Sociological Research Online

This Introduction to the special issue ‘Political Imagination and Social Change’ addresses the role of political imagination for transformative politics and social change. It argues that sociology has a critical role to play in analysing, theorising, and facilitating political imagination and contributing to reinvigorating the collective political imagination by offering insights to envisaging alternative social formations and destabilising conventional ways of thinking. The Introduction discusses how political alternatives are imagined, practised, and lived out in different historical, social, and geographical contexts and by different groups of people. It shows how structures of power and domination, such as colonialism, racism, and gender and class systems, shape the practices of political imagination and affect the ways in which people can imagine and act towards social change. It also discusses how political imagination can be methodologically approached, and proposes a tripartite conceptualisation of political imagination centring on the notions of utopia, imaginary, and practice. It concludes that emancipatory and progressive political imagination is sorely needed to counter today’s dystopic and destructive forces and envisage better ways of being.

This article considers how political imagination shapes the articulation of multidirectional utopias and dystopias by Palestinian artists. The cartography of Palestine-Israel has been drawn by many hands: from the lines demarcated by British Mandate officials between 1918 and 1948 to the borders, crossings, and checkpoints constructed by the Israeli government since 1948. As an archive of geopolitical change, the maps provide a helpful representation of the land, and yet, they have another, less visible function as the place names, roads, and routes have counterpoints: missing towns, omitted place names, and roads that close for some, but not others. Just as territory is at the root of utopia, so too do counter-maps offer a foundation from which to re/negotiate what has been and what could be. As space is redefined in the maps by Mohamed Abusal and Bisan Abu-Eisheh, this article concludes that in the context of Palestinian counter-maps, utopia, and dystopia look in two directions, to the past and the future, providing an opportunity for multidirectional cartographical memory work.

The triumph of neoliberal globalisation has been presented as the end of history, with no viable alternatives available. In Latin America, however, the structural adjustment programmes imposed by international financial institutions and the increased role of transnational corporations were resisted by social and popular movements that eventually translated into progressive politics and policies. Nevertheless, despite anti-capitalist and pro-environment rhetoric, extraction of natural resources has continued to expand under progressive governments, with devastating effects on environmental justice and Indigenous peoples’ rights. Focusing on socio-territorial struggles for re-existence in Bolivia through the cases of peasant struggle in Tariquía and the establishment of the National Coordinator for the Defence of Indigenous Territories and Protected Areas (CONTIOCAP), we investigate how Indigenous and peasant organisations resist extractive projects and organise collective life in alternative ways. We show how social actors, especially women, defend, propose and imagine post-extractivist alternatives as a societal horizon – both utopian and possible – to the current socio-ecological crisis, in a context of disillusionment with the government’s rhetoric of vivir bien as a state-led ecological and Indigenous policy. We argue that by defending life, women try to heal the human and more-than-human relationality in the territories impacted by progressive neo-extractivism.

The article analyzes utopian thinking within the current climate movement, with a particular focus on the Finnish movement, and develops analysis of contemporary society through utopias. Empirically, it is based on material collected in the context of a protest week called ‘Utopia rebellion’, in Helsinki in 2022. We use material such as statements, blog posts, and social media content produced by climate activists, as they aimed to form an idea of utopian society beyond their demands on climate policy. We argue that in order to understand any utopian vision properly, one needs to understand not only how it conceptualizes the ideal society, but also how it (implicitly) interprets the nature and problems of the existing one, and the function of utopias. From this starting point, we develop an analysis of the movement by looking at its utopias, conceptions of the present, and uses of utopias. In the image of the movement formed this way, the key components emerging from the analyses are related to redefinitions of work, reconnecting with one’s community, and the possibilities of identities to flourish.

Since 2018, there has been a notable increase in recognition of the global youth climate movement. Young activists have come into the spotlight through extensive street demonstrations, school occupations, and engagement in other collective actions with the purpose of promoting alternative visions of the future. Multiple scholars have delved into activists’ profiles, their media representations, and other topics. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of research exploring their political imaginaries. This article aims to contribute to understanding how young activists in Portugal assess the current social and political landscape and construct visions of political futures. After analyzing online texts from four climate groups, we identified four themes that offer insights into the political imaginaries of these groups. The four groups discursively negotiate political imaginaries that correspond to a wide spectrum of perspectives, ranging from collective resistance against the neoliberal capitalist system and proposals of decentralized democracy to strategies based on individual ethics and the prevalent discourses of sustainable development and ecological modernization. The plurality of political imaginaries reflects the diversity of sociopolitical stances within youth-led climate movements in Portugal and their commitment to exploring alternative ways of governing climate change.

