[Perspectives] Barbara Prainsack: practical utopianism for healthier societies

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This profile describes Barbara Prainsack, a University of Vienna professor whose early interest in how societies function developed into work on comparative policy and social solidarity. It presents her perspective on building healthier societies through practical, imaginative approaches.

The psychoanalyst and paediatrician Donald Winnicott proposed that a child discovers his or her own self through creative play. This certainly seems to be the case for Barbara Prainsack, Professor for Comparative Policy Analysis and Director of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Solidarity at the University of Vienna, Austria. “I remember that when I was a young kid,” she says, “I played with little figurines—Playmobil—and I wrote their constitution.” It seems her interest in “how society works and what holds it together” was an innate quality during those early years.