Crafting Collective Futures:Exploring the Process of Vision Creation

The purpose of this study is to clarify the process in which the imagined futures are constructed in social movements. A specific imagined future observed in social movements is not something that participants have from the beginning. As Melucci (1989) pointed out, these imagined futures are the result of interactions among diverse participants in the movement. Therefore, the imagined future that emerge in social movements do not necessarily align with the individual visions held by participants, but rather are the result of adjustments among multiple futures.

To clarify the process of creating these futures, it is necessary to identify the components of the futures. To achieve this, I analyze imagined future held by participants in several past social movements. Two key aspects are identified: First, what components constitute the observed imagined future. Second, how these visions of the future were constructed.

By comparing the results of these analyses across different cases, I aim to examine the mechanisms behind the creation of visions of the future in social movements.