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Hi, there! Okay, let's get started welcome. This morning of the very last day of our World Congress. He in Melbourne, Australia, to our joint session on future vision strategies and contentious politics.

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 My name is Marcus Schultz, and we have 5 speakers, so we will proceed in the sequence and in the timeline that is printed in the official program. Our first speaker to welcome is Paolo Gabaudi, from the United kingdom with a paper entitled Social Movements in Times of Ecological Risk.

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social Explosion.

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All right. Microphone to you, Paolo. Welcome here.

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You may want to unmute your button.

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paologerbaudo: Here I am. I'm just trying to activate my presentation. so if you bear with me 1 s, I should be able to. All right. Can you hear me? Well.

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fantastic. All works fine. Yeah. And you can see my presentation right? We can see your slides

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paologerbaudo: brilliant.

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paologerbaudo: Alright! Thanks very much for having me, and I mean here is where I am is to 30 in in the night. So it's it's quite a curious time to present at the conference, but my presentation is about social movements in times of encouragement.

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paologerbaudo: a and social collapse. And he's really questioning how social movements are changing their perspective. And they are facing the current situation in light of a long city debates or social movements in particular debates in

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paologerbaudo: subjectivity of such a movements such as those inspired by torrents, theory of the actor.

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paologerbaudo: and in light of the the rise of

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paologerbaudo: social movements on the issue of climate change, such as extinction, rebellion, flags for future that are interesting in the way in which they are thematizing risks of ecological

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paologerbaudo: and socially, in

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paologerbaudo: by developing narratives of such events and by attributing culpability in in different ways.

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paologerbaudo: for these issues.

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paologerbaudo: whatever it throws on research on social movement, this course online, I've been an outstanding participant in environmental movements. And a student of these movements.

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paologerbaudo: And my interesting category is on, on, on the understandings of the problems, the solutions and and the motivations on these issues developed by these movements.

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paologerbaudo: what I we do in this presentation, we'll be using both the analysis of and and to and on the construction of identity in social movements. Alberta, Malauulu, she.

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paologerbaudo: the notion of such a movements as prospective phenomena, as well as the notion of collective action frames a famous introduced by Snow and Benford

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paologerbaudo: to understand how these movements are dealing with the issue of collapse. I mean with this idea of collapse as well as constructing

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paologerbaudo: narratives of protection. And so the statement

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paologerbaudo: that, fundamentally criticize the kind of product is paradigm

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paologerbaudo: and point towards the and imagine sustainable and a sufficient society.

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paologerbaudo: So this is very much a kind of an analysis of this course, also to move medical medication of the messages they produce. And I will specifically focus in this context on on visual communication, on visual culture.

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paologerbaudo: also of the posters produced by these movements and the kind of narratives that goes with them.

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paologerbaudo: So I think that fundamental starting point to address these movements is a snow and back for its analysis of collective action frames.

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paologerbaudo: you know, it's so quick to actual frames is a way to understand how the messages and the notions developed by by protest movements. I try to deal with an empirical reality that is out there.

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paologerbaudo: Try to interpret it, to shift it through a certain theoretical framework and try to project

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paologerbaudo: an idea of an alternative words

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paologerbaudo: a solution to the problems, right? That are retrieved in reality

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paologerbaudo: as well as some motivations, some ideas of why

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paologerbaudo: participants or prospective participants should participate in a movement in order to address the problems that are raised by the movements. So here, these graph this diagram is taken from a paper in Poetics which is kind of a linguistic analysis.

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paologerbaudo: and we see expansion on Oslo and Ben Ford's Sorry for the me spelling there. collective actual frame and really what the the key issue. There is a certain notion of injustice. Right? This is the from diagnostic element of of the corrective action frame.

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paologerbaudo: The idea that there is a problem

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paologerbaudo: an evil there that needs to be so, it needs to be at rest. And there is the the prognostic element of the collective action frame, the prognosis.

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paologerbaudo: namely, how we are going to solve the problem right. and she associates it in. In a vicari. In our linguistic analysis she associates with notions of We can, we will.

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paologerbaudo: And this is the element of agency. Right? So one thing is to say, there is a problem, as another thing is to say that we can. And we'll act on that problem.

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And finally, there is the motivational element of the collective action frame

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paologerbaudo: which is obviously the more kind of psychological in a way component of this productive action frame, which is fundamentally to do no with that perception that there is a problem. Nor with

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paologerbaudo: the problem is that this program would be addressed with the idea that there are some solution to these problems. But with the idea that we need, and we can deal with this problem.

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paologerbaudo: that there are reasons for which we are able.

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paologerbaudo: We, are capable. And we are interested ultimately in dealing with this problem. So she dissolves the element that in Vicar his analysis

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paologerbaudo: is more associated with the construction of

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paologerbaudo: So in in social movements, we we don't. We have these 3 components going on right on the one end the understanding that the the identification of a given problem on the second hand, the identification of possible solution to the program. But third and perhaps most important, I would say, from a organizational perspective.

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paologerbaudo: the identification of reasons why it we should deal with this problem, and why? Ultimately, it is attractive, both individually and collectively.

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paologerbaudo: to address this problem.

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paologerbaudo: the second theoretical component that I'm presenting here the figures that is useful for an understanding of these new movements on on climate change and related issues is an end to rans famous IoT 3 triangle, which is actually an expansion, a development of a theoretical framework introduced by caramel 9

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paologerbaudo: in his analysis of ideology. So you, the idea is that all collective, all social actors

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paologerbaudo: comprise 3 moments or 3 elements in their social action. One is I identity, or in today.

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paologerbaudo: So which is, of course, a sense of self, a sense of who we are since we this is a weness opposition, who the enemies we are fighting against.

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paologerbaudo: and finally, T, which is the more kind of a systemic

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paologerbaudo: and alternative related

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paologerbaudo: element, not, namely, social movements don't just have usually a sense of we in a sense of them

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paologerbaudo: as versus them, but they also have a vision of an alternative future.

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paologerbaudo: of how we are going to live in a better society.

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paologerbaudo: how? An idea of Utopia. Ultimately we could say a again kind of citing my name, namely, an idea of a better society, of a better word which we are going to construct in place, I mean substituting the old ward that we want to surpass. They want to

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paologerbaudo: overcome.

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paologerbaudo: So we did this to to critical framework that actually quite useful when it comes to analyzing contemporary protest movements and to understand ultimately, how do they conceive of the problem of climate change which is obviously a an objective problem.

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paologerbaudo: a problem that is measured and tized and modeled in very complex scientific ways, right by measuring different variables, and so on, so forth, but which at the same time is also a problem

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paologerbaudo: that it can be conceived

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paologerbaudo: and can be, narrated in very different ways. Right? according to the vision of the war that's ultimately different. Social actors mobilize.

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paologerbaudo: And and secondly, how does this vision of of the problem is diagnostic frame to go back to snow in Bedford,

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paologerbaudo: T. Or E.

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paologerbaudo: Also comprise or alludes at a vision of the future, a vision of a possible alternative to the present problems.

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paologerbaudo: So what I will do to discuss these is focusing on what are arguably the 2 most influential or important social movement on the issue of climate change at the moment. These are kind of extinction, rebellion, and and Fridays for future.

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paologerbaudo: I'd say that internationally they can be considered as the 2 most influential

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paologerbaudo: mobilizations on on this issue anything that they they carry very different framing of this issue. But at the same time they carry a common

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paologerbaudo: perception, a common understanding of a phase of of a great threat or great risk, great danger that affects not just the planets, but the very resistance of humanity, or at least the resistance of society.

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paologerbaudo: as we know it's

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paologerbaudo:  as we know already from

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paologerbaudo: who was commenting on movements in the 1,900 eightys risk as being a a longstanding issue, understanding notion in in social movements, in ecological movements.

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paologerbaudo: In the case of 1,900 eightys movements. A risk was mostly related to nuclear

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paologerbaudo: and nuclear energy and disasters, such as Chernobyl disaster. And this new sense of invisible threats

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paologerbaudo: that affected both the environment and and human beings.

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paologerbaudo: But my my argument here is that now these sense of risk, as being generalized and projected onto a kind of existential plane.

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paologerbaudo: where for many of these movements, what we face with climate change is a problem, the effects, the very basis of the assistance of society, and even the existence of of the human species.

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paologerbaudo: and these sense of existential risk is at the very heart of how these movements conceive of a society and themselves in the case of a since for rebellion this sense of the centrality of of risk, consistently of danger, I think, is evident already, in the very name of the movement.

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paologerbaudo: a carrying the word distinction.

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paologerbaudo: So what is argued here is that what we're facing is For human beings to go the same way as dinosaurs.

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paologerbaudo: We actually sometimes what what is really used as a kind of example, or as as an imaginary right facing the same destiny of species that this came before as

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paologerbaudo: and this goes with a rather visual machinery, as representing in the very beautiful visuals that the central rebellion has become famous for.

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paologerbaudo: So what we see here are often in the individual imagery. is scales, bones, fossils

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paologerbaudo: things that we

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paologerbaudo: would normally see in a zoological museum right? Or in a cabinet of curiosity

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paologerbaudo: or in a natura more that like in a debt table, like things that are deprived the void of life. Right? I understand before us.

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paologerbaudo: as as as a as something that that reminds us, is a reminder right of the past disasters of past

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paologerbaudo: catastrophes, and should therefore also invite us to avoid the very repeat of this catastrophe

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paologerbaudo: that that came before us. So here, in a way.

