Social Appropriation and Diagonal Solidarities Facing Vulnerable Futures

Wednesday, 9 July 2025: 15:30
Location: FSE032 (Faculty of Education Sciences (FSE))
Oral Presentation
Gilles VERPRAET, University Paris Ouest Nanterre, France
Shin-Ock CHANG, Independent Researcher, Republic of Korea
Our approach questions in the modalities of appropriation facing a vulnerable future and the construction of a sustainable society. The technics and visions of future can be apprehended inside social configurations (Forester, Urry, Hajer). Our approach will present a typification of three modes of appropriation of the sustainable future (Schutz) within socio-historical conjecture of 2000’s

-Horizontal appropriation concerns territorial protection by local groups (eco farming, activist groups) and the territorial mobilizations around environmental issues (Thoreau, Amis de la Terre, Latour 2022)

-The vertical futures underline the constraints and their coordination by State authorities. Statist forecasts align these constraints into perspectives, such as the fordist logic, the fuel logic and carbon society (Wagner, Fuller); The democratic future requires how these logics will be deliberated in democratic configurations and political spaces.

-The elaboration of a diagonal future, includes top / down socio- environmental mobilizations (Tejerina, Verpraet). It requires micro and macro links (Alexander 1990). It also includes the progressive politics of sustainable development in friction or in co-determination with social and environmental mobilizations. The social construction for a sustainable future is based on the capacity to federate ecological activities in Region and in Metropolis.

The tensions between horizontal future and vertical future increase by the absence of a progressive policy of sustainable development. The french yellow Vests meet Gaullist sovereignty and the verticality of power. In Italy, territorial ecology and the digital ecologists meet the nationalist and regionalist verticalities. The protection of the Amazon and the Indian peoples, clash with the agro-industry, and the oil logic in a divided Brazilian federal state.

The social theory of futures and socio-political configurations help to specify the social dynamics in the social construction of mixed futures (Touraine, Etzioni, Rosa). The debate focuses on the deep sociological and political diagonal dimensions composing sustainable futures.