Future imaginings: organizing in response to climate change

Abstract

Climate change has rapidly emerged as a major threat to our future. Indeed the increasingly dire projections of increasing global average temperatures and escalating extreme weather events highlight the existential challenge that climate change presents for humanity. In this editorial article we outline how climate change not only presents real, physical threats but also challenges the way we conceive of the broader economic, political and social order. We asked ourselves (and the contributors to this special issue) how we can imagine alternatives to our current path of ever escalating greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth. Through reference to the contributions that make up this special issue, we suggest that critically engaging with the concept of social, economic and political imaginaries can assist in tackling the conceptual and organizational challenges climate change poses. Only by questioning current sanitised and market-oriented interpretations of the environment, and embracing the catharsis and loss that climate change will bring, can we open up space for new future imaginings.

Understanding Sustainability Through the Lens of Ecocentric Radical-Reflexivity: Implications for Management Education

“…This is seen in the number of journal special issues and articles exploring related themes, for example, sustainability and management education (Starik et al 2010); organizational strategies, discourses, identities and practices in relation to climate change (Wittneben et al 2012); and alternative ways of organizing which respond to climate change (Wright et al 2013). Reasons given for the impetus behind this growing interest are associated with the responsibilities of organizations and managers for responding to scientific assessments of rapidly degrading ecosystems (Steffen et al 2015).…”

Imaginary politics: Climate change and making the future

“…Finally, it is important to recognize that reality itself -the way societies, economies and cultures are organized and experienced today as well as the ways in which technologies facilitate experience of the natural and social world -serves as a major constraint on the imagination of alternative future realities (Wright et al, 2013). We suffer from what could be called, "hardening of the categories" -the reification of understandings and practices (Wapner and Elver, 2016, chap.…”

“…Some authors have begun to connect the concept of the imaginary with climate change (Strauss, 2014;Whiteley et al, 2016;Wright et al, 2013). For example, Levy and Spicer define (2013, p. 662) a climate imaginary as "a shared socio-semiotic system of cultural values and meanings associated with climate change and appropriate economic responses".…”

Futuros climáticos en disputa

“…En otros casos, se llama la atención sobre la desatención al futuro (Lever-Tracy, 2008) o la pérdida de la imaginación temporal volcada hacia el futuro (Wright et al, 2013) como causas fundamentales de la desatención social o sociológica al problema del CC, pero, una vez hecha esta sensata advertencia, no se va más allá en la construcción de una sociología del futuro climático.…”

“…It is a temporal vicious circle that connects present and future. The fundamental problem is none other than the short temporal horizons and institutional bases (LeverTracy, 2008: 454;Pahl, Sheppard, Boomsma and Groves, 2014), and the consequent loss of temporal imagination (Wright, Nyberg, De Cock and Whiteman, 2013). If nearly everything speaks in favour of the short term, how can events that might happen within 50, 100 or 200 years be made real?…”