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Short abstract

The talk brings STS work on alterities into conversation with the Frankfurt School‘s critical theory and Foucault‘s analytics of government. It will draw out similarities and differences to develop a concept of possibility that integrates relational, performative and experimental aspects.

Long abstract

The programmatic STS formula ‘It Could Be Otherwise’ invites further exploration of the concept of the possible. The interest of STS scholars in the emergence of ‘empirical ontologies’ is grounded in a sense of alternatives, enabling the reconstruction of how that which was not comes into being. STS traces the instantiations and figurations of the possible, analysing the processes that ‘quietly determine the limits of the possible by both narrowing down certain options and opening the possibility of creating different, and maybe better, worlds’ (Ballestero 2019: 5). In recent years, STS has increasingly developed a sensitivity to ‘not quite realised realities’ (Law and Lien 2012: 363). The initial focus on enactments led to the reproduction of prevailing practices of Othering, rather than to their destabilisation and undermining. As Law and Lien emphasise, it is important to ‘attend not just to ontologies enacted, but also to their shadowland of alterities’ (ibid.: 373).

The talk brings STS work on alterities into conversation with the Frankfurt School‘s critical theory and Foucault‘s analytics of government. While the former traces mechanisms of concealment and inhibition in the present to argue that better futures are possible, Foucault takes a very different stance. He replaces the stigma of deficit with the power of possibility. His problem is not the restriction of possibilities but their proliferation: the extensification of capacities and the accompanying intensification of power. The talk will draw out similarities and differences to develop a critical concept of possibility that integrates relational, performative and experimental aspects.

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Short abstract

This contribution adresses the conceptual underpinnings of STS approaches to unpacking alternative futures. It explores how imaginaries 'straitjacketing' future discourses to what is culturally deemed possible and plausible.

Long abstract

In the STS scholarship, ‘imagination’ is frequently treated as an agentive vacuum in which alternative or imagined futures emerge at will. However, by equating imagination with limitless fantasy the research risks overlooking deep cultural-cognitive ‘straitjackets’ invisibly bounding imagination to the past. These deep schemes define what collectives deem ‘real’ and ‘rational’, effectively constraining discourses to the possible and plausible futures.

While the concept of imaginaries has emerged within STS to address cultural ‘straitjackets’, its robustness and analytical power remain under discussion. Despite their potential, they remain “fuzzy”, often being conflated with future fantasies, used interchangeably with other concepts, and treated as a one-term theory of change. This theoretical impasse leaves the empirical phenomenon of ’straitjackets’ insufficiently scrutinized and undermines the analytical precision and the explanatory power of the research on future discourses.

This contribution delves into the conceptual foundations of STS approaches to unpacking alternative futures. We first delineate the conceptual boundaries in research on future discourses and outline the ambiguities in the conceptualizations of imaginaries. Second, to move beyond the current impasse and to propose a robust analytical framework, we redefine and reoperationalize imaginaries, grounding them in social theory and tailoring them to research on transformative change. Finally, we demonstrate the empirical applicability of our theoretical work through a longitudinal study of German hydrogen policymaking, illustrating how cultural landscapes can be systematically analyzed in practice.

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Short abstract

What constitutes an alternative? This paper proposes Sociotechnical Persistence as a theoretical phrame suggesting that alternatives are not what emerges against hegemony but what endures through it — sustained ideological, organisational and technical continuities maintained across rupture.

Long abstract

This panel asks what constitutes an alternative:empirically and theoretically. This paper proposes a theoretical reorientation: an alternative is not defined by its opposition to hegemony, nor by its emergence against it, but by its persistence through it.

Contemporary STS frameworks for thinking alternativity tend toward the new — the emergent, the imagined, the prefigurative. This orientation risks the four problems the panel identifies: nostalgic longing for what alternatives once were, capture by anti-democratic fantasies of what they could become, unexamined assumptions about who gets to participate, and insufficient theoretical ground beneath the concept itself.

