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Social Positions, Inequality and the Relation with the Future in Lisbon (Portugal)
Despite the spread of the belief that man can control nature and its own life, and the development of rational action, governing our collective future was minimal for long time. Ecological movements and institutions, and the social and cultural struggle for sustainability changed this picture. Nevertheless, these trends remain fragile, lacking connection to the population in general – after all, the necessary condition for its maintenance. It’s, then, relevant to ask: are people worried and working to control their collective future? Which factors explain differences in the relation with the future among persons? Do inequalities of condition or opportunities matter for these differences? Which social positions and dispositions display a stronger orientation to the future?
These questions were introduced in sociology by authors like W. Bell, P. Bourdieu, A. Giddens and B. Adam. In general, they sustain that the cultural relation people develop with the future goes along their social characteristics, reflects on their behavior, and after on social structure. The counterfactual nature of the orientation to the future constitutes, then, an essential aspect of reflexivity and modernity. But this work lacks developed empirical test.
This is the framework for a recent survey on a representative sample of Lisbon. The main goal is to observe people’s relation with the future through its values, social representations and practices, according to social composition. This includes analyzing practices of future planning, saving, ecologically guided consumption, and support for sustainability movements, also representations on who masters the future, personal concern about the future of life on earth and climate change, and attitudes towards the next generations.
In this paper we will present the first results of this survey.