Imagining another world is possible: future making in the Anthropocene

Abstract

This essay explores the study of future, related to environmental changes in the contemporary world and their representations. In everyday life, it is very common to find images about the environmental crisis in the planet. In the perspective of a sociology that takes the future as an object of inquire, the images that anticipate other states of the world have powerful consequences in the present. Social sciences are central to analyze, debate, and achieve the anticipated futures. In the present, the high circulation of images about climate futures and the limited possibilities of acting significantly, produce a state of reflexive impotence. Anthropocene is the name of the current geological age. This concept problematizes our way of conceiving the world, posing questions about the way in which the human and the non-human entangle their domains. On one hand, Anthropocene anticipates harder climate conditions in the times that come. On the other hand, it invites to look for new ways to produce better futures and inhabitable worlds. All the efforts to achieve this purpose are equally necessary. Different anticipation dispositives, like climate
models, fictions and mythologies have a crucial role in the task of producing future worlds.