This paper proposes Sociotechnical Persistence as a theoretical framework that reframes alternativity as continuity-despite-rupture. Drawing from Panich (2020), who shows that persistence is not about holding an original form intact but about sustaining what is essential while adapting what is necessary, Sociotechnical Persistence defines alternatives through three analytical dimensions (Jamison and Eyerman 1991): ideological transmission (how founding principles circulate across generations), organisational continuity (how commons-based governance travels under conditions of imposed dominance), and technical adaptation (how infrastructures evolve while maintaining non-extractive logics). Crucially, the framework distinguishes persistence from survival: communities can continue operating while losing their alternative character through co-optation. Persistence ends not when the organisation dissolves but when its continuities do.

This reorientation has consequences for how STS theorises alternativity: away from the question of what futures we can imagine, toward the question of what has never stopped existing.

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Short abstract

We use STS to unpack what makes futures “alternative.” Showing how different ontologies; imaginaries (ends), provisioning infrastructures (means), and practices (enactment), yield distinct diagnoses, we argue for sufficiency, care, and gentleness as guides to grounded post‑growth futures.

Long abstract

In this paper, we explore what counts as an “alternative future” when viewed through the analytical sensibilities of STS. Building on longstanding STS critiques of technological determinism and solutionist framings, we argue that post‑growth and degrowth debates often remain ontologically narrow: they diagnose structural obstacles and articulate strategic repertoires, yet they frequently bypass the socio‑material arrangements, infrastructural sediments, and everyday practices through which futures are stabilised. We propose that STS’s attention to co‑production, multiplicity, and material agency provides crucial resources for expanding what imaginations of societal transformation can legitimately include.

Drawing on imaginaries research, foundational‑economy approaches, convivial design, and practice theory, we show how different onto‑epistemological commitments generate different diagnoses and different forms of “alternativity.” We demonstrat how futures change depending on whether we foreground collective ends (socio‑technical imaginaries), institutional means (provisioning infrastructures), or everyday enactment (socio‑material practices).

By articulating how different ontologies enact different futures, we aim to contribute to STS efforts to unpack what makes alternatives alternative; when, where, and for whom. Our argument highlights sufficiency, care, and gentleness as normative orientations that help evaluate competing future‑making projects while avoiding both nostalgic regressions and techno‑utopian escapes. In doing so, we position STS not merely as a diagnostic tool but as a generative resource for imagining and assembling more grounded, plural, and materially attentive post‑growth futures.

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Short abstract

While positive visions often obscure future loss, imagined endings can bring such loss to the fore. We explore the notion of imagined endings as example of alternative futures.

Long abstract

Sustainability transitions research increasingly examines how futures are imagined and how these visions motivate (governance) interventions in the present. However, this emphasis on the future privileges emergence over disappearance. Socio-technical change always induces winners and losers. Despite promises of jobs, economic growth, and more efficient and effective ways of doing things that bolster visions of new technologies, novelty has dark sides in its negative effects on livelihoods, communities, and sustainability. Yet these too often remain invisible or are deemed regrettable but necessary. However, when imagined futures are explicit about the specific industries, livelihoods, or landscapes destined to end—through phase-outs, closures, and terminations—the anticipated loss is brought to the fore. Endings-oriented visions are so qualitatively different from those guiding the emergence of novelty that such imagined endings could be considered “alternative futures” par excellence. We explore the concept of imagined endings to capture this underappreciated dimension of imagined futures. Imagined endings encompass how actors envision what they stand to lose through planned interventions and wider transitions, and how these contested expectations have political consequences long before, or even independently of, material changes. However, imagined endings need not be inherently negative but can also have powerful emancipatory functions. In this contribution we unpack the notion of imagined endings and explore their roles in processes of transformative change. We draw on sociological theories of loss (e.g. Reckwitz, 2024) by shifting attention from loss as an experienced condition to loss as a future-oriented concept, as anticipation that structures present action.

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Short abstract

We explore the ‘politics of alternative’ in policy controversies about AI’s risks and benefits as a crucial task for re-orienting STS critique of techno-determinist rationales of the future towards the role of imaginations of human agency and control in the making of (AI) futures.

Long abstract

Visions of the future are increasingly shaped by controversies regarding the existential risks or opportunities of AI for humanity, pitching dystopian scenarios of “Artificial General Intelligence” against utopias of AI’s contribution to a “new human renaissance”. These debates extend to corollary controversies regarding appropriate responses by governments and policy makers to either prevent or accelerate the achievement of particular AI futures: whereas visions of AI’s existential risks justify the need for legal and regulatory action, such intervention is largely framed as a burdensome impediment and barrier for the unfolding of AI’s opportunities for humanity.

