TY - JOUR AU - Walters, Kyla PY - 2020/06/18 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Planning "Real Utopias" through Federal Spending JF - TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology JA - TRAILS VL - IS - SE - DO - UR - https://trails.asanet.org/article/view/planning-real-utopias-through-federal-spending SP - AB - The late sociologist Erik Olin Wright’s work on "real utopias" highlights actualized examples of social transformation. In this class activity, the concept of real utopias offers students a way to creatively envision how emancipatory alternatives might abound. This in-class activity introduces the concept of real utopias through a hands-one activity that focuses on federal spending – a key form of centralized resource distribution. Students move through a series of hands-on individual and group tasks involving creative application of conceptual material and effective communication skills. The assignment features a low-stakes group presentation so that students gain public speaking experience while minimizing performance anxiety. To begin, students learn that the U.S. federal government’s budget includes revenues and expenditures. The latter constitute the government’s actions to set its priorities and support (or eliminate) certain activities and social programs. Students are instructed to individually draft a vision for their real utopian society before identifying and rank-ordering categories for their federal expenditures. They individually sketch a pie graph to visualize the allocation. Next, students are assigned to small groups in which they share their visions and pie graphs; they also discuss the commonalities and differences in their visions and resource allocation in order to reach a consensus about how to distribute the federal government’s funds. Each group creates a poster board display of their agreed-upon pie graph, which they present to the class. Then, the instructor projects a recent pie graph of federal spending. Discussion comparing the students’ expenditures and the actual expenditures concludes the activity. ER -