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paologerbaudo: the lesson behind much of this imagery is this happened already before and this could well happen to us.

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paologerbaudo: and that there is a sort of deficit in understanding, or the deficit in consciousness that needs to be overcome. I mean, this is in a way also

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paologerbaudo: the message of fumes, such as look up right, which very much point to these

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paologerbaudo: evidence of danger to these immediacy, to these

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paologerbaudo: proximity of the danger facing humanity, and these a of of danger on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the the you see

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paologerbaudo: and the shortsightedness of humanity in front of this danger that then leads famously in, in the case of feel more to humanity, not dealing with the problem, not recognizing the scale of the problem not dealing with that right?

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paologerbaudo: So on the right, we have a similar prop. We have similar imagery. Right. It's a skull made of bees, the famously a species that is now facing very collapsing population across Europe and other world regions.

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paologerbaudo: And in the second set of posters we have again, the skull on, on, on, on the right, but on the left. Another important message, which is this, Howard glass, which is like the the logo of a central rebellion

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paologerbaudo: which focuses in steady attention on the temporal element. Right? There is a crucial temporal axis in much of the messaging by things for rebellion.

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paologerbaudo: which points to the urgency of the problem, to the fact that we have very few years to act right. This is actually a recurrent message in much of the Portugal communication.

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paologerbaudo: All climate change campaigners.

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paologerbaudo: namely, that we have a wind of of opportunity

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paologerbaudo: that is measure that is estimated sometimes with different estimates. But that is like between 5 years, 6 years, sometimes 10 years

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paologerbaudo: that are basically the time limit within which we can steal.

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paologerbaudo: be able to change the course of the situation, and see and avoid the the danger of collapse that otherwise faces us right. This is

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paologerbaudo: also highlighted in E in the top part of the posture, in this now or never message now.

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paologerbaudo: and finally to go back to snow and Beamford's collective action frame. This goes with the motivational

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paologerbaudo: frame, namely, so a. We have this very serious problem that is very urgent and temporary compelling, and this should invite us to take radical action. Now act, now, or don't pray, and act as it is expressed in in the second poster.

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paologerbaudo: so this frame we could say in general lines, that is very in a way very

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paologerbaudo: pessimistic in certain respects, though I mean it is pessimistic as a reflection also of the very serious nature of the problem and of the disaster, that indeed, as we know from what climate science is facing us, if we don't act. It has been, though criticized sometimes for being too pessimistic right, and leaning too much on the apocalyptic side.

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paologerbaudo: which, according to some some people, can lead to

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paologerbaudo: but the opposite ultimately result in terms of social psychology, namely.

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paologerbaudo: not to immobilizing results, but to the mobilizing result in a sense that if you think that the most likely outcome of present affairs with the apocalyptic one that may lead people to look for individual solutions, such as whatever 1 billion a bunker or some form of survivalism, rather than investing in a more collective solution.

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paologerbaudo: such as organizing coming together, giving community solutions to the problem. If for this. For future we have

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paologerbaudo: a partly different situation. On the one hand, we could have could say that there is a more more emphasis on the diagnostic level, more emphasis on the totality element to go back to and then to rent a framework

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the very naming of the movement. Friday's for future

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paologerbaudo:  emphasizes the element of of the future, the element of of an investment in a better wards and in a war that continues, therefore, doesn't end into distinction.

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paologerbaudo: but rather leads to a better society, where we overcome present hurdles and present mistakes.  That is more of an element of sarcasm and irony, and so irony in the messaging of the movement which is seen, for example, in the posters of Fridays for future.

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paologerbaudo: where One on the left. We need to talk about the birds and the bees

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paologerbaudo: right? And and we have these these messages in a way more ironic, more more funny, more creative

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paologerbaudo: when it's in many other respects the messaging is the the ultimate content of this pretty communication is similar to the one of, I think short of value. There is always this sense of no planet. B. This sense of the urgency of of of danger, right in a way more than the content is the tone of communication that is, partly more of the optimistic.

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paologerbaudo: So all in all, I mean, I'll just go through these 3 on an analytical levels, I mean at the diagnostic level, would be fine in most climate change of late, campaigning is a pessimistic and apocalyptic diagnosis of the problems

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paologerbaudo: a sense that system is approaching to the collapse.

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paologerbaudo: that there is a risk of extinction, as in the case of a single rebellion

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paologerbaudo: that we are faced with severe environmental damage, and the overall picture is one of a broken system full by capitalist profiteering, and in which the political class is not able to deal with this, or is not willing to deal with this, because it's completing cahoots

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paologerbaudo: with the very companies that are responsible for the destruction of the planet

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paologerbaudo: at a prognostic level. We see the need for urgent political action here. There is a bit of a difference between Friday's for future, and a single rebellion with a single rebellion. That prognostic frame is much more radical. The idea is that only if we have seen this obedience.

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paologerbaudo: we will be able to address present problems. Why, with friends for future, that is a bit more of a kind of ecumenic and mass appeal Also, the forms of action that are called for are less radical, less militant.

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paologerbaudo: They imply a lesser level of confrontation with authorities and police, and therefore they are also appealing to a broader constituency, including people that, for example, would not be willing to be arrested or to face cleaning up prosecution for the action. But all you know, we have. What is common across these different movements is a call for radical response because of the A. A block political system.

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paologerbaudo: and in terms of the possible solution to the problems in terms of of the totality element. To go back to one to Rance framework. The idea is the one of a green society right of a green transition.

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paologerbaudo: which clearly now has become also absorbed, partly kind of accepted by the political mainstream as seen in various plan for green transition in the Us. And in the you, for example.

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paologerbaudo: good idea of the need to rapidly and fossil fuels, and to facilitate the rabbit transition towards renewable energies. Of course, I mean, in the actual kind of policy plans developed by the You and the Us. These plans are far, far less radical and and less rapid than what is called for by activists. But what I think is interesting in terms of the general political debate is the fact that

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paologerbaudo: some plans for transition that were before considered the preserve only of a small radicals. Groups have now be accepted as as necessary also by part of the particular establishment.

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paologerbaudo: to conclude, I mean, the motivational frame here is is really temporal. Time is sticking idea that there is a kind of moral failure that we are betraying our children and our nephews, and we are destroying the planets right? So there is some sense of blame and and of responsibility.

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paologerbaudo:  what I think it, the really, the the sticking point here is is the element of totality, namely, the idea of a better society

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paologerbaudo: of an alternative. Society is still one that you see very much in the making, and a kind of more positive framework continues to be called for

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paologerbaudo: also because of the very nature of the problem. I mean, when the risk is the one of of such a collapse of environmental collapse. perhaps it is more difficult to develop a positive vision of an alternative future than it would be the case in another context. Where the demand is for a material improvement.

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paologerbaudo: So To conclude, I think this this continues to be the challenge for environmental and ecological movements, namely, how to devise the vision of a better planet, of a better future

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paologerbaudo: accompanying the necessary diagnosis of the risks and of the existential dangers the society faces. Thanks very much.

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Oh, we got to Bolos. Thank you very much. It was Paolo Gabbardo.

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You actually got quite a lot of extra time, because the next speaker listed in the program. I could not see online and also not in the room. Natalia, is supposed to give an online presentation. did she? Perhaps log in under a different name. if so, please step forward and let us know.

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Otherwise. We would have to assume that. Something must have happened with Natalia last minutes that she was unable to inform us that she cannot be with us.

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 Well, we have maybe until the next speaker. Get she gets ready 3 min or so. for maybe some direct questions to you is anyone who wants to already raise one question to Paolo.

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Okay, maybe later in the discussion. So then, let's step a little bit ahead of time and gift, and perhaps also a few extra minutes to Getchi Kaluri Sabina, who is joining us all the way from South Africa. She has 2 co-authors, that is Robin Bourgeois from Serat in France.

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and Iva Kuwait at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. please correct me if I am not good in pronouncing any of the names

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and Getchi Kauli. Sabina, in her team's paper is entitled The Future as a Public good

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microphone over to you. Get you.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I'm going to my scan

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and hopefully, and will hold up.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: although I'm also joining you at 2 30 M. is indeed a strange time it just will be getting at a M. Version of Geshe to all right. So I'm really able to share this paper with the day

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: behalf of my co-authors for and the ever who are not able to join and maybe, by way of introducing it is just to say that the background to this work for me on a personal level, it comes from having engaged it, doing futures, features, and for site work

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from around 1,000 2,001 at a time, where we organized something called the Southern.

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Oh, wow!

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Now we lost sketchy.

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It's tech support here.

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I would think there might be

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a tech issue on the other side in South Africa that we lost now our speaker. But it would be maybe good idea if tech support could just verify that the tech glitch is not on our side.

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I will be checking. In the meantime, emailed in case sketchy is trying to communicates through an email channel.

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Yeah,

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maybe get ready.

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So we give it maybe 60 more seconds. If she comes back. It's maybe sometimes only an issue to restart a computer. But if it takes more than 60 s, then

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tech support is arriving.

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Okay, great. The speaker suddenly vanished. So we are not sure, is it on our side or somewhere?

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So our side is okay. So they probably talking about this.

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yeah, okay? So then, yes. If Jordan is willing to advance his presentation, then we lose less time and have maybe a chance. towards the end later. to here. Getchi! So let's welcome as the next Speaker, then Jordan Mackenzie, from the University of Volongongong. Here in Australia, with a paper entitled A Sociology of the Future question. Mark.

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Thank you.

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okay.

