Bringing the future back to the present: The role of prefiguration in European climate justice activism

Abstract

Social movement scholarship has long attempted to apprehend the dynamic qualities of social movements. Considering the temporal embeddedness of social movement activities is essential because it leads to an understanding of continuity and change in the content and form of social movements in the long run. Because the past, the present, and the future are co-defined, more attention should be paid to the way different time frames shape one another. In this article, we focus our attention on the influence of visions of the future on present practices. Drawing on qualitative research mainly in Belgium, France, and Germany, we explore how projected climate-just futures influence the practices of grassroots climate justice organizations in the present. For this purpose, we center our analysis on a macro-level vision that depicts a climate-just world as a world where domination systems (aka. capitalism, colonialism, or patriarchy) have been replaced in order to let a more egalitarian society strive. We use the concept of prefiguration to illustrate how this vision transforms organizing and mobilizing activities. Such transformative effects are exemplified in attempts at developing an alternative organizational culture and building alliances with marginalized groups, with more or less success.