3233.0: Monday, October 22, 2001 - 5:00 PM

Abstract #31455

Utopia and the mystics: the monk, the poet, and authentic communities

Raul Lejano, Professor, Environmental Policy Group, Masssachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 9-320, Cambridge, MA 02139, (617) 4522697, lejano@mit.edu

Working in the area of sustainable community planning, I have sought models by which we can start with a politics of disengagement, with communities that exist in defiance of state and market, and begin to envision the infinite space of alternative futures (reengagement). I find communities to exist. I find them in mountain peoples who seek only ways to preserve their heritage and exist in contempt of that which encircles them. But I also find these in the visions of mystics and poets: communities radical, absolute, and trenchant. The future as seen from the perch of exclusion: it is from these terrifying heights, from the eastern, from the monastic, that we begin to glimpse the alternative.

Learning Objectives: 1) To imagine a future organization of society from the perspective of marginalized communities 2) To analyze environmental justice questions from the persepctive of eastern mystics

Keywords: Environmental Justice, Developing Countries

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.

The 129th Annual Meeting of APHA