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okay, I'd like to just take a moment to acknowledge that we're meeting on the unseated lines of the War Andry people in the coordination. I'd like to also acknowledge I This work has has been done where I I live and work in the in the dial nation.

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 so it's a bit of a weird presentation. it's been a kind of a weird morning. I've got I keep getting messages, saying, my, my flight time has changed because of the storms in Sydney. So Everything feels kind of chaotic, but that feels like a good, you know, like my my clashing with objective clock time and my challenges to temporal time feel very fitting. So I want to present a kind of a unusual sort of conceptual paper.

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largely addressing this sort of question, what do we want from a sociology of the future? And I have to confess that maybe this is not the best audience for it, because you are mostly futures people. And I'm concerned with, and someone someone trying to address the kind of lack of what I would consider to be kind of meaningful engagement with the future in mainstream sociology, and the the way in which one.

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the the the future, serves as a sort of fundamental conceptual aspect of contemporary sociology.

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Now, my argument here is that ultimately it's neglected that that we need to talk about the future more in in mainstream sociology. But I I that the audience here is you're all people who talk about the future. So maybe maybe you can sort of help me make this mainstream. I guess.

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ultimately, what I'm trying to do today is a kind of exercise in making the implicit explicit in terms of what we might want from a sociology of the future, and what that might look like without necessarily becoming Futurists, I suppose, or sort of, you know, techno-future Utopians.

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 and I want to argue that actually, the primary orientation toward the future that we see in mainstream sociology is actually one of kind of non-future. how do I?

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Here we go. Okay.

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So this idea of non future or no future, has been around for a long time. It has a pretty significant lineage in sort of punk and alternative history. the sex pistols. God, said the Queen, was famously, initially titled, no future and it comes up a lot in sort of alternative subcultures.

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But what I'm really interested in here is maybe trying to make a distinction between this idea of the claim that there is no future as an academic discourse. And here I would end up, identify people like Fukiyama's end of history, but also to some extent, fish is slow cancellation of the future, which, while I very much admire Mark Fish's work, I have some significant issues with this particular argument.

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and I want to distinguish those from

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sociological analyses of a culture of futurelessness. For example, like in Richard Tutton's work, which I think is really great. Looking at this idea of the feeling of futurelessness as a kind of affect.

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But ultimately, what I want to try and claim today

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is that without a perception of the future there's ultimately no need for society that that the desire for sociality to cooperate, to live together in communities that are organized and structured and mutually beneficial. I argue.

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it falls apart. If the if the concept of futurity falls apart among the general population. So to put this another way, that the futurelessness ultimately undivines undermines forms of sociality.

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And so I think, a sociologist, we must be very invested in this. In the future. If there is, if there is nothing lying ahead, kind of what is the point of anything that we have to do ultimately? and this view of futurelessness that's become in in many ways kind of socially dullment dominant, especially among younger people. feels like a legitimate threat to how we think about society, and perhaps what we want society to be.

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But I do need to make this distinction, then, between the claim of a kind of culture, futurelessness and an academic discourse of no future, because the the the former I have a lot of time, for in the latter I I struggle with, and I think, perhaps the reason I struggle with that. This idea that that there is no future from an academic discourse point of view is that the future will ultimately happen with it without us.

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and to say that there is no future, or that the future has been cancelled in some ways, like Fisher does, I think, is an ultimately unproductive and potentially harmful kind of argument for sociological discourse and analysis.

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So what does he mean, then, by by the slow cancellation of the future, or by the loss of the future. for for fisher it involves this term, the the slow cancellation of the future that he borrows from from Franco Bifurarati And he describes this in his kind of hauntsological critique, where he describes it as a a confrontation with a cultural impasse and a failure of the future.

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And then he develops this critique, based largely on popular culture and music that refers to this kind of like lack of imagination. The second right recycling of traditional concepts. You know the the sort of somewhat postmodern. There is nothing new kind of argument, and ultimately what he writes, is that a slow cancellation of the future has been accompanied by a deflation of expectations.

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I will come back to that. But let me make the pitch. So this is my proposal for a sociology of the future for better or worse. I'm very curious, I guess, to see what people think of this. So

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the first claim is that It needs to be more than a fringe study of Utopia dystopia. I argue that it needs to be able to think of the future as as something rather than nothing, and finally, that it needs a sophisticated and so sophisticated understanding of the interrelations between time, emotion, imagination, and reason.

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So with the time I have, I'm going to attempt to go through each of these

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now. I'm certainly not a critique of Utopian dystopian studies. My last book is called Dystopian Emotions. I'm very much someone who was invested in this space. But ultimately I think that the quite a lot of the public interpretation and and analysis of these kinds of narratives

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 ultimately excludes the kind of middle, the middle, which is where kind of virtually everything happens, and it tends to focus down on extreme ends of of Utopian and dystopian discourse. Ultimately, I think, we have to recognize as sociologists that every society contains Utopian and dystopian dimensions.

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that that the best and worst possible society kind of mutually coexist depending on the perspective and standpoint, and that I think these concepts are useful in an academic discourse, but I think lack of translation into real commentary about, for example, what to do about climate change?

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So ultimately, I think these kind of Utopian and dystopian predictions have the potential to kind of miss the of uneventful and mundane aspects of everyday social life.

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And I'm I'm tempted here to think about concepts like the slow apocalypse. As a result, as a response to that. This idea that you know the the dominant hegemony around apocalyptic thinking is exciting and bombastic, but that the real apocalypse is a very slow and boring and bureaucratic and uninteresting process.

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So the analysis of Utopian and dystopian narratives, emotions, and strategies, I do think, offer a kind of an important way of accessing a sociology of the future. And we've seen this I think best in the work of Ruth Levitas.

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However, Utopian and dystopian visions, I do think, overlook the likelihood that the best and worst-case future. Does scenarios coexist rather than cancer one another out?

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I really want to rush to the third one, because it's my favorite one being very selfish. Yeah. The concept of the future is something rather than nothing, I think, is absolutely central. And in a way this is kind of a response to the slow cancellation of the future type argument.

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But here, ultimately, what I'm doing is kind of perhaps borrowing terminology from from Ritz's something and nothing in globalization. And this idea of nothing spaces. I think the argument or the the treatment of the future is a kind of nothing. Space

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is is incredibly frustrating. If this is obviously not the case, as I said, the future will happen with or without us. And this this treatment of the of the future, as this thing that is inaccessible and and untouchable, and ultimately kind of unworkable

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I think, become self-defeating in political and and democratic projects again around something like climate change or class inequality.

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So thinking, then, about this kind of argument that I think really informs this sort of thinking, the slow cancellation of the future.

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Fisher comes to this argument by doing this kind of analysis of popular culture, where he in particular, I don't know how many people have kind of engaged with this in his ontological work, but he really lays into, for some reason, Amy White House and the Arctic monkeys, and a very selective critique of sort of 2,000 era British popular music.

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as basically saying that if you were to go back in time and show this music to people, they would think it was of the present day, and that this ultimately reflects a failure of imagination and creativity and a sort of a cultural collapse, I guess around the idea of the new. And I find this argument incredibly defeatist and and and

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pop music, I mean, I would argue that in many ways popular music is weirder than it's ever been more experimental. It also seems to completely ignore music from outside of basically white people in England, and it has a very kind of narrow focus. It ignore electronic music, hip, hop, music, experimental music in general.

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 so ultimately, I think we have to kind of recognize that the the the future is not something that it's not going to be that this sort of cancellation of today doesn't necessarily mean a replacement with nothing. It will be replaced with something, even if it is maybe not something that aging music fans like. And I I see myself as one of those aging music fans, which is perhaps why I have a sensitivity to fish's argument.

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So then let me talk about the thing I really want to talk about, which is about time and emotion, imagination and reason.

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 so this, I guess the starting point here is that I think the the sociological analysis of time is incredibly important and somewhat neglected in mainstream sociology. And I I also feel like this one something that lots of people are publishing on. But when I look at, for example, I'm I'm the discipline leader in my department, and when I look at the subjects that we offer, there is no meaningful analysis of time in any of those subjects. you know, we could talk about, you know, clock time and modernization industrialization.

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the way in which time is, is rigidly organized, but it's it seems to be a very, very quick thing that people brush over. And I talk about Giddens as Timespest Association. But there's not really a meaningful analysis of time in everyday life in the interaction. And it's something I'm very interested in which is the sociology of emotion.

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So I propose today kind of 2 responses to this or 2 to alternatives. the first is to So one is a phenomenological response, which is a kind of an attempt to offer something practical from the phenomenology of time, which I think is something that is largely alienating to mainstream sociological readers, and the other is is through this example of understanding and unpacking indigenous temporality.

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I'll start with the latter first. Actually, I think thinking about time as being culturally-specific and and and and and varied and inconsistent between and between places and between cultures

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is a really nice

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thread to, I guess. to pull and unravel. I suppose, in mainstream sociology, the idea that time is not a universal concept concept. And, as you know, people like Barbara Adam have written in in time and social theory, which is an absolutely fabulous book. But the the past, present, and future are a human concepts that vary greatly between different cultures.

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I've been reading recently Rifkin's book on on colonial time. I think it's a wonderful investigation into the way in which sort of, I guess colonial time is used to denigrate indigenous populations and undermine the history but also to to form a form of imper oppression, and and that there are fascinating alternative conceptions of time within indigenous cultures.

