Separating the Future: Socialism, Valuation, and Conflict
(2021) ESA 15th Conference of the European Sociological Association: Sociological Knowledges for Alternative Futures- Abstract
- While social movement scholars have long recognized the importance of collective memory and shared pasts in the construction of collective identities, less attention has focused on the role of imagined futures. Based on a long-term ethnographic study of radical left-libertarian groups in Sweden, this paper explores the role of utopia in structuring, influencing, and evaluating actions and practices in the present. I argue here that the social world of these groups can be understood not only as rejection of the mainstream, but also as the creation of another reality. This reality, shared, maintained, and reproduced largely through face-to-face interactions between individuals in both the same and different movement groups, contains a... (More)
- While social movement scholars have long recognized the importance of collective memory and shared pasts in the construction of collective identities, less attention has focused on the role of imagined futures. Based on a long-term ethnographic study of radical left-libertarian groups in Sweden, this paper explores the role of utopia in structuring, influencing, and evaluating actions and practices in the present. I argue here that the social world of these groups can be understood not only as rejection of the mainstream, but also as the creation of another reality. This reality, shared, maintained, and reproduced largely through face-to-face interactions between individuals in both the same and different movement groups, contains a different scheme of valuation, rewarding the ability to create protected and separated places, groups, and interactions. Within these separated spaces, individuals and groups attempt to live their utopias. However, as the social reality exists only in limited number of interactions, it remains inherently unstable. This paper argues that not only does this perspective enable us to develop a more thorough understanding of conflicts between and within social movements, but it also helps to explain individual life-courses of activists. The paper concludes in arguing that the projected future should not be thought of as ideology, but as practice, suggesting that future-oriented spaces play a role in both maintaining and limiting a radical movement. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/21d51680-79c8-47cd-b207-afacc940ba94
- author
- Flaherty, Colm LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2021
- type
- Contribution to conference
- publication status
- published
- subject
- conference name
- ESA 15th Conference of the European Sociological Association: Sociological Knowledges for Alternative Futures
- conference location
- Barcelona, Spain
- conference dates
- 2021-08-31 - 2021-09-03
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 21d51680-79c8-47cd-b207-afacc940ba94
- date added to LUP
- 2021-10-07 09:31:38
- date last changed
- 2021-10-07 10:55:18
@misc{21d51680-79c8-47cd-b207-afacc940ba94,
abstract = {{While social movement scholars have long recognized the importance of collective memory and shared pasts in the construction of collective identities, less attention has focused on the role of imagined futures. Based on a long-term ethnographic study of radical left-libertarian groups in Sweden, this paper explores the role of utopia in structuring, influencing, and evaluating actions and practices in the present. I argue here that the social world of these groups can be understood not only as rejection of the mainstream, but also as the creation of another reality. This reality, shared, maintained, and reproduced largely through face-to-face interactions between individuals in both the same and different movement groups, contains a different scheme of valuation, rewarding the ability to create protected and separated places, groups, and interactions. Within these separated spaces, individuals and groups attempt to live their utopias. However, as the social reality exists only in limited number of interactions, it remains inherently unstable. This paper argues that not only does this perspective enable us to develop a more thorough understanding of conflicts between and within social movements, but it also helps to explain individual life-courses of activists. The paper concludes in arguing that the projected future should not be thought of as ideology, but as practice, suggesting that future-oriented spaces play a role in both maintaining and limiting a radical movement.}},
author = {{Flaherty, Colm}},
language = {{eng}},
title = {{Separating the Future: Socialism, Valuation, and Conflict}},
year = {{2021}},
}