This article examines everyday labours of life-maintenance – cooking, cleaning, child-rearing – for what they tell us about participation in a moment of environmental devastation. Building on feminist theories of reproductive labour, I use the term reprod-estr-uctive labour to explore a contemporary tension: how to reproduce life in a dying world? What forms of participation is this tension producing? This article is based on qualitative work with French families and weaves together: (eco)feminist theories of reproductive labour and care work, ethics of care, (Feminist) Science and Technology Studies, theories of environmental and epistemic justice, (Rancièrian) critique of pedagogy, and ecological thinking. It argues that reprod-estr-uctive labour offers speechless participation for speechless times. Reprod-estr-uctive labour allows a space for material participation which is particularly worthy of attention in a moment where words seem to fail us. How can we possibly talk about it (climate changing, species dying, oceans rising)? In the impossibility of expressing concern, doing care remains. The article contextualises material participation in a logocentric political regime which predominantly situates participation in public-oriented discourse. Yet having no words for it does not mean not caring about/for it. This article argues that the environmental situation accentuates two problems with logocentric politics: first, it calls us to the materiality of our Earthly footing, which makes ever-more problematic the disregard for unspoken, material, life-tending labours; second, it produces a moment of epistemic instability that questions the very possibility of an expert metadiscourse on the catastrophe. Attention to the material everyday can alert us to participation done in gendered, classed, and raced ways. This has the potential of decluttering our democratic imagination. It can help us move past dichotomies that pit those who care about the environment against those who do not, by reminding us that some who might not express audible concern can nevertheless care.

In this article, we identify ways to methodologically stimulate political imagination in sociological research by exploring an art concept called ‘utopia consultation’ and related arts-based exercises. We investigate how political imagination can be stimulated and practised through arts-based research methods in sociology, and what tangible tools arts-based research offers for studying the intangible. Our analysis builds on recent work on utopia, understood as a tool rather than a blueprint, and sociology of the future, which focuses on the future as an analytical category. We draw on 18 one-on-one utopia consultation sessions conducted in 3 upper secondary schools in Finland, and 3 facilitated collective discussions with the participants in each education institution to discuss their experiences of the one-on-one utopia consultations. Based on our analysis, we suggest four key methodological practices for stimulating political imagination: dialogue, play, cultivating a hopeful orientation to the not-yet, and collective utopian negotiation. We advance sociological discussions of methodology around utopia and political imagination, and contribute to sociological work on the intangibility of discovering the not-yet through arts-based methods by identifying tangible practices and tools for studying the intangible.

With the world population aging rapidly, it is crucial to include the imagination of older adults in envisioning a better future, and to promote transgenerational exchanges. To achieve this, novel interdisciplinary methods are needed to assist researchers with studying the process of transgenerational creative co-imagination involving older adults and younger people together. In this article, we present a workshop method that brings together methodological approaches from the fields of sensorial ethnography and visual narratives in a multi-professional setting to facilitate transgenerational creative co-imagining of future. To illustrate the use of this method, we present a case study of two workshops we have held recently with older adults and young people in which a sensory walk method has been combined with a grassroots comics method to co-create comic strips that present narratives of transgenerationally co-imagined future of natural environments. We also discuss the lessons learned from these two case-study workshops, with the aim of highlighting some of the shortcomings of our workshop method, so that, it can revised and expanded further to suit the specific needs of other studies.

Artists Emma Fält and Anna Väisänen initiated Shared Futures project, a long-term multiform artistic collaboration that invites people to imagine futures. The group has explored the urban spaces and living environments in weekly workshops for people over 60 years old. The artists also invited different audiences to imagine the future 100 years from now together with the older adults group. The project is based on an artwork concept by the artists Fält and Väisänen who invited Roberto Fusco to join the project in 2022. Shared Futures project supported the maintenance of wellbeing and functional capacity among older adults through a process founded on the participants’ needs and based on being present, listening and respecting their boundaries. This article describes the projects background, considers the relationship to sociology research and discusses the artistic practices with which the project engaged, offering the materials provided along with the article. The working group aims to find and develop new artistic tools for the imagination of political utopias. While the project has been an artistic one, the topic, its depth and length have given rise to practices that could be beneficial to other fields too. The project is situated between participatory and community arts, working actively with an open community of older adults, as well as sharing and inviting all audience to participate in the work in public performances. The initiating artists are practitioners, who facilitate, spaces and invite different groups to discuss alternative ways of knowing and understanding the reality.