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one that I want to talk about very quickly in terms of just kind of pulling a thread that unravels is the the concept of seasons in Australia. So Australia inherited a four-season model from from colonization. well inherited, it was more or less forced upon a climate that makes absolutely no sense in a 4 season model. Australia is a very, very large country, with lots of different climates and weather systems.

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the English model makes absolutely no sense here, but it is so taken for granted as someone who is kind of learnt that in school, and then sees that as a part of a way of understanding the temporality of a year. Something I highly recommend is looking at the Bureau of Meteorology. The main Australian Weather website has a a section on indigenous seasons, and you can go and look at different parts of Australia, and how different season models have been understood by indigenous populations over time. In those areas

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many have 2 or 3 or 6 seasons of different lengths, and different completely different kind of ways of thinking about these things as opposed to

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this quite sort of rationalized and, I guess, oppressive way of implanting traditional seasons onto what we currently have.

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the other is her. So I think her so off. This is something really simple here that we could use as sociologists to to better think about time and temporality. So, like many others like Hunter rent and and Zimmel to an extent has written about. You know the the the present moment is something that is transcended. That is not necessarily a fixed point.

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But it's not this kind of like instant moment that exists in between past and present, but instead of something that is shifted between and around.

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and the example that I really like with her, so this he uses this analogy of the melody. In order to make sense of this.

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in his analogy of the melody, he writes about how, when you, when you hear a melody that you understand and recognize. You might be hearing effectively one note at a time, but your mind and your sort of emotional comprehension of what you're experiencing is stretched across a little a longer period. So I think of this song I always think of here is somewhere over the rainbow, which is very recommended, you know, recognizable song, and perhaps from the first one or 2 notes of that song you can effectively imagine what the rest of it is going to sound like, and you are

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then kind of suspended ultimately a a stretch of time between that where you are anticipating, but also remembering and making other kinds of connections, and I think this is a very valuable way of thinking about emotion and social interaction as it pertains to time, and how we reflect on what we're experiencing and how we're making sense of those things and then sharing, based on that and interacting with other people based on that.

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And I think this is something that

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is straightforward enough to integrate into. For example, undergraduate teaching and into more mainstream versions of of sociological analysis.

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 there is a paper about this, and I go into a lot more detail, but I'm rushing

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So then let me try and try and make a case for this. So

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I want to. Then, I guess, apply this 3 part model and and think about how it would apply to one of the most sort of researched concepts in the history of mainstream sociology concept of alienation. Now, obviously, how the nation goes back to Marx and estrangement. But it's a consistent theme, you know the boys double consciousness by this enchantment as d comes enemy. Also similar ways of thinking about a very similar kind of problem.

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And I'm I'm thinking a lot about the way in which it connects to the kinds of things I've just been talking about. ultimately, what we end up with is a transition from thinking about alienation as it associates with with place or with with system and connection, and thinking about it in more temporal forms. So

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mit ctl. And what does it mean to be alienated in the future? And what does it mean to be alienated from the future? Which to me again 2 very different kinds of questions, but 2 that I think we should absolutely be thinking about in in sociology. One.

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So

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A. Let me let me let me split them apart, I mean, from an alienation and experience of alienation in the future, I think, shifts a discussion from something like being alienated at work to recognizing the fact that work is perhaps less about place and more about time, and that that feeling of alienation that we might feel from employment is something we take with us outside of the the front doorstep of our place of employment.

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and that thinking about alienation in this traditional sense is actually perhaps less relevant. We are alienated in, you know, uses of social media, in, in, in the social interaction, in dating, in work, in, in all sorts of places, precisely because we are not bound by place in the ways that we previously have been, but are still bound by time in various sorts of ways.

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alienation from the future is something that I initially started thinking about from Adams and Adam Groves book on called Future Matters, where they talk about various forms of colonization of the future

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in response to this kind of argument, if the future is being nothing, they argue that the future is, in fact, not nothing but is being colonized by people with the power and the resources in order to do so.

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And in that the sort of 99% get alienated from a future from an active future. I think about an example like like petrol cars right? There might be lots of people who've been wanting to move away from petrol cars for a very, very long time. But ultimately, you know, British Petroleum have been giving money to the right people, and various companies have been able to stall legitimate conversations about alternative energy sources

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they are able to direct a future that I am now alienated from. And even if what I want as a consumer is something very different to what's on offer, I'm alienated from a a discourse that allows me to shape that. And so this kind of feeling of alienation from the future, I think, feeds into the kind of something and nothing distinction that I was making earlier. But ultimately it. It is a a new form of inequality, really, that that that separates people from legitimate forms of future planning.

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 so I guess, to try and bring all of this together. I think this this way of thinking about the future in sociology has an ability to I don't know. Perhaps a fresh lens offer a fresh lens to you know, even topics as traditional as a work on alienation. I know there has been some wonderful work in alienation in recent years. I'm in the article I write a bit about yeah. Yaghi's work on alienation and how it fits into this.

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But ultimately I do think this this question between alienation in the future and education from the future off a new pathways and and something that I don't know. I, I think, gives sort of fresh life to old arguments. So I might leave it there.

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Yeah, thank you.

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Thank you so much. Jordan. Fantastic

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In the meantime Getchi has been able to rejoin us from Africa. Indeed! there Bandwidth was very, very low, so she was kicked out. She had some help from tech support to upload her slides. We are thinking whether we want to keep switched off her

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video to save on bandwidth.

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 let's see.

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what do I now need to click

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to go? Aya.

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and

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let's see.

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But I think those are only the

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a Pdf file. Yeah.

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okay. I think we see now her presentation, the the Powerpoint slides.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: Can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you. Very well.

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Okay, maybe. Then comment

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on the slides as we will be displaying them from here.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: Okay, thank you very much. I'm sorry to put you to work, Marcus. I did one. It's very early. Yeah. So perhaps the bandwidth is also sleeping.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: and thank you for being willing to fly to those. So apologies, everybody, and thank you for allowing me to come back on on on stage in a way having heard the previous presentation. It's not bad timing, because I think I do pick up on some elements. I think of what the previous speaker was referring to.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: So I I was just introducing this to say that the basis for this work is My own experience dating from back around 2,000 when I became quite involved in futures and foresight work and where we created a regional node of the millennium project because we were just a way that many people around us were not that aware about features and foresight, and we thought creating a culture that was a bit more feature away.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: at least in the formal sense, might be a good thing, and then we also wanted to intervene into some concerns we hand around. We had around gatekeeping, where there was a tendency for it to be, really a consulting space rather than a a a social, you know communal space where people were allowed to think about the future fast forward to 20 years later.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: but I and my co-authors, I think, have developed some real concerns about the content and consequence of what we are actually doing in the futures and foresight field specifically, the dominance of methods and procedures over substance

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: And the problem we think is very similar to what's been experienced, I think, in the broader development field. which is this inability to confront? really, the tyranny of a particular world order or power structure? and what that means. it affects, who is considered in in featuring it affects what is considered in featuring and what are considered in a way to be valid ways of engaging with the future. And so this for us, has links to a lot of our decolonial work.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: and this particular paper, I think, was an attempt to do a bit of conceptual work, but also to begin to point at alternative basis. If you want for a methodological direction in in in futuring. So

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: thank you. I'll ask you to go to the next slide here.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: Sorry for whoever is going to have to click for me.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: Marcus, is it you?

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: Okay? So you know. in the, in the work of features and fors. And this will be a bit of a movement between some of the practical work. You know, it's become very common to talk about making the future better which sounds unfortunately very similar to some other, making things better.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: again, not making them good again, making them great again, the good future, the preferred future. We have ideas of future proofing. These sorts of concepts have become, really foundational and very compelling. I think, as arguments for why we should do futures and foresight work. but in a way, this is a starting point for a critique that we launch, and we can go to the next slide here

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: about. Why, this might, in fact, be a problematic

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Geci Karuri-Sebina:  the, the, the, the, the work, the critique about these ideas, possibly colonizing the future, in fact, is not something new and not something African. For those who think the coloniality only has to do with Africa or the South. we see ideas from Jim data as back as 2,005, talking about there being no particular normal or starting point for thinking about the future. And yet that is something that's rooted in a lot of current featuring

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: We see Saddam talking about future studies, being really a a a last frontier for colonization. And again, this having to do with some very fixed ideas which we try to contend with next slide, please.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: So we begin in our paper. And this was not without a lot of debate with suggesting that the future could be considered what we call a public good the starting point, for that was recognizing and directing people to a very robust de-colonial literature which sits in a different domain, but nonetheless is they

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: that has commented on stolen futures. And these ideas of a system aside. If you think of the work of Sanchez and others that offices a good starting point

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: to think about these issues. We make the point that the future does not exist in the present. the only way it does so is in the imagination. So imagination is what we hold and that gives us the sense of agency for the future, but also action in the present. So this idea that the future, in the presence only exist as imagination.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: The future, we argue, can be considered, I suppose, in economic as having the attributes of a public good, meaning that it can be non-rival. in the sense that you know me using my future doesn't prevent you from using yours, so anybody can do it.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: it can also be non excludable meaning that technically, there is no way. There should be no way to prevent others from using their imaginations. you can imagine as much as you want without limiting anybody else from doing the same. and so it should be non-excludable.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: However, we suggest that if it is that it is probably an impure public good. because we sort of demonstrate that those non-rivaleness and non excludibilities are really are only to a certain extent. we begin to argue or propose that in fact, they use can be, and has been restricted and through control and domination by certain groups of individuals and certain institutions. next slide, please.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: we. We propose the way that this is happening. if we go to the next slide.

