Is another world possible? Futures in the anthropology of social movements

Moghaddari, Sonja; Giudici, D. (September 2021). Is another world possible? Futures in the anthropology of social movements (Unpublished). In: SIAC 3rd National Conference “Anthropology of the Future, Future of Anthropology”. Rome. 22.-25. September 2021.

Social movements tend to be thought of as inherently future-oriented. Yet, activist futures have been subject to debate in recent anthropological research. Since the 1960s, the hitherto dominant striving for a predefined aim that was promoted, for instance, by Fordist labor movements, has been gradually diversified. As uncertainty grew within a world driven by globalization and neoliberal restructuring, new social movements in the West – such as the anti-globalization movement of the 1990s and 2000s – have reacted by inventing and theorizing ways to deal with, but also actively produce more indeterminate futures. Through the concept of prefigurative politics those movements collapse ends into means, by focusing on participative processes that accommodate a multiplicity of goals united by the idea of striving for another world in the now (Maeckelberg 2011). In the global South, social movements are marked by parallel yet divergent dynamics, through locally specific experiences of (neo)colonialism, authoritarianism and failed promises of modernization (Bonilla 2010).

Yet, more recent research critiques the concept of prefiguration: holding onto the linear temporality of progress, it is bound to delude as contemporary futures are increasingly negative, abounding with senses of crisis, social decline, environmental degradation and even existential anxiety (Gordon 2017). Critical studies argue that social movements no longer work towards any specific future. Instead, they practice radical presentism, seeking to realize political alternatives within rare spatial and temporal fissures in the capitalist world order (Krøijer 2015).

The COVID 19 pandemic, which has exacerbated inequalities but also reignited the strength of a multiplicity of social movements (such as Black Lives Matter, feminist, environmentalist and animal rights movements), marks a point of reorientation, in which predominant future perspectives may be confirmed, renegotiated, or shifted. What is the state of social movements’ future orientations at the height of the pandemic? What futures – if any – do they imagine, predict or anticipate in the face of changed systemic conditions? Which practices serve as vectors of temporal agency? This panel seeks to shed new light on concepts such as: prefiguration, figuration, absent futures or futures in crisis, apocalypse, dystopia, and utopia. We welcome papers grounded in rich ethnographies from a variety of geographical and social contexts to engage the debate on the future in contemporary social movements.

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