The magic kingdom syndrome: trials and tribulations of life in Disney’s celebration

This paper critically analyzes the political elements of the new town planning trend, New Urbanism, through a study of the Disney Company’s development of Celebration, Florida. Celebration, as both a high‐profile example of the New Urbanism and as a product of Disney’s skill at “Imagineering,” provides an important example of utopian thinking and planning within the context of the political economy of consumption. Through interviews and archival research, this paper looks at the political and social implications of commodity utopianism as planned communities and the ethic of consumption continue to occupy prominent places within the popular American psyche.     

Book reviews

Gilles Deleuze and the Question of Philosophy PHILIP GOODCHILD London: Associated University Presses, 1996

Baudelaire and Schizoanalysis: The Sociopoetics of Modernism EUGENE HOLLAND Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993

Australian Television and International Mediascapes STUART CUNNINGHAM & ELIZABETH JACKA Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1996

Sociolingwistics and Language History: Studies based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence TERTTU NEVALAINEN & HELENA RAUMOLIN‐BRUNBERG (Eds) Language and Computers: Studies in Practical Linguistics No 15, Amsterdam/Atlanta., GA: Rodopi, 1996

Fear of the Dark. ‘Race’, Gender and Sexuality in the Cinema LOLA YOUNG London and New York: Routledge, 1996

Deleuze: A Critical Reader PAUL PATTON (Ed.) Oxford: Blackwell, 1996

A Guattari Reader GARY GENOSKO (Ed.) Oxford: Blackwell, 1996

Counterworks. Managing the Diversity of Knowledge R. FARDON (Ed.) London: Routledge, 1995