Protests as Imagined Futures
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12912643 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joshua K Dubrow (0000-0002-0140-8441, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology Polish Academy of Sciences Warsaw Poland), JOSHUA DUBROW (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, corresponding author), Anna Radiukiewicz (0000-0002-5980-6768, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology), Alan Żukowski (0000-0002-4724-2942, Institute of Philosophy), Michał Nawrocki (0000-0002-7107-9591, University of Warsaw and Institute of Philosophy and Sociology Polish Academy of Sciences Warsaw Poland) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Sociology Compass (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1751-9020 • E-ISSN: 1751-9020 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/soc4.70163 |
| OpenAlex | W7125395666 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 62 |
Street protests are expressions of grievance and dissent that seek social change. Yet, scholars rarely theorize about protests' inherent future‐orientation. In this article, we build on the “imagined futures” approach to understand street protests as collective, future‐oriented performances that envision social change. The imagined futures approach shows us that the concept of the future has long been a central idea in social science theory, and for political sociology, its interdisciplinary roots are in cultural studies' social imaginaries and fictions, and in social movement studies' framing, narrative, and prefiguration. We trace these roots to argue that protests are an emergent phenomenon such that contextual conditions and organizational instigation, along with the dynamics of the protest itself, interact to co‐create a protest's vision of the future
Dissent · Futures contract · Grievance · Phenomenon · Politics · Social dynamics · Social movement · TRACE (psycholinguistics) · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics
The Framing Perspective on Social Movements
Frame Disputes within the Nuclear Disarmament Movement
"It Was like a Fever …" Narrative and Identity in Social Protest
The prefigurative politics of social movements and their processual production of space
When do stories change our minds? Narrative persuasion about social problems
Visions of Protest. A Media‐Historic Perspective on Images in Social Movements
Multimodal approaches to the reconstruction of street protest events using publicly available information
The role of temporal analogies in collective movements
The strategy of protest against Covid‐19 containment policies in Germany
Modularity and Transferability of Repertoires of Contention
Bringing the future back to the present
Framing different energy futures? Comparing Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion in Germany
Imagined Futures
Social movements and the changing structure of political opportunity in the European union 1
Bringing grievances back into social movement research
Linking Arenas
Utopia, future imaginations and prefigurative politics in the indigenous women’s movement in Argentina
Prefigurative Politics and Social Movement Strategy
From Rallies to Riots
Love is over, this is going to be Turkey
Collaborative Frame Construction in Social Movement Campaigns
Defending democracy against the ‘Corona dictatorship’? Far-right Pegida during the Covid-19 pandemic
Introduction to the Special Issue
Politics of anticipation
Climate change or what? Prognostic framing by Fridays for Future protesters
Rethinking Prefiguration
Protests as critical junctures
Small stories as a new perspective in narrative and identity analysis
Preemption, precaution, preparedness
Feeling Social Movements
Social Imaginaries in Debate
Culture in Action
The future as a social fact. The analysis of perceptions of the future in sociology
Social movements, field frames and industry emergence
Mobilizing During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Back to the Future. Sociological Perspectives on Expectations, Aspirations and Imagined Futures
The Infinite Rounds of the Stubborn
Occupying the Political
Future-cultures
Techniques of futuring
Futures in Action
Voices of emergency
Framing Processes and Social Movements
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |