Paper short abstract:

This paper will consider the case of environmental movements on the brink of climate disaster.Based on both off- and online fieldwork amidst Estonian and UK protest and survival groups, I will consider the sociality of preparing for a collapse, and the methodological possibilities this theme offers.

Paper long abstract:

As disastrous climate change is increasingly discussed as an inevitability, the groups closest to these discussions - climate protesters, survivalists and deep adapters - have started to add to their protest and general trepidation various forms of actual preparation for the climate changed future. Considering the flourishing literature on changes to the perception of anticipation of the impending catastrophes, I propose the concept of dispossession of the future and discuss how the present practices align with the discussions of and challenges to the surrounding societal institutions, systems and structures, and what role do various power relations - present, desired and feared - have in this. As protesters and activists, the members of these groups share an ethos to change the world and to function as "prophylaxis" to the society. Aware of the knowledge systems, fatalism, insularity or hope(lessness) of other doomsday and millenarian movements, these groups also build on or avoid such histories of relating to the collapse. I will discuss the value this adds to the group members and/or the society they inhabit, and how does their relationship with the catastrophic future evolve.

Methodologically, the discussions with the members of such groups could be seen as a type of "oral history", always in need to consider "the time of the telling" and "the time of the event". Taken from the point of the relationship with the future, we could also lay the groundworks of studying "the time of the coming", and draw from the memories of the future.