Seminar (TURBA Lab): "Voices of Emergency"

Program

Abstract

Recent sociological debates on the mobilising force of imagined futures are particularly relevant in the current climate crisis, where the claim-making of a “threatened future” has come to the forefront of worldwide climate protests. This article examines the role that imagined climate futures play in present forms of collective climate action. Based upon empirical research on new climate movements conducted in Barcelona, I analyse how social imaginaries of disastrous ecological futures reflect upon individual imaginations and play a key role in propelling involvement in collective climate action. Informed by Mische’s (2009) conceptualisation of projectivity, I identify two imagined climate futures with distinct temporalities and demonstrate that both cognitions of climate futures and the emotions that these futures produce are crucial in prompting collective action. This article asserts that Beck et al’s (2013) notion of ‘cosmopolitan communities of climate risk’ can address the centrality of affect and capture how, along with pragmatic goals to politically respond to imagined climate threats, expressive goals to cope with them structure an important part of these new climate movements.

Anna Clot

Postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Studies on Culture, Politics and Society (CECUPS) at the Sociology Department (UB) and Teaching Collaborator at UOC. Her research areas revolve around classical and contemporary sociological theory, cultural sociology and environmental sociology combining theoretical and empirical work.

To take part in this seminar, please contact blancacb@uoc.edu.