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Oh, suddenly sorry. Suddenly the

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: The keyboard becomes unresponsive. Oh, yeah.

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let me escape.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: Okay, look. Looks like somebody doesn't want this presentation to happen.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: Gee.

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a mass.

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the mouse is a little bit.

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Yeah, I think that helped great thanks.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: Okay, thank you so much.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: Right?

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: yes. So we suggest that. you know, when that happens, when that kind of subject to commodification happens future.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: and then, in fact, or even a completely private good totally limiting others from their ability to use the future we suggest this happens through power over the production of the future, so where it can actually be commodified, and the resistance to that would be where people insist on using their imaginations as they wish the other way that can happening. The othering is in the technicality. And this is an important point of the production of the future. So how featuring is done.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: and how that can be made exclusive, and the resistance to that would be a refusal actually to conform to single images of what is true, believable, and real, and the epistemological basis, of course, for doing that. So we then, suggest that coloniality, unfortunately, has provided and continues to provide an environment with this kind of deprivation from using the future

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: can happen, and can affect significant populations and their capacity to in the presence, then have agency and have hope for their own futures. Next slide, please, if if that is still working.

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Yep.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: okay, super. So we offer this framework what we see as a 3. And this is an attempt in a way to offer a conceptual frame. But 3

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: aspects or 3 dimensions of colonizing the future. The first we saw as an intellectual and institutional dimension where the future, as we suggested, because a public good that gets turned into a private good primarily through saying, there are those that have the ability and the right, the expertise, the place to actually talk about the future. So it's not something that everybody should be able to do.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: Secondly, the instrumental or the procedural dimension which has to do with this primacy of method, which in my experience is a very real thing, by the way. So there are ways to future. There are tools for featuring, and, in fact, the most important thing about featuring appears to be the tools, and I'll talk about that shortly. And the third dimension, which is the result of the other 2, is the political and societal dimension of what the result all the calls, I suppose.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: and that we described in terms of this idea, that they are either compulsory pathways, so the probable, most likely futures, and therefore they are 1, 2, 3, 4 of them.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: And then this idea that there is an optimal pathway that ought to be everybody's objective. This idea of the preferred future next slide, please.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: in terms of these ideas. and this is in a forthcoming paper that we're working on. we hope to get published called development is that it might not get very far. What we try to do in that paper is to say that there are probably at least 5

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: reasons, or or or ways in which this gets entrenched. Right? So first of all is this idea that there is, you know, a serious ego in the way we tend to think about the future where it's very self referential in the sense that it has both the desire to center

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: certain selves in the future over others, but also the desire to dominate over others

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: and support that by legitimating norms and ideas that become that that make that the truth, and therefore not a supposedly objective basis for featuring this idea of vision which offers fixed rather than open images of the future

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: issues of agency, where there's a big assumption of power and control and real a a sense. If you want a boldness, a lack of humility, in a way we tend to think about the future in many futures exercises

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: the issue or the challenge is out quality of accountability where there's a need to claim even unduly, certainty about the future and certainty about elements in the present. that really create these very deterministic features, and and one apparently needs to be able to do that to be accountable. So we need to start with the log frame that says we know all of the activities, the outputs, and the outcomes.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: and that's accountability. but that's really challenging when you're dealing with the future and the development. I would argue

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: and then finally, the challenge of recognizing transitions that we have long and dialogic features that will not and may not always send to us. We may not always come out on top, and it's very difficult, in fact, for people to think in those ways. So I'm I'm really abbreviating this, but just indicating that these may be some of the bases for this next slide, please.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: So This is a messy slide. My apologies for that. But the frame I just shared around the pillars or the dimensions for colonizing the future. I recently found useful to map against the responsible futures framework of Ted Fuller and Hubilat

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: where they have these 3 I guess propositions in terms of future study. the idea that a responsible study of the future ought to may, or to focus on responsibility of acting and developing the capacities to act

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: which in our critique we worry that the future, in fact, can be made a club good through practices of future study and the standards they impose, which really are shaped almost exclusively by Western ontology and epistemology. And so there is a question there about how responsible we are actually being in that dimension. The second one is around responsibility for the future consequences of decisions that are taken through futuring.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: And there again, we critique, that if we only have these 2 axes, this idea that the future is probabilistic in the sense that is noble, or there's a preferred future which is therefore an indisputable and commonly held societal choice.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: Then there are probably real issues there about whose future we're talking about, and then the third element they propose is around the responsibility of the future study community. which, from an instrumental and procedural dimension, we think

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: it's really problematic, because this is a community which I participate in that's really replete with specialist jargon. Very dominant tools. And really, Teds are just debates within itself that serve to do not much more than limit entry by others into this space. So if we found it useful to think about these ideas of colonizing the future with this question or proposition that there is such a thing as responsible futures next slide, please

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: so very quickly through the next 2 main points. So who who's been producing futures next slide, please.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: And this is really just I was, I was poking around and found about a year ago a really great bibliometric study that I thought was really insightful. I had been doing some writings, basically saying that a review of a lot of the foresight work carried about Africa 150

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: and, in fact, that informed Africa 2,063 was a little bit depressing because it didn't take long to demonstrate that the trends and drivers that were being used to inform the scenarios were really just completely uninteresting, and a a a cobbling together of the same old stuff that people have been saying for you know, 50 years and isn't very helpful.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: And indeed, this bibliometric study actually demonstrates that when it comes to a lot of the the Mega trends and trends analysis that many of us will use at the beginning of any features and foresight. Exercise actually only come out of about 6 countries, mostly in the North.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: that's an important finding, because we teach them as objective. But in fact, they probably represent a very small fraction of with global thinking and and and and in fact, if they are such, the second is that there is a distinct shift between the twentieth and the 20 first century from those futures being created by what you might consider public organizations so Futurist associations, other associations

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: to actually being mainly produced by corporations, by corporations, or for corporations. and again, those becoming the reference points that we then commonly use for all featuring work. And I think this just raises the question, at least about who really is informing these features. And if we can go to the next slide.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: and I love this poster from this comic book series, but it is really increasingly obvious to many of us in the field, and and hopefully to others as it is in the study of a lot of science. But we're really looking at. We had futures. We are looking at futures that are really based on ideas that are western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic.

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and and and then generalizing those to everybody else as though this is a common base for thinking about the future, and this, we think, is colonial. Next slide I should also mention, I like to say, about that, but I am just as weird as those who think they are implicated, because many of us are schooled in that thought. And so we bring that quite blindly, I think, into the spaces we go into.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: In the paper we do refer to the work of Buntu as possibly offering some direction in this where he proposes that a the colonial epistem may at least begin to think about how features can be produced from outside established sentence. Centers of dominance

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: produced by people from the formally colonized societies, irrespective of where they are, of course. How futures can begin to embed different ways of thinking and imagining, and that that could deliberately be done. how we can also look at other at the teams and world views and centering those, and how we do featuring

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: And we added the point around really an element of indigenity. How does one respect that there are different anticipatory systems that may exist in different places. and that that might be the most important thing one could do is not to parachute in with a different an undeclared anticipatory system. and assume that that's something that ought to be commonly held next slide.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: And then the next set of the next question, then, of course, is how? Because I mentioned the methodological dominance of the next slide.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: And here we just sort of, you know, and I use this, you know, to be self challenging as well. I'm part of the millennium project, and one of the things we've done over the years is to create these recognitions of all of the very formal, you know, tried and tested or validated tools that we use in the space of featuring, and there are many more than 39, you see in front of you, but, as you can see in the next slide The point I try to make about this is that, you know, when I began featuring, and for many years

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: we would often begin any presentation with a slide that looked like some version of this, and we would use it to say, ha, ha! Ha! This is not what we are doing. We are not crystal ball gazing. Don't worry. This is not some of the cottage kind of thing where we are going to predict the future.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: whereas I would stand behind the point about the future not necessarily, or featuring a foresight not being about prediction. I think the idea that we use these kinds of images and references to suggest that what we are doing is something better than this.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: that what we are doing is something that's more legitimate than a person who uses this as their method, I think, is problematic, and I personally no longer use this as a point of reference to make the point about prediction. because I think what it does is to rubbish and to ridicule

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: ways of using the future. And I come from cultures by the way, that use futures in many different ways. There are many different anticipatory systems. in the context that I come from, and I suppose they might seem as ridiculous as this, and to do that is a form of dominance next slide

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: what that does you know, in terms of. And I think the previous tika had some good references to how we use the imagination. it is really when you talk about a lack of imagination, I I love using this slide which I got from a colleague in slanderers, international India that they use during world cities day, just to show how one can basically move from having

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: an image of housing as one element, and then only being able to think about reconstituting those elements in a different form, but thereby creating even worse problems. And I think we've seen all of that

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: maybe moving towards the end. Then What the paper does is to go to. really, seeing, what could we learn from a very well established field of participatory action research which many of you in this conference might be aware of, and the characteristics that it's based, and how those perhaps also offer us some real directions into what we might look at in terms of a practice of anticipatory participatory research or participatory futuring.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: Yes, if I yes, Marcus, if we can just go to the next slide, I think we can go towards closing.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: Okay? So we offer this as a framework. How How? Those 3 dimensions, then, might be addressed through

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: the example of anticipatory participatory action. Research next slide

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: and then I begin to offer just these 3 ideas about how we might move beyond. So next slide, how might we expand the imagination? and see as irresponsible the idea of reproducing futures. So if the only job of features and foresight is to go in and tell people how they can go from some very limited view to your limited view, then that's not particularly responsible or useful. So we try to raise this challenge, or I try to raise in my work this challenge of the imagination next slide.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: the next being a challenge of inclusion. So how can we be much more radically inclusive because this idea of creating these exclusive public or club good spaces, we think is not responsible, and we've got to dismantle and address these systemic barriers to inclusion. And then the final slide

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: would be around the institutionalization. So any featuring or foresight in our view, that doesn't really challenge them, those power structures that seek to commodify the future would be a very irresponsible approach to to featuring sorry for going over time markets, but I think we can stop there.