In this presentation, we inquire the ‘politics of alternative’ engendered by controversies about AI futures in global policy settings and ask how STS can critically engage with them. In particular, we follow deliberations at the OECD and the UN on the future of AI and the alternative futures discussed among experts for the anticipation and foresight of AI’s risks and benefits. Complementing recent scholarship in STS regarding the nature and role of public controversies on AI, we observe that these debates serve not only the closing down of policy discussions through the essentialization of particular AI futures against others. They also open up diverse, alternative visions of human agency and control for the achievement of particular socio-technical futures. We suggest that unpacking these ‘politics of alternative’ is a crucial task for re-orienting STS critique of techno-determinist rationales to the powerful role of imaginations of human agency and control in the making of (AI) futures.

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Short abstract

What does it mean to build alternatives in practice? Examining prefigurative politics in science materialisation, I explore how lab to market alternatives shift the conditions of possibility for innovation systems, and what ‘doing otherwise’ reveals about the nature of alternativity itself.

Long abstract

What does it mean to build alternatives, not as utopian aspiration, but in practice? This contribution examines 'alternatives' through the lens of prefigurative politics (Monticelli, 2022), attending to the material and affective realities of enacting different logics within existing systems. Prefigurative politics offers a productive analytical frame precisely because it locates alternatives in the doing: in the organisational experiments, compromises, and everyday negotiations through which actors attempt to instantiate different futures in the present.

The dominant 'lab to market' pathway – organised around proprietary IP, venture capital, and private companies – has been naturalised as both the most efficient and the only viable route for science to have ‘real-world impact’. Yet this logic creates systematic exclusions: science requiring patient capital, high technical risk tolerance, or long development timelines struggles to find institutional homes, while successful ventures frequently experience mission drift from public good objectives. The paradox is acute: the scientific imagination required to tackle fusion energy or quantum computing is not mirrored in our institutional imagination about how to organise, govern, and finance these endeavours.

Drawing on ongoing empirical research across alternative organisational models (e.g. Focused Research Organisations and independent laboratory models), IP arrangements (e.g. patent pools and IP salvage), and financing mechanisms (e.g. thesis-driven philanthropy and blended finance), this work focuses on how enacting alternatives shifts the broader ecology of science materialisation – not just what individual innovations achieve in isolation, but how their presence begins to alter the conditions of possibility for the system as a whole.

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Short abstract

This presentation unpacks the aestheticization of circular economy futures as a bridge between the ‘alternative’ and politically mainstream. It traces cultural ideas about waste, beauty, and cleanliness in CE futures – and what aestheticization means for the transformative future they claim to be.

Long abstract

In response to resource scarcity, waste piling up in big cities, and geopolitical resource-dependency, the circular economy (CE) is increasingly put forward not just as an alternative, but a necessity. Policymakers, scientists, and industry-players alike insist on the CE as a necessary national or regional future. However, while imagined as a sustainable alternative to today’s extractivism, in practice CE futures are often embedded in existing discourses and imaginaries (e.g. Friant, 2022; Hendriks, 2024). Positioned as a bridge-concept between the ‘alternative’ and the political mainstream, CE futures highlight questions about how alternative imaginaries are made performative – and what consequences this has. More specifically, this presentation argues that CE futures’ performativity to a significant extent relies on aestheticization, and it investigates how this takes place and what it makes either self-evident or invisible (Rancière, 2000). To do so, this paper draws on a critical discourse analysis in which a Dutch CE visioning workshop series, CE futures presented in policy and industry documents, and interviews are analyzed. It empirically showcases how circular futures harness cultural repertoires about beauty, waste, cleanliness, waste, and controllability (cf. Anantharaman, 2024; Douglas, 1966). As such, we unpack what aestheticization means for how CE futures are staged as transformative, yet crucially recognizable and aesthetically attractive futures – and the shaping role aestheticization plays within this tension.

