How Do Futures Unfold?

• In Event: 289 - Theory Section Invited Session. Future-Making in Sociological Theory

Abstract

Because humans are unidirectional temporal beings, the future unfolds behind an ever-receding horizon of expectation. It moves every time we move and therefore requires vigilant effort to affix it to social space from moment-to-moment. I examine this “real-time,” processual aspect of future making. How do some versions of the future force their way into agents’ attention and stick to social space? How do groups synchronize the rhythms of attention and energy to focus on the same unfolding future? What do people do when previously reliable versions of the future begin to fail? Under what social conditions do they switch from one version of the future to another? I think through these questions using the case of unemployed Americans who lost their jobs during the 2008 financial collapse. I discuss how the different tempos, periodicities, and rhythmic patterns created when these job-seekers engage in sequences of future-making together constrain narrativity, encouraging them to pursue some versions of the future and not others.

Author

• Benjamin Harrison Snyder, Victoria University of Wellington