Category: Publications

What are the dominant imaginaries of a sustainable future? What do they say abou the future of eating, dressing and moving?

The IMAGINE project note “Imagining Future(s): Mining Literacies of Sustainable Consumption”, published this summer, tries to respond to these questions by examining imaginaries in popular culture, through films, novels and advertisements, and business and policy documents over the past 20 years.


Written by Justyna Jakubiec, Tamalone van den Eijnden, Lisbeth Løvbak Berg, Virginie Amilien,
Rick Dolphijn and Mimesis Heidi Dahlsveen, edited by Justyna, the note is a deliverable from Work Package 1 – “Mine”.

We asked one of the authors, and the editor of the report, Justyna Jakubiec, to tell us about it.

In short, what is this report about?

This project note highlights the question of what it means to imagine a future of sustainability and, as such, results from our research into the imaginaries of sustainable consumption. Our research results have been turned into a collection of dominant imaginaries, or we can say dominant themes, that we have recognized when looking into materials based in the time frame from the 1980s onwards. The final chapter is a reflection that further prompts the reader to contemplate how a sustainable future has been imagined and how the existing imaginaries influence our ways of imagining – and shaping – the future.

How does Ricoeur’s concept of imagination play a part in the work of this report?

one of our roles in the WP1. In particular, we paid attention to Ricœur’s emphasis on the close and strong bond between imagining and acting, consolidating and challenging, which turns imagination into a form of negotiation. This negotiation concerns that which is already there (such as novels or policy documents) and that which has not been realized before but can be through the productive potential of imagination. As such, his philosophy has become crucial for us to stress the importance of already present and dominant imaginaries of sustainable consumption for us as those who also imagine and shape the future. Thanks to Ricœur, we have noticed and celebrated the diachronic character of imaginaries – not following a linear timeframe but bringing the past, present and future together.

You examine very different sources to mine for imaginaries of sustainability. Why did you examine such varied sources??

First, this has allowed us to emphasize and embrace the interdisciplinary character of our work package and the IMAGINE project in general. WP1 has assembled a team of researchers with backgrounds in art and media, philosophy, food studies and cultural studies; engaging with the diversity of sources has put our equally diverse perspectives into the discussion.

Second, our aim was not to give an answer to the question of how sustainable consumption should look in the future. Instead, we strived to build a collection of themes, ideas, and materials that would incentivize – both ourselves and our readers – to reflect on ways of imagining the future we have already embodied and think about how we might want to continue. In the report, we show that imagining is a form of negotiation – the diversity of sources also emphasizes this claim and shows that imaginaries of sustainable consumption can be found in many different research materials.

How do these sources differ in the types of imaginaries they present?

Regarding novels and movies, we notice a strong focus on the notion of techno-future. It has two faces: its optimistic facet celebrates the ubiquity of technology and approaches it as having an emancipatory potential. The pessimistic understanding imagines a future in which technology has taken complete control over life, causing, for example, the mechanical production of food. Literary and cinematic materials, more often than not, offer very explicit imaginaries of the future; as such, they prompt us to critically and creatively reflect on our surroundings and our relation to them.

On the other hand, policy documents tend to contribute a relatively cautious approach to sustainable consumption in the future: they focus on the here and now, remaining hesitant and vague about the question of a more distant future. Unlike a great range of literary and cinematic sources, these documents tend to support and celebrate the technologically oriented narrative of future consumption, be it through product labelling or methodologies for monitoring the effect of diet on the human body.

Business strategy documents further add to the techno-oriented narrative, mixed with a notion of human empowerment through, for example, sturdy clothing or alternative mobility solutions. The imaginary of the future, is usually concerned with incentivizing consumers to buy more and consume more. The notion of innovation is central to most of the documents we looked into and usually adds to the incentive to consume more..

The report examines sources from the 1980s till now: How have imaginaries of sustainability changed over this period?

The omnipresence of technology remains, but approaches to it seem to have proliferated. Thus, the imaginary of genetically modified foods is juxtaposed with the call to develop a greater awareness of environmental issues, which can be seen in several novels and movies we have looked into. Especially within the domain of food consumption, the notions of local production and quality have been accentuated over the decades. The notion of human health has also become increasingly popular and has started to enter discussions within the business domain.

Perhaps most interestingly, things seem to have come full circle for some domains. Within the transport domain, for example, the discussion has switched from focusing on clean air unhampered by exhaust particles, electric vehicles, and popularising public transport to the re-appreciation of walking. As for eating, the discussion on sustainability has moved from a more specific focus on, e.g., food waste management to a more holistic approach to community gardening within urban spaces. All this shows that the past, present and future are not markers of linear time but, in fact, interlink.

Were there findings that surprised you in particular?

One of my most striking observations concerned policy documents and the fact that it is challenging to find the imaginaries of the future consumption they propose. That is not to say that they do not offer anything on the topic; they indeed do, but these imaginaries are implicit rather than explicit. Explicit mentions of the future are difficult to find in these documents, which is why one needs to engage quite close reading to gauge how the future is imagined within the domain of the political.

