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Prefigurative plastic politics : Alternative organising in the global plastic economy

Chertkovskaya, Ekaterina LU ; Hasselbalch, Jacob ; Stripple, Johannes LU ; Auty, Leon LU ; Gäbken, Johanna LU and Visser, Vera Norien LU (2026) In Earth System Governance 29.
Abstract
This article examines how grassroots and community-led initiatives engage in prefigurative politics, understood as building alternative futures in the present, in response to the global plastic crisis. Engaging with work on sustainable materialism and alternative organising, we introduce the concept of prefigurative plastic politics to capture how initiatives rework material and economic relations around plastics through spatially plural practices. Drawing on a global mapping of 125 initiatives and 45 interviews, we develop an empirically grounded typology of how these actors intervene across the domains of production, use, discard, and governance. Our analysis identifies four dynamics through which these initiatives operate: reworking... (More)
This article examines how grassroots and community-led initiatives engage in prefigurative politics, understood as building alternative futures in the present, in response to the global plastic crisis. Engaging with work on sustainable materialism and alternative organising, we introduce the concept of prefigurative plastic politics to capture how initiatives rework material and economic relations around plastics through spatially plural practices. Drawing on a global mapping of 125 initiatives and 45 interviews, we develop an empirically grounded typology of how these actors intervene across the domains of production, use, discard, and governance. Our analysis identifies four dynamics through which these initiatives operate: reworking material relations, relocalising economic activity, organising differently, and developing diverse approaches to scaling. These findings position prefigurative plastic politics as an important but overlooked dimension of contemporary plastics governance, and show how such initiatives expand what counts as political action in the global plastic economy. (Less)
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author
; ; ; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
prefigurative politics, Alternative organising, plastics, Environmental governance, scaling, Sustainable materialism
in
Earth System Governance
volume
29
article number
100347
pages
11 pages
publisher
Elsevier
ISSN
2589-8116
DOI
10.1016/j.esg.2026.100347
project
Plastics in a circular society: Alternative organising beyond resource efficiency
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
7b40fd74-6cd3-4a66-8b2d-294e5bcf5d3b
date added to LUP
2026-08-01 22:25:10
date last changed
2026-08-11 13:15:22
@article{7b40fd74-6cd3-4a66-8b2d-294e5bcf5d3b,
  abstract     = {{This article examines how grassroots and community-led initiatives engage in prefigurative politics, understood as building alternative futures in the present, in response to the global plastic crisis. Engaging with work on sustainable materialism and alternative organising, we introduce the concept of prefigurative plastic politics to capture how initiatives rework material and economic relations around plastics through spatially plural practices. Drawing on a global mapping of 125 initiatives and 45 interviews, we develop an empirically grounded typology of how these actors intervene across the domains of production, use, discard, and governance. Our analysis identifies four dynamics through which these initiatives operate: reworking material relations, relocalising economic activity, organising differently, and developing diverse approaches to scaling. These findings position prefigurative plastic politics as an important but overlooked dimension of contemporary plastics governance, and show how such initiatives expand what counts as political action in the global plastic economy.}},
  author       = {{Chertkovskaya, Ekaterina and Hasselbalch, Jacob and Stripple, Johannes and Auty, Leon and Gäbken, Johanna and Visser, Vera Norien}},
  issn         = {{2589-8116}},
  keywords     = {{prefigurative politics; Alternative organising; plastics; Environmental governance; scaling; Sustainable materialism}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  publisher    = {{Elsevier}},
  series       = {{Earth System Governance}},
  title        = {{Prefigurative plastic politics : Alternative organising in the global plastic economy}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esg.2026.100347}},
  doi          = {{10.1016/j.esg.2026.100347}},
  volume       = {{29}},
  year         = {{2026}},
}