Futures in action: Embodied or empty futures in youth activation workshops

Abstract

In this article, I explore the orientations towards the future and their consequences for action in youth activation workshops. My analysis is drawn from a distinction between embodied and embedded futures, on one hand, and empty and decontextualised futures, on the other hand. The relations among past, present and future times are explored, as well as the embodied or disembodied nature of orientations towards the future. I analyse the embodied orientations towards the future through Bergson's work. The collisions between two different time frames and projections for the future are found to require adjustments on an individual level in the private sphere. The various orientations towards the future are valued differently, and the embodied orientation is overridden by an understanding of the future as empty or even cruel. Nonetheless, I interpret the future to be active and to produce effects. My analysis draws from empirical data based on an ethnography conducted in youth activation workshops in the metropolitan area of Helsinki, Finland.

Living temporality: Speculative engagements with elderly people on bioscience and the body

“…The participants oriented themselves towards the future through memories and present embodied experiences thus manifesting the Bergsonian idea of the body as the central locus that connects past, present, and future in human experience through the generation of memories (Bergson, 2015[1896]). Like Elina Paju's (2019) and Rebecca Coleman's (2008) analyses of younger people's experience of time, our analysis confirms how the experiences are simultaneously collectively shared and personal in their embodied nature. The speculative, open-ended approach to technoscientific change allowed us to avoid constructing abstract scenarios or detached imaginations of collective futures.…”

“…As a phenomenon, aging itself is a biological process and simultaneously related to the experienced temporality of the life course. The embodied nature of experiencing time in the context of aging has been studied within different periods of the life course from youth (e.g., Coleman, 2008; Paju, 2019) to late adulthood (e.g., Facchini and Rampazi, 2009) and old age (e.g., Twigg and Buse, 2013; Wanka, 2019). As in the studies of May (2016) and Chazan and Whetung (2021), the temporalities we explored with the aged participants were profoundly intergenerational, not solely related to individual life courses and singular selves.…”

“…To conceptualize this multiplicity and doubleness of experienced time, we build on Henri Bergson's (2015[1896]; 1998[1907]) conceptualizations of time as multiple intertwined continuities in our experience, rather than an independent entity measured by clocks, calendars, and age as numbers. Contemporary developments in feminist scholarship on Bergson's thinking (e.g., Coleman, 2008; Grosz, 2001; 2004; 2011; Keightley, 2013; May, 2016; Paju, 2019) help us characterize the embodied nature of the experience of time. Isabelle Stengers’ (2011; 2019) speculative thinking on science and nature provides us with tools to methodologically and theoretically address the ways our participants engage with the bioscientific views on the future of aging in our discussions.…”

Time to Work—Opposing Political Rationality with Young Peoples’ Experiences of Working in a Mandatory Activation Context in Norway

“…Paid work is a cultural construct within political and moral contexts: paid work is distinguished from other forms of work by the fact that it has monetary and temporal values that can be measured and standardised. Measurable time, or abstract, spatialised time, has traditionally been opposed to lived time in philosophy, pure duration as Bergson (2001Bergson ( /1913 conceptualised it, that cannot be measured (Paju 2020). Wagner (1986) makes a similar distinction between the passage of time and the presence of time.…”

“…Although there is a huge body of literature addressing the uncertainty, vulnerability, and temporary employment of youths (Leccardi 2005(Leccardi , 2012Paju 2020;Shildrick et al 2012;MacDonald et al 2020 etc. ), there are fewer studies that compare the representation of work as stated in political discourse to the lived experiences of work which disadvantaged young NEETs have.…”