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Short abstract

This paper analyzes Europe's transition from animal testing to New Approach Methodologies. It finds a "frontstage" coalition on NAMs as a technical upgrade, while "backstage" disagreements persist about goals and NAMs' limits. This representation traps chemical safety in "captured futures."

Long abstract

This paper focuses on the ongoing transition from animal testing to New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) in regulatory risk assessments in Europe. Understanding actors’ views on the rationales behind the transition and what it will take to achieve it is important, as they constitute a critical part of collective future-making of chemical safety. Using Bacchi's (2025) 'What is the problem represented to be?' framework, we explore how different actors in the “pro-NAMs” community, including regulators, toxicologists, NGOs, and policymakers represent what the transition is about, and what it takes to facilitate it. We show that the transition discourses can be analyzed using a frontstage–backstage distinction. On the front stage, a discourse coalition has been formed representing the problem as one of knowledge production, technology transfer, and scientific norms. Lurking in the backstage are issues on which actors diverge, including the long-term goal of the transition and lack of address of the limitations of NAMs. An overly positive future enabled by NAMs is being painted, although the back-stage discourse reveals that this future remains highly uncertain. Regardless of what is displayed where, radical reimagining of chemical safety futures, for instance reducing the use of toxic chemicals rather than continuing to focus on levels of acceptable risk, remains excluded. We argue that to get out of this crisis of imagination, or ‘captured futures’ (Hajer and Oomen 2025) of chemical safety, not only should a different discursive regime be installed, but alternative ways of co-producing non-hegemonic futures also need to be practiced.

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Short abstract

This paper introduces funnel plurality: how coexisting funnels channel support for a single technology. In plasma chemistry, common sustainability funnels overshadow technology-specific visions, limiting futuring options and reinforcing development-as-usual rather than radically alternative futures.

Long abstract

New technologies need wide-range attention and financial support. Typically, this is achieved through ‘funnelling’, a rhetorical device (e.g. in articles or grant applications) conceptualised in the 80’s to guide the support from broad interests to specific technological projects, that also legitimises technology development. For instance, hopes of sustainability are funnelled to renewable energy, and then solar panels. Some technologies, however, appear in multiple, co-existent funnels. In this paper, the under-researched phenomenon of funnel plurality is further developed by distinguishing its key characteristics and detailing what it implies for the dynamics of support. I draw on a case study of plasma chemistry, a form of basic chemical production that has gained increased interest for its promises of sustainability. This case was studied through interviews and a systematic literature review. Analysis shows that plasma is predominantly championed through fixed (i.e. continuously reproduced) funnels, such as sustainability, because it is a case of circularity and electrification (i.e. becoming fossil-free). These funnels are institutionalised through policies from EU to local level and also used for all competing technologies. Sometimes, technology-specific funnels are used as well. For instance, decentralised production with minimised transport distances, and the ability to turn it on and off easily, depending on (renewable) energy availability. These latter promises are not only technology-specific, they also unveil elements of more radically different futures. I argue that the availability of fixed funnels hinders the use of unfixed, technology-specific funnels and their absence hinders collective futuring for more radically alternative futures and thus stimulates ‘development-as-usual’.

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Short abstract

Through a range of experiments in practice-based research, from sociotechnical foresight to applied science fiction, we demonstrate and analyse the value, limitations, and constraints of framing anticipation work aimed at ‘opening up’ futures landscapes within a RRI approach.

Long abstract

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has emerged for well over a decade as an engaged, practice-based strand of STS with interventive objectives for futures and emerging technologies. Foresight and other futuring methods are key to facilitating RRI, which aims to go ‘upstream’ in the development process of emerging science and technology, to enable anticipatory action that can shape that process in ways deemed to be socially desirable and to help build capacity to cope with perceived concerns and potential risks. When, how, and who gets to be heard in deciding what may be ‘socially desirable’, which concerns are considered and which are discarded, which risks are paid attention to: these are crucial and uneasy questions underlying the choice and development of futuring approaches for RRI. In this paper, we discuss our experiments in conducting futures studies of emerging science and technology, in practice: first, as part of an established overall RRI strategy in the context of the Human Brain Project, a Future and Emerging Technology Flagship of the European Commission, between 2014 and 2020; second, through applied speculative/science fiction, an independent line of practice-based research in participatory processes for ‘opening up’ futures for RRI, pursued by one of the authors since 2016. Through a range of experiments and activities, we demonstrate and analyse the value, limitations, and constraints of framing anticipation work within a RRI approach. This is a research paper contribution to a Combined Format Panel.

