5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Contemporary society is characterised by multiple insecurities which are often experienced as crises. Such evaluations evoke responses at all levels: Scientific analyses seek to develop forecasts and prognoses, policy-makers tend to develop approaches to mitigate the effects of crises and many social movements protest against existing orders. We take this increasing volatility as a starting point and ask, how different social actors envision alternative future ideas and how they employ future-oriented practices, with which they want to shape their own, but also the societal future differently. At the centre of attention is the nexus between future-oriented practices and processes of community-formation. Community, as a basic element of social order, plays a crucial role in shaping people’s scope for action by serving as a catalyst for future- oriented practices. This session will address this nexus by focussing on empirical inquiries into future-oriented practices in the present. We are particularly interested in how mundane practices are being deliberately designed by social actors to prefigure desirable futures and seek to understand how these practices interrelate with community-formation.