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Utopianism, Scientific and Socialistic: Albert Chavannes and “Socioland”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Extract
Albert Chavannes is not a name that is mentioned often in intellectual histories of the United States in the late nineteenth century. Few nowadays are familiar with the work of this émigré farmer and businessman who lived for most of his life in Knoxville, Tennessee. Yet his achievement was impressive. Between 1883 and 1885 he edited and published The Sociologist, which was possibly the first monthly journal of its kind in the U.S.A. Inspired by Edward Bellamy's utopian novel, Looking Backward (1888), and the nationalist movement which resulted from it, he also wrote utopian fiction in two books, The Future Commonwealth (1892) and its sequel In Brighter Climes (1895). In the first of these novels Chavannes synthesized Darwinian theories of evolution and secular notions of progress to suggest that scientific sociological inquiry could aid rational planning in the cause of perfecting society. In the sequel, he built a firmer bridge from this dynamic sociology to a form of naive Marxism. Chavannes's work thus colours with European ideas and influences that distinctive American utopian tradition which retains a nostalgic faith in the realization of Jefferson's millennial democratic vision.
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References
1 Chavannes's complete works are in the special collections department of the University of Tennessee library, Knoxville, where research for this article was completed. His utopian writings have been seldom cited, but they are mentioned in Parrington, V. L., American Dreams (New York: Russell & Russell, 1964)Google Scholar and in Armytage, W. H., Yesterday's Tomorrows (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968)Google Scholar. Extracts from The Future Commonwealth have been published in Negley, G. and Patrick, J. M., The Quest for Utopia (Maryland: McGrath Publishing Co., 1971).Google Scholar
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