Living Utopia?: Stories from Rojava

For social movements around the world, Rojava embodies the real possibility of a better society: the revolution began there in 2012. In the Kurdish-dominated regions, an autonomous self-administration has been established based on the values of grassroots democracy, gender equality and ecology. The ＂Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria＂ now controls about a third of Syria’s territory. It unites different ethnicities, religions and languages under its umbrella. A decade later, Christopher Wimmer examines the aspirations and reality of the ＂revolutionary society＂ from a critical perspective. Based on numerous interviews with people from all sectors of society - administration, education, military, medicine, etc. - in a mixture of reportage and analysis, he creates a polyphonic picture of the everyday life, hopes, and problems of the people on the ground.

Christopher Wimmer, Dr., is sociologist and author. From 2023-2024 he worked as a research assistant at HU Berlin, now at the ＂IBI - Institut für Bildung in der Informationsgesellschaft＂ (Institute for Education in the Information Society). He has published several monographs and articles on social inequality, poverty research and marginalized groups, including Exclusions and Marginalisation In: Global Handbook of Inequality (Springer, 2024), Die Marginalisierten. (Über-)Leben zwischen Mangel und Notwendigkeit (Beltz, 2024) and Global Inequality. Rethinking Socoiolgy in the 21st Century (with Tobias Rieder) (Brill, 2025).