Clarence-Smith, Suryamayi (2019) Towards a Spiritualised Society: Auroville, An Experiment in Prefigurative Utopianism. Doctoral thesis, University of Sussex.
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Text (PhD thesis)
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Abstract
This thesis is an autoethnographic examination of the intentional community “Auroville,” located in Tamil Nadu, South India, as a site of utopian practice. I begin by situating Auroville within the broader, historical context of the intentional community movement and its academic literature, to which I contribute previously under-explored insider perceptions and experiences that offer significant insight into how utopian practice is animated, engaged, and sustained. Building on recent utopian scholarship that emphasises the critically engaged, concretely applied, and progressive nature of utopian practice, I further theorise such practice as prefigurative in the Auroville context, specifically as spiritually prefigurative, given that it seeks to anticipate and incarnate a spiritually evolved society. My ethnographic research, undertaken as a participant-observer, researcher-member of the Auroville community, focuses on how the founding spiritual ideals of this experimental township are, and have been, embodied and articulated in its socio-political and socio-economic organisation, development, and praxis. This exploration proved revelatory of the strategic role and influence of spirituality in inspiring, informing and sustaining its utopian practice, enriching an emerging body of literature that examines the prevalence of spirituality in contemporary, prefigurative left social movements. As a detailed empirical study, it contributes to the record of communal economic models, and anarchist forms of organisation, administration and decision-making, offering analytical insights that are relevant both for Auroville and for other contemporary collectives that enact these alternative practices. These raise important considerations related to the institutionalisation and perpetuation of the latter, a matter of significant activist and academic debate that reaches beyond intentional community contexts. Specifically, the uniquely semi-institutionalised organisational structure of the Auroville community ensures its perpetuation while preserving the opportunity for open-ended reformulation, both of which are key to sustaining its utopian practice. This original, autoethnographic scholarship thus furthers theoretical understandings of, and offers pragmatic insights into, how communal utopian practice is enabled, challenged, and sustained – relevant to fostering such practice within and beyond the Auroville experiment.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | utopia; prefiguration; spirituality, Auroville; intentional community |
| Subjects: | Collective Organisation > Collective Organisation (General) |
| Depositing User: | Dr. Suryamayi Clarence-Smith |
| Date Deposited: | 23 Mar 2023 19:19 |
| Last Modified: | 23 Mar 2023 19:19 |
| URI: | http://aurorepo.in/id/eprint/241 |
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