Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T10:15:21.017Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

From Utopian Hopes to Practical Politics: A National Revolution in a Rural Village

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Roert Roy Reed
Affiliation:
Ohio State University

Extract

To begin a revolution is very difficult. To sustain it is even more difficult. To win it is almost impossible. But once you have won, then your troubles really begin.

Stephen Bann states that Utopia “forms the concrete expression of a moment of possibility, which is however annihilated in the very process of being enunciated” (Bann 1993:1, emphasis added). He traces this characteristic to Sir Thomas More, whose neologism Utopia puns on being both the Good Place (eutopia) and No Place (Outopia), and to the modern denial of this No Place, which he labels ”a ritual of double negation” (Bann 1993:1). The present essay focuses on one ethnographic instance of Utopia's annihilation by enunciation. I will demonstrate that, when the enunciation of Utopia requires the implementation of public policy, the process of creating the Good Place is undermined by the mundane demands of practical politics.

Type
Post-Revolutionary Stress Syndromes
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abreu, Dinis de. 1975. Eleiqoes em Abril: Didrio de Campanha. Lisboa: Liber.Google Scholar
Bailey, F. G. 1977. Morality and Expediency: The Folklore of Academic Politics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bailey, F. G. 1991. The Prevalence of Deceit. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Bann, Stephen. 1993. ”Introduction,” in Utopias and the Millennium, Kumar, Krishan and Bann, Stephen, eds. London: Reaktion Books.Google Scholar
Bermeo, Nancy Gina. 1986. The Revolution within the Revolution: Workers' Control in Rural Portugal. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biersack, Aletta. 1991. ”Prisoners of Time,” in Clio in Oceania, Biersack, Aletta, ed. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977a. ”The Economics of Linguistic Exchanges.” Social Science Information, 16:6, 645–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977b. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bruneau, Thomas. 1976. “Church and State in Portugal: Crises of Cross and Sword.” Journal of Church and State, 18:463–90.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Politics and Nationhood: Post-Revolutionary Portugal. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Bruneau, Thomas; and Macleod, Alex. 1986. Politics in Contemporary Portugal: Parties and the Consolidation of Democracy. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienne Publishers.Google Scholar
Chilcote, Ronald. 1987. A Revoluçāo Portuguesa de 25 de Abril de 1974: Bibliografia Anotada Sobre Os Antecedentes E Evoluçāo Posterior. Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, Centra de Documentagao 25 de Abril.Google Scholar
Cutileiro, Josè. 1971. A Portuguese Rural Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Downs, Charles. 1989. Revolution at the Grassroots: Community Organizations in the Portuguese Revolution. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Duarte, Carlos; and Lamas, Jose. 1980. Piano da Area Territorial de Covilhā-Cova de Beira, vol. 14. Lisboa: Carlos Duarte e Jose Lamas, Estudos de Planeamento e Arquitectura, Lda.Google Scholar
Ferreira, José. Medeiros. 1983. Ensaio Histórico Sobre a Revoluqao do 25 de Abril. Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional-Casa Da Moeda.Google Scholar
Ferreira, Hug. Gil; and Marshall, Michael W.. 1986. Portugal's Revolution: Ten Years On. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
SousaFerreira, Eduardo de Ferreira, Eduardo de; and Opello, Walter C., Jr. 1985. Conflitos e Mudanças em Portugal: 1974–1984. Lisboa: Editorial Teorema.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Tom. 1983. Portugal: A Twentieth-Century Interpretation. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. ”Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” in The Interpretation of Culture. New York: Basic.Google Scholar
Goldstone, Jack. 1991. “An Analytical Framework,” in Revolutions of the Late Twentieth Century, Goldstone, Jack A., Gurr, Ted Robert, and Moshiri, Farrokh, eds. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Barbara. 1978. Social Science and Utopia. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.Google Scholar