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Thank you so much. Sketchy. This was sketchy, Karuli, Sabina, and her team. Thank you so much.

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Last, but not least, ops our last our final speaker. Let me see

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which. What's the button to click again.

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I think we need some tech support. how we get out of the one particular mode to the next.

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 let's see.

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here's the

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stop share. really?

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okay. Yeah. Our final speaker, Maximilian Vickerman, from the vicinch of Sent Home, Berlin, the Berlin Social Science Center in Germany, with a paper entitled Polarizing the Future, mobilizing the People, the temporal structure of creating a future horizons. Microphone over to you, Max.

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Max Weckemann: Thank you.

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Max Weckemann: Let me just briefly share my screen with you. I hope you can all see my slides and hear me.

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Perfect audio, visual, all they are fantastic. Go ahead.

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Max Weckemann: thank you very much for the invitation. and by now it's it's almost 4 am. In the morning. So bear with me. I hope I was being too optimistic about my ability to have this presentation in the middle of the night. But, as Mark has already said, I will be talking about

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Max Weckemann: paper, that is.

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Max Weckemann: let me just part of my Phd research.

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Max Weckemann: and in my ph, here I work on the broader question of how the future influences the present.

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Max Weckemann: And more specifically, I want to work on the question, how different temporal structures of imagined futures are

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Max Weckemann: influence on motivate actions in the present. And I do this with regards to the far right. So the the basic motivation of this focus is also that usually, at least with with regards to the far right in Western countries. When you look at their temporality, the literature usually links it to a certain nostalgia for the past.

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Max Weckemann: But then, when we look at

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Max Weckemann: those parties and movements in recent years, they have also been searching conspiracy theories, such as the great placement or the great reset conspiracy theories which are very much about the the future, and and play a very prominent role in the discourse.

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Max Weckemann: and so

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Max Weckemann: this kind of begs the question about their their temporality in general. But then also about how the way, how they see the future. And so let me first start by clarifying what I mean with those temporal structures of imagine futures.

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Max Weckemann: and the first I want to clarify what I what I understand. when I talk about temporal structures.

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Max Weckemann: So traditionally, I think in in philosophy there were these 2 big schools, one that maybe it's more coming from a Newtonian tradition, which would take time as a sort of this objective entity that is somehow out the end that can be measured. And, on the other hand, there is a more Cantian tradition which would take understanding of time as being something that subjective and constructed.

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Max Weckemann: And what I'm trying to do, my research is to follow more proxy, logical approach that is sort of situated in between those 2 that tries to to combine them. And so the idea would be that on the one hand,

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Max Weckemann: understandings of of time are socially constructed, but then, at the same time, when they are being shared into subjectively, that they would also gain this more in quotes objective or structuring quality.

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Max Weckemann: And then we can also further nuance this understanding. If we differentiate different layers of time. So yeah, I'm I'm following.

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Max Weckemann: and he differentiates between everyday time lifetime and then delays of historic and sacred time. So in everyday time you you would plan your day to day activities in lifetime. Maybe you would think about having like planning your education or having a family But then the layers that that I would be interested in when looking at imagined features would be the layers of historic or sacred time, where which would more relate to the society level

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Max Weckemann: and to the end and beginning of time, or sort of that would define when certain historic periods

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Max Weckemann: end or start but also the way how they develop, whether it's sort of understood as linear or cyclical, or maybe as a sequential phase, and so on and so forth.

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Max Weckemann: and then, lastly, I mean by, and they also showed that evoking time and and the different temporal modes of past, present, and future. But this can also provide active with with agency, by way of like positioning themselves towards a time that they there for can also sort of evoke certain things and and position themselves differently.

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Max Weckemann: and so taken together. for imagined features. This this means that

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Max Weckemann: they might also have a a performative quality, so they might become a force for action when actors sort of engage with specific understandings of historical sacred time.

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Max Weckemann: And then this brings me to the question of what imagined features actually are supposed to be. And yeah, I I define them as representations of a future state of society that allow actors in the present to place themselves in the future

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Max Weckemann: and based on existing literature. We can say that these imagine futures. They would usually come in a narrative form. There may be sort of transmitted by mass media.

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Max Weckemann: and they might consist of of different things, maybe of aspirations or calculations or expectations. So the idea being here that even a supposedly very sophisticated forecast I would be conceptualized as an as an imagined future, because there's no So a certain way of of knowing whether it's actually going to take place, and whether and because, especially also, it hasn't happened yet.

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Max Weckemann: and then also

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Max Weckemann: most imagined futures, they will probably relate to a specific topic, instead of giving, like a full fledged account of of how society in the future is going to look like.

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Max Weckemann: But then, importantly, There's 2 aspects that imagine if you just sort of need by by definition.

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Max Weckemann: and first of all, they need an imagined community which an individual would would understand as its own community. So that also this imagine future is is understood as the the future of of myself and and not someone else

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Max Weckemann: and they would also need a temporal structure that links the imagined future to the presence of sort of some sort of storyline

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Max Weckemann: because otherwise

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Max Weckemann: it might be understood as some sort of Science Fiction, or some other account that is depicting a future vision of society, but not one that derives from the present

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Max Weckemann: and so this, then, would back the question or lead me to my research question for this paper.

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Max Weckemann: which temporal structure the chairman, speaking to movement

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Max Weckemann: used in order to mobilize for the anti-covid protests. And

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Max Weckemann: for for those of you who who are not familiar with the quoting movement is, it's which The German version of the anti covid containment measures, protests that we also saw in in several countries. and while it is much more heated, and then only

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Max Weckemann: consisting of the far right, there were certain overlaps and and sort of

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Max Weckemann: plus specialization of the 2 And so I started with some initial observations of demonstrations and telegram channels to to identify sort of key outlets and publications to

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Max Weckemann: get a better idea of which texts might

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Max Weckemann: might be representative of their imagined futures for for analysis. And then I decided to analyze the newspaper called Democratic Persistence in German

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Max Weckemann: which was published by one of the 2 sort of organizational course of the movement, and which is also kind of exemplary in that it's it was founded by 2 activists who were in the past active on the left.

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Max Weckemann: but then, during the Covid pandemic. they moved more and more towards the the far right and and opened up their their newspaper quite quickly, actually, to far right activists.

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Max Weckemann: And so here I first just

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Max Weckemann: looked for articles that describe sort of a temporary mode temporal development. And then I I coded for the different temporal mode of of past, present, and future, and then, in order to to reconstruct the temporal structure of the imagined features that they

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Max Weckemann: employ, I then just went with open coding, and then try to make sense of of those articles.

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Max Weckemann: and the the first finding but that the past off is still plays the road, but that it's often more about shaping sort of the the identity of of the movement, more than sort of coming with the call for action.

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Max Weckemann: And when that was the case when the past was actually mobilized to to sort of motivate protesters to take the streets. Then it was more that the pass was extrapolated into the future. So it actually they both the past, but only to to to

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Max Weckemann: also provide and imagine futures to to the audience. and so, for example, there was one article which which alluded to very recent past actually in France.

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Max Weckemann: and mapped out these different sort of stages of of escalation, and then it introduces this parallel notion that now Germany would be in the same process, but at the earlier stage, and so that therefore they also then try to to sort of predict the future and what should be done now in the present.

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Max Weckemann: And then, secondly, when looking at the temporal structure that these imagine. If you just contained

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Max Weckemann: what what I found was that typically they would describe 2 sort of

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Max Weckemann: different options of the future. On the one hand, they would, they would describe a sort of a very frightening or or like a negatively connotated scenario, that sort of German society would be on the brink of of going into dictatorship.

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Max Weckemann: But then, on the other hand, they also accompany this with a sort of very vague idea. that if the populace would be strong enough, and and would sort of resist strongly enough.

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Max Weckemann: that then There might be a a, an alternative future which is even better than the present, which would actually be able to to introduce. So quote and go through democracy or

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Max Weckemann: real democracy and the like And so with the the most classical example of this, I think related obviously to the

401
01:24:44.470 --> 01:24:58.080
Max Weckemann: containment measures into the lockdown. and then also 2 vaccines where they would always sort of map out. an escalation spiral. How this would sort of be the first steps towards dictatorship.

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Max Weckemann: But then, interestingly enough, this sort of dual structure also came up with regards to many other topics, such as, for example, social media, where they would also talk about sort of the opportunities of of using telegram. But then, also the the of how online technology and social media could also be used for surveillance.

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Max Weckemann: or then, similarly, also, when it came to economic or banking finance, cryptocurrency topics like this whether where they would also rely on this sort of tool structure in order to mobilize for their course

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Max Weckemann: and then to to Another thought on this would also be that

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They would then also reinterpret events and and facts to to correspond to this tempo structure so obviously throughout the pandemic with it sort of

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Max Weckemann: waves and and and sort of a a sequence of of restrictions, but then also of loosening that didn't always neatly fit into this temporal structure. And so what happened then was was just that they would then rely on these these alternative truth ecosystems, and just always

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01:26:16.640 --> 01:26:30.329
Max Weckemann: see some sort of tech plot being at play, or just reinterprets reality. completely in order to to to still be able to to, to convey this sort of meet a narrative

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Max Weckemann: of these 2 different scenarios.

