Bracketing the Future: Rethinking Hope and Praxis in Climate Activism

Daphne Fietz, Yale University

Postapocalyptic sentiments—beliefs in an unavoidable or already present catastrophe—are increasingly common among climate activists, yet groups continue to focus on mitigation. To understand this tension, scholars have proposed forms of “radical hope” centered on saving what is still possible. My concern with this approach is that it fails to critically examine the relationship between first-order expressions, second-order concepts (such as “radical hope”), and the broader background of modern assumptions. This results in the imputation of concepts rather than an interrogation of their applicability. The positivity of hope is rooted in a modern ideal of agentic emancipation from the present, which is itself part of activists’ crisis experience. To understand how activists navigate the climate crisis, I argue that we need an inductive approach—one that begins with experiences of disorientation and processes of reorientation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with climate resistance campaigns in the UK, US, and Germany conducted between 2023 and 2025, I show how activists manage the crisis through shifts between the temporal, spatial, and moral dimensions of human existence, which together enable a “bracketing of the future.” Morally, groups cultivate identities centered on “doing something against the climate crisis,” aligning with their campaigns’ declarative focus. Spatially, they reaffirm an alternative reality of crisis and engage in meaningful, routine practices within that reality. Temporally, they shift their focus from long-term outcomes to everyday praxis. Through this temporal shift, future-directed goals come to serve as a moral background. In the process, the meaning and significance of activism—and hope itself—are redefined. These findings have broader implications for the field. They urge us to recognize how people realign moral, temporal, and spatial orientations when confronting problems and to critically interrogate sociological assumptions, such as the inherent positivity of hope and the goal-oriented nature of political action.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 149. Temporality, History, and Memory