How Do Young People Deal with Border Tensions When Making Climate-Friendly Food Choices? On the Importance of Critical Emotional Awareness for Learning for Social Change

If we are going to be able to fight climate change in an effective way there is a need for a profound sustainability transformation of society. The question is how everyday pro-environmental behavior such as climate-friendly food choices should be looked upon in this context: as something that hides the need for structural change, or as a starting point for a profound transformation? The aim is to discuss how emotions related to conflicts encountered when trying to make everyday climate-friendly food choices in a society that is not always sustainable can be used to promote transformational learning. Interviews were performed with 15 adolescents. Emotions felt in relation to conflicts and how the youth cope were explored. The results show that the youth mainly felt individualized emotions of guilt, helplessness, and irritation and that they coped primarily by distancing themselves from emotions felt, but also sometimes in a problem-focused way and through positive reappraisal. Results are discussed in relation to theories about critical emotional awareness and prefigurative politics. It is argued that by taking account of emotional aspects related to everyday conflicts in a critical manner, issues such as justice could be brought to the surface and transformative learning could be enhanced.

On the necessity of prefigurative politics

The purpose of this article is to elaborate on the concept of prefiguration by outlining the necessity of its contribution to a progressive public philosophy for the 2020s. In the introduction, I explain how the object of critique for many social theorists has shifted over the course of the last decade from neoliberal globalization to capitalism understood as an encompassing form of life. In light of this, I enumerate the features that should define a progressive public philosophy: radical, emancipatory, and decolonized. The introduction is followed by an overview of the academic debates emerging after the North Atlantic financial crisis of 2007–8. Among these, accelerationism fundamentally rejects the incorporation of prefigurative politics in any emancipatory political agenda. To better understand this position, I examine the origin and meaning of prefiguration and prefigurative practices in more detail in Section III. In it, I argue that prefigurative politics entails a holistic approach to social change that digs its roots in feminist and ecological thought and focuses on social reproduction and the preservation of life rather than solely economic production. Subsequently, I deploy the case of Occupy Wall Street to show that a growing number of contemporary social movements are implementing a dualistic strategy that simultaneously combines repertoires of action typical of protest movements with prefigurative practices focused on the embodiment of alternatives. This dualism, along with the limited success of Occupy Wall Street in concretizing its claims and goals, has led prefigurative politics to being labelled as incompatible with, if not even hindering, any emancipatory strategy. My argument instead is that prefigurative politics constitutes a fundamental and necessary component of any political strategy aimed at transcending contemporary capitalism since it conceives progressive social change in an ontologically and epistemologically different way with respect to political parties and protest movements. Taking this into consideration, I conclude that conventional politics and prefigurative politics can be seen as having the potential to mutually reinforce each other and that prefigurative politics should be acknowledged as a pivotal concept in establishing a progressive public philosophy for the 2020s. Only by doing so, will this philosophy be truly radical, emancipatory, and decolonial.

Sovereignty, Prefigurative Politics, and Basques’ Joy to Decide

The literature about Basque politics and the anthropology of sovereignty often define the political within the boundaries of violence, desire, and statehood: a sort of pessimism pervades the general assumptions and the end results. In this article, I shift the focus to a different aspect of the problem of sovereignty, drawing on ethnographic research about a Basque social movement that asserts self-determination in terms of a democratic and pacifist ‘Right to Decide’. Exploring the movement’s organization, daily activities, performances, sociality, and discourses, I argue that they prefigure political pleasure in a way that encourages the performance of sovereignty as a positive force. I show how the movement creates an environment in which producing sovereignty becomes a joyful experience.

Apocalypticism as Radical Realism? On the Dangers and Benefits of Wishful Thinking in Prefigurative Politics

In this article, I aim to bring apocalypticism and radical realism into conversation, with a view to their mutual interest in prefigurative politics. On one hand, radical realists may worry that an apocalyptic approach to prefigurative politics may be marred by wishful thinking. On the other hand, radical realists can (and sometimes do) acknowledge that wishful thinking is sometimes desirable. I argue that an apocalyptic approach to prefigurative politics suggests one way of guarding against the dangers of wishful thinking, while allowing space for its potential benefits; prefigurativists have reason to pay at least some attention to what Bernard Williams calls ‘The First Political Question’. I will argue for this claim with reference to the case of Omar Aziz, a Syrian activist who played a pivotal role in the construction of local councils in the aftermath of the 2011 protests.

INTERSECTIONAL PREFIGURATIVE POLITICS: QUEER CABARET AS RADICAL RESISTANCE

The implementation of intersectional frameworks and political priorities have proven challenging for social movements. Drawing on a case study of queer cabaret and insights garnered through a combination of field observation, semi-structured interviews, and cultural artifacts, I introduce the concept of intersectional prefigurative politics as a theoretical tool for understanding how social movement actors build collectivity and engage in consciousness raising informed by a commitment to intersectional social justice. By distinguishing movement spaces from other social spaces, unsettling hegemonic power relations through a commitment to accessibility and care, and centering marginalized peoples, queer cabaret movement actors build collectives and raise consciousness informed by intersectional politics.

Power-with and Power-to and Building Asian Studies in Africa: Insights from the Field

Taking seriously Chinweizu’s (2004) call for Asian Studies in Africa this article examines the ways in which African Asianist scholars with their partners elsewhere decided to take counterhegemonic action, and how their approach differs from the status quo as a prefigurative politics of power-with society they seek. This work explores the establishment of Centres for Asian Studies in Africa as institutional actors in the counter-hegemonic project of decolonization. The processes that led to the setting up of the Centre for Asian Studies (the first in Black Africa excepting South Africa) at the University of Ghana serve as a case study. The article utilizes information gathered through the authors’ ongoing participation over the last eight years in the ideational, organizational, logistical, financial and institution building moves that are aiding the establishment of an ultimately emancipatory Asian Studies in Africa research framework. To establish the contextual challenge, the article engages discursively with how hegemony (power-over) functions within Global North/Western/modern research agendas, funding, and institutions; and explains how and why its colonial project is most evident in Area Studies in particular. The work concludes with pointers on how these moves for building Centres for Asian studies in Africa may be useful for other institutional intellectual decolonial efforts.

Academic knowledge production and prefigurative politics

Inequality is the pervasive structural characteristic of academic knowledge production. To dismantle this inequality, the challenge raised by prefigurative politics which is based on an ethos of congruence between means and ends must be taken up by the International Journal of the Sociology of Language. The IJSL’s peer review process, its academic conventions and its access model can potentially be spaces for concrete practices that prefigure parity in academic knowledge production.