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Max Weckemann: So do you. To sum up briefly, the the funds would just suggest that these reference to the past. Often they still get extrapolated into the future, and that there's this newspaper, the gym. Creating a movement that they would sort of strongly rely on this duality or this this sort of imagine pretty that they portray in the imagined features, and that this would also then sort of be the the the guiding

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Max Weckemann: guiding scheme for for their sort of interpretation of reality and good news. Thank you.

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Thank you very much. There was Max Vigerman from the Vates at B in Germany. Now we have approximately 23 and a half minutes. for common discussion. feel free to write any questions that you may have into the chat

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and anyone in the audience. I would suggest that you would step to the microphone, because when you speak through the microphone the online audience will hear you much better.

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maybe. Let me start. with one question. to Paolo Gabodo. fantastic presentation. one thing that occurred to me was, there is so much great analysis. of the tactics of the strategies.

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of the visions of the social movement actors? But would you like to also offer? let's say, if given the chance, one single point of advice of an action recommendation based on your analysis. What would you suggest?

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that the social movement actors should consider doing that they are currently not doing or not sufficiently doing?

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01:28:41.430 --> 01:28:52.669
Is there? Is there something like 1 point that you that you really want to sort of like, communicate across from scholars to to activists? How? How would you see that, Paolo?

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01:29:03.380 --> 01:29:04.780
Paolo.

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are you still there? At least we cannot hear.

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Is there anything I can do on my end?

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01:29:33.240 --> 01:29:36.710
Yes, yes, I clicked the ask to unmoot button.

421
01:29:38.410 --> 01:29:52.699
It's probably 4 Am. Also in the Uk. So it would probably not be surprising if a speaker just falls asleep. Overwhelmed by the by the time difference?

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01:29:57.280 --> 01:30:25.789
maybe The same question. We can pass on to any of the other speakers in a in a slightly tilted way. Would there be any sort of a policy recommendation or an action recommendation to civil society actors that you would sort of like try to get off your chest, something that sort of derives from your study that you already, you know, would see. So in the sense a bit of like public sociology. What? What? What is like a point? to to get across.

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01:30:26.680 --> 01:30:32.120
So anybody Max or getchi welcome to to jump in

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01:30:34.600 --> 01:30:40.780
while we will have to maybe figure out how to send an alarm to Paolo to to wake him up.

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01:30:42.590 --> 01:30:48.370
Max Weckemann: I get to if you want to go first. Feel free. Otherwise.

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01:30:49.800 --> 01:30:55.880
Geci Karuri-Sebina: Okay? Yeah, because my call is one for imagine.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: Let's go ahead, Mike.

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Max Weckemann: Okay, sorry.

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Max Weckemann: Where marks to to answer your question. I wouldn't say that I have a policy recommendation that I want to get out there. If if you are sort of pushing me to to answer the question, then I would say, I mean, we could think about if it if it works right. But if we see that on the right, what work for them to mobilize is sort of to have one very precise

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Max Weckemann: and and sort of undesirable future, and they contrast it with a rather vague or like a bake and desirable future, then that might be a way of thinking about it, if if that's the way to go for progressive movements.

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Max Weckemann: But there, of course, you can raise a question if if it's still applicable to this other context, and if it works, and and so on and so forth, because, my my research would also sort of be based on the assumption that I imagine future is always tied to a very specific context

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Max Weckemann: in in which they work. And I think also, if I understood the other speakers correctly, then they would probably agree to this. But if you're sort of pushing for the policy recommendation. Then I I think that's that's

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Max Weckemann: the only idea that that would come from my mind.

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I have one more question here in the audience and also in the chat.

435
01:32:27.280 --> 01:32:57.139
 could you maybe step forward to the microphone? In the meantime, maybe I will read to you, but you can also read it on the screen a question from Sean Mcnelly's. Some events in our future are predictable, but overall our future is unpredictable. So it seems to me that a key question is, how can we work out a way forward without some cras of our future possibilities, of who we can be, of who we will become?

436
01:32:57.600 --> 01:33:05.430
I guess any of the speakers are welcome to address the question by Sean Mcnelly.

437
01:33:10.380 --> 01:33:32.510
Geci Karuri-Sebina: I'm happy to take a a crack at. It's Marcus. I think I just posted in the chat as well. but yeah. So I mean, I I think that's in a way, that plot of the point I was referring to and and maybe prediction is a difficult term to use, but with my response would be that they it will always be some element of uncertainty and emergence. And I think Max referred to that as well.

438
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Geci Karuri-Sebina: you know the the ultimately you don't know. So we can only imagine what we think these possibilities are, but I think part of the challenge in in wanting to have these clarities about the future. One of the quotes, people often say is, the point of featuring is not to make you more comfortable about a future. It's actually to make you more uncomfortable

439
01:33:54.260 --> 01:34:05.620
Geci Karuri-Sebina: because you realize how much you don't know and can't know. I think that's something we tend to find quite difficult. So I think, grappling with those ideas that you don't want to do. Now.

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: do you want to be Do you think to? And what you can declare into the future? Was Powerpoint, that I would have been trying to out this.

441
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Thank you. Getchi.

442
01:34:19.210 --> 01:34:22.009
Max, did you want to jump in as well?

443
01:34:22.410 --> 01:34:38.760
Okay, we have a question from the audience in here. please, could you maybe also say your name because we come from different research committees? So not everybody knows everybody else. And those people in the very back. standing! There are a few seats here up front left. Please go ahead.

444
01:34:44.860 --> 01:34:46.700
So I'm probably whether

445
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research and you say anything about why it was so easy

446
01:35:06.080 --> 01:35:12.069
or in Ukraine. But you ought to say it goes like written where Johnson's

447
01:35:13.580 --> 01:35:21.919
all of advisors of the United States. and I just I just find it very interesting that this

448
01:35:22.030 --> 01:35:22.700
issue.

449
01:35:23.090 --> 01:35:27.450
he said, that the simultane is so easy to precipitate, and only for it is them

450
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the common.

451
01:35:29.340 --> 01:35:32.130
We don't come back to that

452
01:35:39.230 --> 01:36:01.210
if I understood the question correctly, was about how the waiting for movement in Germany managed to sort of integrate also shotskist or or leftist elements. But I wasn't sure.

453
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That's a

454
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okay

455
01:36:07.260 --> 01:36:09.319
it's a conversion of

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Max Weckemann:  yeah, I, I think in in Germany, the movement also started out rather heterogeneously. because you also had sort of very

457
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Max Weckemann: like a a strong community of of sort of basic alternative medicine. and then, of course, also some just state skeptical like disillusioned communities. that were more based in in sort of conspiratory networks, and without necessarily having those those links of the far right

458
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Max Weckemann: But then, whatever I saw in my research, or what I also thought was very interesting, is, when you look at those networks, or sort of the the notes in those networks. that are very important for the mobilization

459
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Max Weckemann: that there I I had the impression that they are often linked to to the far right without maybe necessarily being being very

460
01:37:07.950 --> 01:37:18.539
Max Weckemann: like visible in in in that aspect. So, for example, In Germany. The protests were very early on. They were being mapped

461
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Max Weckemann: And the the homepage that was in charge of doing this

462
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Max Weckemann: was actually led by a like a veteran far right activist who was in the past. Like he, he worked with the Identitarian movement and and other right, being extremist organizations. But the way that it was presented

463
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Max Weckemann: was very sort of innocuous and and very professionally made as well, but then, at the same time still sort of giving this this image of of being a grassroots

464
01:37:52.690 --> 01:38:07.439
Max Weckemann: movement or organization, and sort of an artist's collective. And so, I think is, besides those like the the temporal links that I alluded to. in my in my presentation, I think there's also maybe something to you. Keep in mind right? That

465
01:38:07.500 --> 01:38:10.039
Max Weckemann: I think also many people were were kind of

466
01:38:10.300 --> 01:38:19.920
Max Weckemann: maybe drawn into this And then also, when you when you move to the when when you go to the demonstrations, or at least the ones here in Berlin, I'm like at first glance

467
01:38:19.970 --> 01:38:31.599
Max Weckemann: they don't really look like far right demonstrations. They also they use this sort of cacophony of of symbols, and and then even position themselves against

468
01:38:31.760 --> 01:38:48.909
Max Weckemann: the right or against ready system, and so on. But then, when you move further and and look at the narratives and and sort of the structure they follow, then, of course, it like the picture changes quite quickly. But at first plans I could imagine that sort of if you're

469
01:38:49.070 --> 01:39:01.440
Max Weckemann: going there without a lot of preconceptions, or like a lot of sort of political education, that you might have difficulties to tell, actually which which parts are linked to. Far right.

470
01:39:01.680 --> 01:39:04.000
Max Weckemann: But maybe that's hope that answers your question.

471
01:39:06.870 --> 01:39:11.089
Catchy. You just wrote something. Would you like to? Add something?

472
01:39:12.190 --> 01:39:24.980
Geci Karuri-Sebina: Sorry. Sorry, Marcus. That's the previous question that was to Shawn's question, okay, okay. Now I see. we have Paolo G Abouto, back online. Paolo, can you hear us? Yes.