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Short abstract

Emerging aviation innovators encode sci-fi futures in the design and communication of Advanced Air Mobility, which publics decode in their readings of AAM. Encounters with alternative, less speculative, AAM futures prompt diverse reactions from publics, with implications for upstream engagement.

Long abstract

Science fiction plays an active role in the UK’s emerging Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) innovation ecosystem, informing design decisions and how these emerging technologies are communicated in and to publics (Mason-Wilkes, under review). Often referred to as ‘air taxis’ or ‘flying cars’, passenger-carrying AAM concepts are routinely read by publics through these sci-fi framings (Mason-Wilkes and Elsdon-Baker 2025). In an expanding technological sector which has received government and regulatory support to enable its development, the ‘sci-fi’ inflection of these technologies has implications for how publics engage with them upstream of their potential roll-out and broader civic and commercial use.

Public and community engagement around AAM technologies - including logistics and maintenance drones, and passenger carrying eVTOLs or ‘air taxis’ – was undertaken across the UK between October 2025 and March 2026 to understand selected local communities’ perceptions and attitudes towards potential AAM use in their local areas. Focus groups in England explored potential eVTOL use. Participants were introduced to eVTOLs via press images, before discussing their hopes, fear, concerns and expectations. Sci-fi framings arose unprompted during these discussions, with participants positioning AAM in both utopian and dystopian imagined futures. Discussions were followed by a demonstration of one UK AAM innovation ecosystem organisation’s AAM concept. This presentation of an alternative AAM future, distanced from science-fictional imaginings, prompted diverse reactions from participants, with some less enthused by eVTOLs whilst others were reassured by less speculative messaging. The implications for upstream public engagement with emerging technologies rich in pop-cultural referents are discussed.

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Short abstract

Participation promises access to alternative futures. Drawing on discussions of major innovations, we show that citizens often seek to reconfigure rather than replace hegemonic socio-technical arrangements. Alternativity appears as relational and constrained, revealing "imaginative exclusion zones".

Long abstract

A core premise of STS is that “it could be otherwise”. Participatory formats are often viewed as spaces in which counter-hegemonic alternatives may emerge. Similarly, the availability of tangible alternatives is a central tenet of democratic life. Yet, how alternative are the futures assembled in participatory settings?

Drawing on eight card-based citizens' discussion groups conducted in Austria within the ERC Advanced Grant Innovation Residues (GA:101054580), this paper examines how citizens relate three major fields of innovation that centrally shape societies to their problematic residues (notably microplastics, nuclear waste, and digital residues), and to what degree citizens articulate futures that challenge or disrupt current socio-technical arrangements.

Rather than assuming alternativity in participatory contexts, we explore how alternatives feature in citizens’ discussions. We argue that - given the hegemony of innovation-driven societies - citizens draw on futuring practices that more often seek to reconfigure than replace existing systems. While some proposals gesture towards systemic transformation, others reproduce familiar imaginaries. This raises key questions: To what extent can futures that recycle historical formations or rely on one-world world visions (Law 2015) be described as counter-hegemonic alternatives? When and at what scale do suggested changes qualify as alternatives – for citizens and for us, as researchers? And to what degree can we identify "imaginative exclusion zones" (Felt 2025) that tacitly delimit the spectrum of possible futures?

Examining how citizens connect innovations to their residues provides insights into their visions of politico-economic arrangements, innovation-induced material configurations, modes of governance, and connected socio-environmental relations.

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Short abstract

This paper examines how farmers in Thessaly, Greece imagine resilience amid climate and economic disruption, and how their situated futures clash with top-down policy visions, producing fragmented and unjust outcomes conceptualized as patchwork restorative justice.

