Disruption and Mobilization In Turbulent Times: Future Imagination

How do labor and social movements advance the struggle for a better world amidst the turbulences of warfare, eroding international normative frameworks, spreading authoritarianism, escalating wealth disparities, ecological crises, AI and rapidly changing media interfaces? How do subalterns overcome despair, challenge hegemonic codes and temporal regimes, engage with anticipatory modes of governance, and form political subjectivities beyond authoritarian and consumerist templates? Under surveillance and with scarce material resources, how can they create leverage through surprises? How are visions, tactics, and strategies adjusted for these convulsive constellations? What roles do assumptions about the future play in political imagination, and how are these assumptions being shaped? How do grassroots actors weave long-term visions, strategies, hopes and the solidarities that nourish these? How do they reshape authority, agency, and resonance? How are disruption and mobilization redeployed in the contentious politics of turbulent times?

This session invites empirical case studies, comparisons at different scales, and theoretical contributions from the Global South and North on questions such as these with the aim to bring into systematic dialogue scholars of social movements, working class struggles, culture, transformation, and futures research.