Prefiguring Utopia

Auroville in Tamil Nadu, South India, is an internationally recognized endeavour in prefiguring an alternative society: the largest, most diverse, dynamic and enduring of intentional communities worldwide. This book is a critical and insightful analysis of the utopian practice of this unique spiritual township, by a native scholar. The author explores how Auroville's founding spiritual and societal ideals are engaged in its communal political and economic organization, as well as various cultural practices and what enables and sustains this prefiguratively utopian practice. This in-depth, autoethnographic case study is an important resource for understanding prefigurative and utopian experiments - their challenges, potentialities and significance for the advancement of human society.