Long abstract

Agrifood systems are increasingly defined through policy narratives of resilience and sustainability, yet the futures these narratives represent remain contested on the ground. This paper examines how rural communities in Thessaly, Greece, imagine viable futures under conditions of climatic disruption, economic volatility, and institutional uncertainty. It addresses two questions: how farmers envision resilience in their everyday practices and how these situated imaginaries interact with and become contentious against institutionalized transition pathways promoted by initiatives such as the EU Farm to Fork strategy, regional development plans, and NGO interventions. Drawing on fieldwork with farming communities, the paper shows that farmers rarely articulate resilience as systemic transformation. Instead, they imagine survival-oriented and regionally grounded futures based on pragmatic adjustments: cost reduction strategies in the plains and quality-oriented adaptation in more climate-vulnerable areas. Policy proposals, by contrast, largely advance techno-infrastructural futures centered on technological fixes and productivity transitions. These competing imaginaries rarely align. Policy visions overlook distributive, recognition, and procedural injustices experienced by farmers, generating fragmented and contested outcomes (Cifuentes et al., 2026; Flodin et al., 2025). We conceptualize this dynamic as patchwork restorative justice—a fragmented landscape of partial remedies that stabilizes the present instead of enabling alternative futures. By examining how agrifood futures are imagined, negotiated, and constrained, the paper contributes to STS debates on the plurality of futures (Stirling, 2019) and the conditions under which "alternatives" emerge in practice. The paper draws on thematic and discourse analysis of policy reports, interviews, focus groups, and a co-creation workshop with farming communities.

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Short abstract

Based on ethnography, a scenario-building workshop and anticipatory interviews with tech professionals in Lagos, this paper argues that “alternativity” is situated and relational: what counts as an alternative future depends on where imagination is located and which exclusions it seeks to redress.

Long abstract

STS scholars call for “alternative futures” to counter a diagnosed “crisis of imagination,” tied to sustainability, degrowth, and justice. But what does “alternative” mean when viewed from places where exclusion from technological inclusion isn’t abstract, but a lived condition? What happens to “alternativity” when futures are imagined from Lagos’ tech ecosystem?

This paper draws on the ethnographic LAGOSTECH project (HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01). It presents findings from a participatory scenario-building workshop and anticipatory interviews conducted in Lagos in 2025/2026. The methodology combines the STEEP framework, scenario planning from the Institute for the Future (USA), and an updated Robert Textor’s Ethnographic Futures Interview. Through fictional characters in Lagos 2035, participants crafted optimistic and pessimistic narratives around drivers such as AI adoption, government policy, infrastructure, and entrepreneurial development.

A productive tension runs through the findings. The futures participants desired — industrialization, productive capacity, infrastructure, global participation in AI — map onto what STS often labels “hegemonic.” From Lagos, though, these aspirations feel genuinely alternative; colonial legacies, structural adjustment, and global asymmetries have long foreclosed them. Yet participants didn’t embrace these visions uncritically — they negotiated them, questioning who controls AI and whether growth risks reproducing old dependencies. Pessimistic scenarios feared not technological excess but exclusion: remaining consumers rather than becoming producers of innovation.

This paper contributes to the panel’s agenda with a core argument: “alternativity” is irreducibly situated. Unpacking alternative futures demands attention not just to what people imagine but to the structural position from which they imagine — and the negotiations they engage in.

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Short abstract

This presentation focuses on the debate about capitalism's co-optation of social movements and the associated question of radical alternative futures, as well as on the role and influence of the social sciences in distorting originally progressive terms and concepts.

Long abstract

Social movements are usually societal expressions of contradiction. They address perceived injustices, formulate and organize opposition, and create spaces and practices for criticism and change. At the same time, this raises the question of the radical imagination of an "outside": How is it possible, under given social conditions, to break away from hegemonic structures of thought and formulate radical alternatives? Based on ethnographic fieldwork on the protest movement against the Corona measures and their further developments in Germany as well as other work done in the U Bremen WOC Research Lab Radical Futures, in this presentation I will focus on the debate on the question of capitalist co-optation of social movements and the related question of alternative futures and the role and impact of social sciences regarding that topic. And I will show how this debate itself is subject to a certain framework that, ironically, prevents the imagination of alternative futures outside the capitalist framework, in order to end up discussing the question of whether and how it is possible to break on through to the other side.

