspects of human society; the author, a scholar native to Auroville, offers an in-depth autoethnographic analysis of how its ideals have been, and continue to be, articulated, embodied and developed in realms as wide-ranging as the community’s political and economic organization, as well as various cultural practices. Responding to critiques that spirituality discourages activism, this work is revelatory of the strategic role and influence of spirituality in inspiring, informing and sustaining prefigurative political practice, while providing an honest analysis of the challenges of direct democracy, as well as prefiguring an alternative form of economic organization within a mainstream capitalist context. It raises important considerations pertaining to the perpetuation of prefigurative experiments, drawn from Auroville’s singular longevity and development trajectory, providing both theoretical and pragmatic insights into how communal utopian practice is enabled, challenged and sustained that are relevant for scholars and activists of prefigurative and utopian experiments alike.
The chapter outlines the key contribution of the book: an autoethnographic analysis of how communal utopian practice is enabled, challenged and sustained. It presents the overall structure of the book and the distinct theoretical and ethnographic foci of each chapter, distinguishing the research focus of this work from that of intentional community scholarship in general given that the latter tends to be limited to understanding and analysing alternative practices, rather than the processes that give life to these. The chapter introduces the intentional community of Auroville, its founding period and its development, challenges and achievements, and presents the community’s endemic understandings and practices of research. It discusses the author’s positionality as a native scholar, her autoethnographic research methods and how these are uniquely leveraged to offer a rich analysis of the process of engaging in utopian practice in an intentional community context.
Rates of anxiety have been steadily increasing over the past 20 years, prompting commentators to warn that we are in the throes of a global mental health crisis that is ruining well-being, threatening lives and damaging the economy. By highlighting how a person’s mental health, while nuanced and distinct, is always situated in a larger socio-emotional context or ‘structure of feeling’, this article argues that the issue of rising anxiety is a direct consequence of a biomedical model of treatment and care beholden to a neoliberal economic system that objectifies and isolates people. Through a framework termed ‘liberation health modelling’, it explores the progressive potential of ‘anxious solidarities’ as a way to reframe the problem of anxiety by connecting personal struggles to wider social and economic injustices. At a time when it is becoming impossible to deny the collective and widespread nature of people’s anxieties, the point of anxious solidarity is not simply to recount pain and suffering but to ‘make sense’ of it in relation to overarching structures of social oppression – calling into question the status quo in solidarity with other subjugated groups. Since struggles with anxiety have the advantage of being familiar to most, anyone can be a potential provocateur so long as they disavow an entirely personalised framing of their mental health.
This chapter revisits key findings and concepts that emerge from this work, and their relevance for the development of alternative societies in general. One is that of spiritually prefigurative utopianism: that a spiritual quest can underly, strategically articulate and sustain an evolving utopian project that engages with the challenges of human society. Another is that of prefigurative utopian practice: that utopianism can be engaged with as an evolutionary process, rather than as an attempt to realize a predetermined blueprint, and that this can be enacted by both spiritual or a-spiritual groups. In view of Auroville’s unique trajectory of prefigurative institutionalization, the chapter posits that such institutionalization may be key to the perpetuation of prefigurative projects.
The chapter contextualizes and examines the Auroville community within various prevalent frameworks and possible definitions – those of an intentional community or ecovillage, utopian community or ashram, and government project or neocolonial enclave – discussing and drawing parallels with other contemporary or historical examples of these to best situate and understand the nature of this particular experiment. In so doing, it highlights Auroville’s unique success as the largest, most diverse and among the longest-standing intentional communities in the world, and how it is distinct from historical utopian communities given its experimental ethos and absence of a predetermined societal blueprint. While acknowledging its roots in the Indian ashram tradition and the presence of a spiritual founding figure, the chapter distinguishes Auroville from an ashram or other forms of guru-centric organizations and communities on the basis of it being a self-governed collective eschewing religious rites or doctrines. The role of the Indian government in the development of the project is also discussed, alongside the critique that Auroville is a neocolonial enclave. The chapter concludes by outlining the original theoretical lens of (spiritually) prefigurative utopianism that serves to analyse and understand Auroville’s praxis in this work.
The chapter explores the conception of being ‘on-road’ as a gendered space, with historical antecedents. It explores the intersection of race and gender politics in early modern Britain, specifically the interwar period, which informed early youth penal reform. The analysis draws on documentary research from the Liverpool University Archives. In historicising and gendering the ‘on-road’ existence in this way, the chapter emphasises the importance of conceptual approaches expanding the explanatory scope about racialised youth’s contemporary contested positioning, beyond the customary suturing to crime and punishment. Historicising and gendering the logic of ‘the road’ enables exploration of racialised youth’s circumstances as part of a historic exclusion from the resources and opportunities associated with early modern justice reform.
This chapter is written as three sets of reflections by the editors on the preceding collection and the next steps for on-road scholarship. The editors each reflect on the aspects of the collection which speak most to them and our own work, and most importantly, what the next steps are for this field of study and what questions need to be further posed and answered. Levell’s section focuses on the use of feminist theory to understand subjectivity, relationality, love and community in the collection. She argues that this humanised previously stigmatised young people. Young looks at the contentions that result from the over-focus on gangs, including enhanced racial discrimination and over-policing. Earle weaves in his own journey to on-road scholarship with reflections on the chapters, and the undercurrents of music, inequality, Whiteness, racial capitalism, and the desire to see beyond youth criminality and instead focusing on the richness of their lives.