Greene, Thoma. H. 1990. Comparative Revolutionary Movements, 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Hammond, Joh. L. 1988. Building Popular Power: Workers' and Neighborhood Movements in the Portuguese Revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Harvey, Robert. 1978. Portugal: Birth of a Democracy. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Insight Team of the Sunday Times. 1975. Insight on Portugal: The Year of the Captains. London: Andre Deutsch.Google Scholar
Instituto Nacional de Estatfstica. 1940. Recenseamento Geral da Populaçāo. Lisboa: I.N.E.Google Scholar
Instituto Nacional de Estatfstica. 1950. Recenseamento Geral da Populaçāo. Lisboa: I.N.E.Google Scholar
Instituto Nacional de Estatfstica. 1960. Recenseamento Geral da Populaçāo. Lisboa: I.N.E.Google Scholar
Instituto Nacional de Estatfstica. 1970. Recenseamento Geral da Populaçāo. Lisboa: I.N.E.Google Scholar
Instituto Nacional de Estatfstica 1981. Recenseamento Geral da Populaçāo. Lisboa: I.N.E.Google Scholar
Instituto Nacional de Estatfstica. 1991. Recenseamento Geral da Populaçāo. Lisboa: I.N.E.Google Scholar
Jornal de, Belmonte. 1984a. “25 de Abril: 10 anos depois—opiniōes,” p. 4, Abril.Google Scholar
Jornal de, Belmonte. 1984b. “Comemorac,6es do 25 e 26 de Abril no Concelho de Belmonte,” p. 7, Maio.Google Scholar
Johnson, Paul. 1983. Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Eighties. New York: Harper Colophon.Google Scholar
Kramer, Jane. 1987. “Letter from Europe.” New Yorker, pp. 105–20, 11 30.Google Scholar
Kumar, Krishan, 1991. Utopianism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Krishan, Kumar; and Bann, Stephen, eds. 1993. Utopias and the Millennium. London: Reaktion Books.Google Scholar
Levitas, Ruth. 1990. The Concept of Utopia. New York: Philip Allan.Google Scholar
Mailer, Phil. 1977. Portugal: The Impossible Revolution? New York: Free Life Editions.Google Scholar
Maxwell, Kenneth. 1975. “The Hidden Revolution in Portugal.” New York Review, pp. 2935, 04 17.Google Scholar
Maxwell, Kenneth. 1986. Portugal in the 1980's: Dilemmas of Democratic Consolidation. New York: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Moshiri, Farrokh. 1991. “Revolutionary Conflict Theory in an Evolutionary Perspective,“ in Revolutions of the Late Twentieth Century, Goldstone, Jack A., Gurr, Ted Robert, Moshiri, Farrokh, eds. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Olson, Theodore. 1982. Millennialism, Utopianism, and Progress. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Opello, Walte. C. 1985. Portugal's Political Development: A Comparative Approach. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Opello, Walter C. 1991. Portugal: from Monarchy to Pluralist Democracy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Paden, Willia. E. 1994. Religious Worlds. Boston: Beacon.Google Scholar
Pimlott, Ben. 1977. “Parties and Voters in the Portuguese Revolution: The Elections of 1975 and 1976.” Parliamentary Affairs, 30:35–58.Google Scholar
Reed, Rober. Roy. 1989 “Managing the Revolution: Revolutionary Promise and Political Reality in Rural Portugal.” Ph.D. Disser., Department of Anthropology, Indiana University.Google Scholar
Reed, Robert Roy. 1990. “Are Robert's Rules of Order Counterrevolutionary? Rhetoric and the Reconstruction of Portuguese Politics.” Anthropological Quarterly, 6:3, 134–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reed, Robert Roy. n.d. “Counting Things in Rural Portugal: A Numerical Look at Political Candidates and Strategies.” In press.Google Scholar
Reisman, Karl. 1974. “Contrapuntal Conversation In An Antiguan Village,” in Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking, Bauman, Richard and Sherzer, Joel, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Riegelhaupt, Joyce. 1965. “In the Shadow of the City.” Ph.D. Disser., Department of Anthropology, Columbia University.Google Scholar
Riegelhaupt, Joyce. 1979. “Peasants And Politics In Salazar's Portugal: The Corporate State and Village ‘Nonpolitics,”” in Contemporary Portugal: The Revolution and Its Antecedents, Graham, Lawrence S. and Makler, Harry M., eds. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Silverman, Sydel. 1975. Three Bells of Civilization. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda. 1979. States and Social Revolutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stryker, Sheldon. 1980. Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structural Version. Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin-Cummings.Google Scholar
Torode, John. 1975. “Lisbon Letter.” The Guardian, 04 25.Google Scholar
Wallace, A. F. C. 1956. “Revitalization Movements.” American Anthropologist, 56:264–81.Google Scholar