What if utopia wasn't a distant dream, but already unfolding around us? Focusing on South Africa, the presentation rethinks utopia not as a fictional unreachable future, but as a lived practice – emerging in social movements and intentional communities through prefigurative practices. Rejecting capitalism, it explores how people create alternative ways of living social orders or economies, imagining and organizing everyday life. Blending decolonial sociology, political sociology, utopian studies and real-world experiences, the analysis offers a new approach to understanding social transformation in times of crisis. The presentation provides selected insights from the book of the same title, *Analysing Contemporary Society through Lived Utopia* (Bristol University Press, 2026).