Another aspect that appealed to me is that textile consumption – or the practice of dressing in general – received very little attention. This aspect concerns all of our research sources and perhaps shows what is prioritized in the context of what it means to imagine a future of sustainability.

The full report can be found here.

What do Norwegian consumers think about the future of eating, dressing and moving?

This summer, the project note “Images of the future. Reporting on the minner.no data collection”, was published. Written by Audun Kjus, Harald Throne-Holst and Atle Wehn Hegnes, it is based on a collection of stories about the future from Norwegian consumers.

This is a deliverable from Work Package 2 – “Explore” in the research project IMAGINE: Contested Futures of Sustainability. The aim of the WP is to collect narratives about the future from the Norwegian population through a questionnaire distributed in collaboration with the Norwegian Ethnological Research (NEG). The note examines 123 stories, collected from May 2022 to June 2023.

We asked one of the authors, Atle Wehn Hegnes, to tell us about the report.

The report is in Norwegian, citing the Norwegian consumer stories, can you give an overview of what it contains for English-speaking readers? What can they expect to find in it when they use Google Translate?

The project note is divided into three main parts. The first part concerns background, objectives, methods, and sources. The second part, titled “Narratives,” looks into overarching themes and ways that people talk about the future, which include “the crisis ladder,” “modernity and morality,” and “frugality.” In the third part, “Dimensions,” we have identified some recurring themes in the material that appear across multiple narratives. The appendix presents the results in a matrix, showcasing the breadth of narratives about the consumption areas of food, clothing, and transportation. In sum, English-speaking readers, if they use Google Translate, will hopefully find a general presentation of future scenarios based on responses from 123 contributors. We hope that the narratives and themes can be understood as relevant to the ongoing discussions about the future of sustainability in Norway and insights into how the Norwegian population perceives and imagines different aspects of their future, especially related to consumption and sustainability.

What kind of stories did you find?

The stories we collected ranged from optimistic to pessimistic, shaped by contributors’ attitudes towards for example modernity, technology, and humanity’s potential.

Some optimistic stories embrace modernity and technology, seeing them as tools for positive change. Contributors expressed faith in technological advancements, such as implants for health monitoring or sustainable textile production, as a way to support freedom, reason, and global development. Some believed that people inherently desire cooperation, safety, and harmony, and that with time, they would overcome restrictive traditions and ideologies to create a better future.

Pessimistic stories, on the other hand, focused on the challenges posed by cultural, historical, as well as the influence of capital forces. They saw these obstacles as formidable counterforces against progress. While some acknowledged that renewal through research and idealism could lead to a better society, they expressed doubts that humanity would overcome ingrained greed and ignorance. They identified humanity’s inherent negative qualities as the fundamental problem, highlighting issues such as overconsumption, population growth, and the abuse of power by certain groups.

In the report, you describe how the topics of the stories shifted over time. What were these shifts?

The report reflects work that was carried out in the spring of 2023, using material that was collected from the spring of 2022 to the spring of 2023. A lot has happened during this period. The world was emerging from a pandemic but was at the same time entering into a war when the collection began. Around halfway through the period, ChatGPT was launched, electricity prices in Norway increased drastically, and the interest rate was on the rise. Our material shows that our imaginings of the future are shaped by these events and by the state of society today.

Were there findings that surprised you in particular?

In this early stage of analysis, the optimism about the past, and how it impacts our understandings and hope for the future, is something I find interesting. Although it may not be particularly surprising.

So then, what are the visions of the future of eating, dressing and moving among the respondents?

They are numerous and complex, and that is what makes IMAGINE, this material, and this project note exciting to work with further. We already now see that there are more people with visions for travel and food in the future than about clothing. This is interesting in the sense that it can tell us something about which areas of consumption are getting attention, and that this might change. However, it’s difficult to give a good answer to this question now, but I will hopefully give a more nuanced answer if you ask me the same question again in a few months.

The full report can be found here.

The questionnaire on minner.no remains open during the whole project period, so should you like to contribute as well, this is still possible.

IMAGINE-researchers Marie Hebrok and Henry Mainsah have published a paper about design fictions, Skinny as a Bird: Design fiction as a vehicle for reflecting on food futures, in the journal Futures (sciencedirect.com).

Abstract

This article explores the use of design fiction as a vehicle for critically reflecting on the complex issue of sustainable food consumption and production. The paper presents the design fiction Bird, a food delivery service that provides food rations to its customers based on their exact nutritional needs and self-improvement goals. The service makes food consumption sustainable by design, leveraging individual lifestyle ambitions to circumvent the need to translate sustainability awareness into action. We discuss what it means to embed provocation, critique, and reflection in a design fiction that highlights potential preferable and non-preferable trajectories of change related to imaginaries of technocentric food futures. Through a design fiction artefact that reflects a complex set of ethical, social, cultural, political, and environmental issues related to food consumption, the aim is to examine how design fiction can serve as an entry point for imagining and critiquing possible futures.

Click here to read the full article (sciencedirect.com).