Agency, futurity and representation: Conceptualising hope in recent sociological work

Cook, Julia; Cuervo, Hernán

doi:10.1177/0038026119859177

Cited by 40 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(18 reference statements)

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“…Many conceptualizations of social agency imply a mono-dimensional view of projectivity (focusing on the regime of the plan) or tend to dichotomize between non-reflective and reflexive modes of projectivity (Tavory and Eliasoph, 2013) or non-representational and representational forms of projectivity (Cook and Cuervo, 2019). There is a common overemphasis on the specific status of the project or plan in relation to the future, which flattens the varieties of social agency and multiple forms of reflexive projectivity (Mandich, 2019).…”

Section: Projectivity and Teleoaffectivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The future has thus been conceived as a dimension deeply embedded in social agency rather than as a field external to human agency (Adam and Groves, 2007;Emirbayer and Mische, 1998). However, how it is possible to position future-oriented agency, and what type of assumptions regarding social practices, culture and agency are embedded in how we conceptualize temporality and the future, are still matters of debate (Cook and Cuervo, 2019;Mische, 2009Mische, , 2014Schulz, 2015;Tavory and Eliasoph, 2013). The field of the future is a very complex one: simultaneously symbolic and material; not yet and in the making; embedded in the present and the past, as well as being forward-oriented.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Futures in Practice: Regimes of Engagement and Teleoaffectivity

2020

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The article triangulates Schatzki’s practice theory (2002) and Thévenot’s (2001) ‘regimes of engagement’ with the nascent field of ‘social futures’ or future-oriented cultural sociology (e.g. Coleman and Tutton 2017; Mische 2009). We present a reading of Thévenot’s regimes of engagement that is ontologically compatible with Schatzki’s account of social practices and argue that practices are more or less enmeshed in distinct regimes of engagement. We aver that while people engage reality through distinct regimes of engagement they do so, to follow Schatzki, primarily in the context of social practices. We then articulate this account with Giuliana Mandich’s (2019) work on the different modes of engagement with the future, or forms of reflexive projectivity, that are expressed through Thévenot’s regimes: that of practical anticipation for the regime of the familiar; of probability for the regime of the plan; of possibility for the regime of justification; and of discovery for the regime of exploration. This synthesis enables a practice theoretical account of the different modes through which actors engage with the future that is, we suggest, analytically superior to both Thévenot’s and Schatzki’s tendency towards a mono-dimensional view of agents’ projectivity towards the future. We illustrate the synthesis of practices, regimes of engagement and modes of projectivity chiefly through a study of domestic laundry practice conducted by Southerton and Mylan (2018). We suggest this theoretical development may be productively applied to practice theoretical work informing understanding of issues such as sustainable consumption, mobility and energy use, as well as social change more broadly.

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Section: Projectivity and Teleoaffectivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Futures in Practice: Regimes of Engagement and Teleoaffectivity

2020

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“…activities that hold the promise of social and economic capital'. However hope can also be a form of labour in itself, functioning 'as a strategy for coping with the uncertainty of everyday life', as a form of agency (Cook and Cuervo, 2019: 1106citing Alacovska, 2019. Engaging with hope as an analytical lens draws attention to the range of emotional and physical labours that women and men engage in to cope with their circumstances of precarity and uncertainty, and the centrality of the home to 'practices of survivability' (Brickell, 2020: 7, citing Lees et al, 2018.…”

Section: Labouring Bodies Of Urban Resilience-buildingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If there is a demolition, we know where we are going to go [will be relocated] after that'. As reflected in these narratives, respondents' desires for a better future are also inextricably connected with their fear and anxiety about their current circumstances of insecurity, hope in this instance constituting a form of agency (Alacovska, 2019); a strategy or 'psychosocial resource' that enables them to cope with their immediate realities (Cook andCuervo, 2019: 1104).…”

Section: Dreaming Of Homementioning

confidence: 99%

Hope, home and insecurity: Gendered labours of resilience among the urban poor of Metro Cebu, the Philippines

Ramalho

2020

Environ Plan D

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This article traces the labours of hope embedded in the everyday social reproductive practices of urban poor homeowner association members in Metro Cebu, the Philippines. It explores how aspirations for housing and land tenure security and the (failed) promises of opportunity bound in the urban materialise in the narratives and activities of women and men living in informal settlements. I argue that the sociality of hope, which propels and sustains homeowner associations, produces gendered labours of resilience amidst everyday circumstances of poverty, uncertainty, risk and displacement. As I reveal, these care-based practices constitute expressions of hope that are driven by moral codes associated with the family, industriousness and service to others. These findings reinforce the utility of hope as an analytical lens in geographical studies; one which broadens conceptualisations of labour beyond economic production to include, in this case, the emotional embodiments and reproductive activities that underpin people’s everyday resilience.

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“…Acknowledging this idea involves a reconceptualisation of human agency as a temporally embedded process (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998), thus emphasising the multidimensionality of agency and the interrelated multifariousness of temporality and futurity (Mandich G, 2017). How it is possible to position future-oriented agency, and what type of assumptions regarding social practices and agency are embedded in how we conceptualise temporality and the future, are still matters of debate (Cook, 2018;Cook and Cuervo, 2019;Mische, 2009Mische, , 2014Tavory and Eliasoph, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modes of engagement with the future in everyday life

Mandich

2019

Time & Society

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This paper is aimed at understanding how we engage with the future in different ways in everyday life. Many empirical studies have emphasised that what we usually call ‘imagination’ of the future takes diverse forms and meanings. Varied narratives of the future that are possible coexist in daily life in a bumpy, semi-conscious and occasionally tense dialogue with one another. To understand this variation of narratives, a thorough exploration of the different modes of engaging with the future that various forms of agency bring into play is required, together with a sensitive empirical analysis. I use Thévenot’s theory of regimes of engagement as a starting point to at least partially explain this variety. Thévenot’s idea that different types of individual involvement in relation to different definitions of the relevant reality (e.g. familiarity, plans and the public domain of justification and exploration) contain interesting implications for the analysis of what I define as modes of engagement with the future. As involved as we are with social reality through specific formats, so are we with the future. As the ‘relevant reality’ is different according to the regime of engagement that we are involved in, the nature of anticipation also varies. The future is ‘made and measured’ within the logic of probability in the regime of plans; of possibility in the regime of justification; of practical anticipation in the regime of familiarity; and of discovery in the regime of exploration. This perspective helps to avoid a reification of the future as something that is ‘there’ and that we simply discover and avoids easy dichotomisation of forms of anticipation of the future as realistic or unrealistic.

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Agency, futurity and representation: Conceptualising hope in recent sociological work

Cited by 40 publications

References 23 publications

Futures in Practice: Regimes of Engagement and Teleoaffectivity

Futures in Practice: Regimes of Engagement and Teleoaffectivity

Hope, home and insecurity: Gendered labours of resilience among the urban poor of Metro Cebu, the Philippines

Modes of engagement with the future in everyday life

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