473
01:39:25.400 --> 01:39:31.579
I don't know. Did you get earlier? The the question that I had raised? to you?

474
01:39:32.130 --> 01:39:33.670
paologerbaudo: No. Could you repeat.

475
01:39:33.800 --> 01:39:50.929
please? Okay, It was a question specifically to your fantastic paper. analyzing tactics and strategies and the visions of the social movement actors fighting against climate change. and

476
01:39:51.730 --> 01:40:02.489
I wonder if based on your analysis. There was like, if you were given the chance, 1 point that you want to communicate across as a kind of an action recommendation.

477
01:40:02.640 --> 01:40:19.009
What is it? that they are not doing, and that you would think are they should do, or that they should currently not do sufficiently. you know. So to sort of like, get a bit across the, you know, from scholar to activist. What would that

478
01:40:19.140 --> 01:40:21.979
piece of advice be be like if any.

479
01:40:23.560 --> 01:40:29.030
paologerbaudo: I mean in a way that is difficult as it is. not that

480
01:40:29.550 --> 01:40:39.389
paologerbaudo: I mean the divisions of the future, that such movements develop the the solutions and the the of totality, to to use the terms of of of Turing.

481
01:40:39.700 --> 01:41:04.850
paologerbaudo: are a a direct result of their of their diagnostic level, right in in a sense that it is not random, that they carry on a certain narrative of the future, that they're not actually the fishing, is there, you know a already embryonically in in the way to criticize the presence right and the criticize the the actions of the past.

482
01:41:04.940 --> 01:41:09.449
paologerbaudo: I would say that one mistake, perhaps, that

483
01:41:09.590 --> 01:41:25.920
paologerbaudo: that some ecological movements have been carried out in the in, in, in the past. I I is a certain tendency to to focus on a kind of level of more accurate season.

484
01:41:26.020 --> 01:41:31.929
paologerbaudo: right? That sometimes in certain circumstances almost acquires quasi religious kind of connotations.

485
01:41:32.330 --> 01:41:37.999
paologerbaudo: while what is required is more of a level kind of like a

486
01:41:38.160 --> 01:41:39.950
more of a grounding

487
01:41:40.120 --> 01:41:45.449
paologerbaudo: in in, in the productive system, more of a ground, you know. So in in

488
01:41:45.920 --> 01:41:50.220
paologerbaudo: next in the in the question of exploitation, right in the quest, you know.

489
01:41:50.570 --> 01:42:01.789
paologerbaudo: of production and of alternative forms of production. So these stems from what isn't as critically sizes. It's a kind of medo-class

490
01:42:02.050 --> 01:42:06.470
paologerbaudo: in certain forms of of ecological action.

491
01:42:06.680 --> 01:42:17.739
paologerbaudo: and I think that the big challenge now for for me on this group is, if we are, we kind of like go down to level of of of recommendation is how to construct

492
01:42:17.910 --> 01:42:26.830
paologerbaudo: a vision of to social coalition. where there's something on offer for

493
01:42:27.010 --> 01:42:29.840
paologerbaudo: for workers, for a.

494
01:42:30.260 --> 01:42:41.799
paologerbaudo: for the disadvantage for this of all turn right, which I think is is a big debate. Now, also in the environmental movement. So it's not been a green new deal debate, much discussion. It revolves around

495
01:42:41.870 --> 01:42:45.679
paologerbaudo: that precisely how the green your deal can offer

496
01:42:46.100 --> 01:42:49.249
paologerbaudo: jobs, you know, for model jobs

497
01:42:50.280 --> 01:42:58.859
paologerbaudo: as well as a fort, but I mean I feel the the discussion is already there in nuts in the movement, but still require far more

498
01:42:59.090 --> 01:43:10.420
paologerbaudo: development as such. Also because of the very technical difficulty I will develop in that. I mean also in the green new deal. So there's there's been 2 easy.

499
01:43:10.910 --> 01:43:21.670
paologerbaudo: easy, and to rosy representation of what the ecological transition can mean in terms of creation, of of manual jobs and kind of well paid

500
01:43:22.140 --> 01:43:23.580
paologerbaudo: model jobs.

501
01:43:23.750 --> 01:43:30.170
paologerbaudo:  I feel like really to to to to

502
01:43:30.180 --> 01:43:33.559
paologerbaudo: the green Transition, the national Green Transition

503
01:43:34.520 --> 01:43:40.519
paologerbaudo: as a hegemonic terrain. But it was a terrain of kind, of a competition. A of struggle

504
01:43:41.050 --> 01:43:47.409
paologerbaudo: needs to be developed far more in depth because it is now, I think, really the

505
01:43:47.920 --> 01:44:00.610
paologerbaudo: the battlefield is not any more denunciation of destructive system. But now is really the question of what should the screen transition be

506
01:44:01.180 --> 01:44:11.390
paologerbaudo: now that in a way it has been accepted widely that we need to have a green transition. Now the the definition of alternative visions of this screen transition

507
01:44:11.559 --> 01:44:12.780
paologerbaudo: come to the 4.

508
01:44:17.610 --> 01:44:25.830
Thank you so much. Paolo. more questions. Jian, bang Deng, please, if you can use the microphone.

509
01:44:25.959 --> 01:44:32.509
 Jianbang ding from Taiwan is here. raising a question, he in Melbourne?

510
01:44:37.010 --> 01:44:38.139
A.

511
01:44:44.160 --> 01:44:46.809
I've got a

512
01:44:47.830 --> 01:45:00.630
that we know  about the choice of how we for me so is one of the that is

513
01:45:00.809 --> 01:45:04.939
because of these. I have a

514
01:45:06.040 --> 01:45:15.089
 how you which does research for me to study

515
01:45:15.190 --> 01:45:18.710
the teachers. Research is part of the

516
01:45:18.900 --> 01:45:23.230
so we, the future of the research. Is that it?

517
01:45:24.510 --> 01:45:33.190
This because many people precise that you just study, is another district, because

518
01:45:33.930 --> 01:45:36.959
pretty good.

519
01:45:38.879 --> 01:45:46.739
And so this is the we just studies for them to brief and sizes not this, this.

520
01:45:47.379 --> 01:45:58.480
this is my question. So how do you see that in some official research, is the path sociology? Or is the independent research

521
01:45:58.590 --> 01:46:05.419
the first question. And then, if you see the feature study of visual research to be at this point.

522
01:46:05.670 --> 01:46:09.719
then the second question is, how is it my stages?

523
01:46:10.040 --> 01:46:25.789
Oh, very often the people like as the the feature studies no very clear methodology as we have in sociology. We have a conductive method of the the

524
01:46:25.830 --> 01:46:28.859
in that it's still it's not so clear.

525
01:46:28.990 --> 01:46:31.109
This my 2 questions. Thank you.

526
01:46:31.889 --> 01:46:41.919
Thank you so much. Jian Wang Deng from Taiwan. Question here in from Melbourne. please. the presenters go ahead

527
01:46:43.219 --> 01:46:58.049
Geci Karuri-Sebina: markets. I we missed, I think, a bit of the beginning of the question. But what I understood is that it's a question about whether it is research, future studies, or part of sociology was that the first part of the question. Okay, okay?

528
01:46:58.680 --> 01:47:07.959
Geci Karuri-Sebina: So so, to be honest, I don't know. What I can say is, I studied sociology and we studied no futures back when I studied sociology in the early nineties.

529
01:47:08.129 --> 01:47:25.290
Geci Karuri-Sebina: That might have changed now. But And maybe in relation to the second part of the question. You know, there is no World Federation for futures studies. And and when I listen to them, and I look at the kind of papers that go in there. It seems to me that the field of features

530
01:47:25.450 --> 01:47:42.749
Geci Karuri-Sebina: research, like several other fields, I'm also a planner, and I would say, planning also sometimes the bit of a non discipline that borrows quite heavy, actually heavily, actually, from a sociology. and I found very much the same sort of thing. If I went back to the slide on the methods that I show you

531
01:47:42.750 --> 01:48:03.240
Geci Karuri-Sebina: showed you earlier, you would find that there is actually a sense of qualitative and quantitative methods that are sort of clearly dealing that you can delineate there. But many of the qualitative ones will actually be an adaptation of what I would see as methods from sociology, or in some cases from some of the other sciences. I I don't know that the futures field itself

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: has its own theories and its own methods. And I think that's one of the many debates that I refer to earlier. So I don't know that I, personally can clearly answer the question as to whether this is a discipline and whether it's it's under sociology, but I know that it does borrow heavily, and I know, one of the debates actually sometimes is to what extent

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: the work that we do practically is really science or art. Because, I really do think there's a lot of it. As I, as I mentioned, kind of jokingly, that might not be very different from staring at a crystal ball, because we we kind of, you know, use whatever methods we want, I suppose, to do the thing we are doing, and I do think sometimes there isn't a robustness to how we think about

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Geci Karuri-Sebina: what we are doing more deeply, which I I think, perhaps disciplines like sociology do so. I don't know that I have a clear answer, but I would say that there is a clear distinction between quantitative and qualitative methods in sociology. I think, as in in in future study. I think they've tried to do that work, but I think the overlap with other disciplines is evident.

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Thank you so much. Sketchy. I think we are at the end of our time. thanks so much to all the presenters. Thank you so much to the audience online. And here in Melbourne for coming Today, at 2 30, we actually have part 2 of our joint sessions, future vision strategies and contentious politics. So we can continue the discussion in the very near future. Thank you so much, thanks to all. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.