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Short abstract

This paper explores collective imagination as a practice through which alternative futures become institutionalized. Drawing on Ostrom’s commons governance and Wright’s “real utopias,” it analyzes cohousing as a grassroots experiment where shared visions turn into commons-based social infrastructure

Long abstract

This paper examines collective imagination as a social practice through which alternative futures emerge and become institutionalized. Instead of treating futures as speculative visions, the analysis focuses on participatory processes in which groups collaboratively construct scenarios of shared life and social organization. These processes rely on structured methods of collective scenario building that combine representation of affected groups, non-hierarchical deliberation, and techniques of collective creativity. Such arrangements enable participants not only to imagine alternative social arrangements but also to develop agency in their realization.

The theoretical framework brings together Elinor Ostrom’s theory of commons governance and Erik Olin Wright’s concept of “real utopias.” Ostrom shows that communities can develop durable institutional arrangements for managing shared resources through locally grounded norms and practices. Wright describes real utopias as institutional experiments that embody emancipatory principles within existing social systems. Together these perspectives frame alternative futures as institutional prototypes emerging in everyday life rather than distant ideals.

Empirically, the paper analyzes cohousing initiatives as grassroots experiments in collective living that combine shared resources, participatory governance, and everyday cooperation. These communities illustrate how collective imagination can move beyond discourse and take material form as commons-based social infrastructure.

The paper argues that alternativity emerges when shared visions become embedded in governance arrangements and daily practices, turning imagined futures into lived institutional experiments.

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Short abstract

We analyse the growing phenomenon of ‘atlases of alternatives’—i.e. online sites that respond to the widespread crisis of imagination by gathering and sharing unorthodox approaches to advancing justice and sustainability that are already happening in diverse places around the world.

Long abstract

In the face of multiple intersecting socio-ecological crises, society has struggled to develop compelling visions of better possible futures. Recent years have seen the proliferation of online atlases containing thousands of real-world initiatives that tackle justice and sustainability challenges in novel ways (e.g. Seeds of Good Anthropocenes, Atlas of Utopias, Urban Nature Atlas, Global Tapestry of Alternatives). However, what is defined as an 'alternative' and the potential of gathering such alternatives to shape imagination and action remains understudied. We analyzed 13 such atlases to examine the their theories of change and approaches to establishing and populating them, and their relationships to real world change. Our analysis reveals six design choices reflected in the atlases: 1) selecting alternatives—deciding what to include or exclude, 2) generating knowledge—deciding what knowledge to generate and for whom, 3) facilitating learning—deciding what kind of learning to facilitate around alternatives, 4) enabling alternatives—deciding how to support alternatives to grow, 5) institutionalizing action—deciding who to engage with to catalyse change, and 6) (de)constructing worlds—deciding how to counter the status quo versus imagine what does not yet exist. These design choices reflect distinct implicit theories and goals, which influence how alternatives are made visible, by whom and for whom, and how the sharing of alternatives may contribute to transformation and justice. We find that considering these design choices and strategically navigating the tensions inherent to them is vital for enhancing the potential role that atlases of alternatives can play in imagining and making more just and sustainable worlds.

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Short abstract

Latin American science fiction films depict technological futures that diverge considerably from those dominant in Western film cultures. This presentation explores these alternative visions, highlighting distinctive features, cultural and historical contexts, and the value of engaging with them.

Long abstract

Latin American science fiction films offer alternative visions of technological futures that diverge considerably from those dominant in Western film cultures. Rather than constructing speculative far-future scenarios of hyper-intelligent machines threatening human control, Latin American films foreground sociotechnical issues, lived experiences and harms associated with artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies in the Global Souths, such as data colonialism, exploitative labor regimes, and resource extraction tied to hardware production. In doing so, these films give cinematic form to critiques long articulated by decolonial scholars. Alongside historically grounded scenarios of oppression, social control, and the exploitation of Latin American communities by authoritarian regimes and/or tech corporations, however, Latin American science fiction films also articulate alternative visions of more desirable futures. These visions include, on the one hand, scenarios of effective resistance to technology-driven oppression, foregrounding the decolonial appropriation and resignification of technologies as a central strategy. On the other hand, some films envision a reorientation toward nature and human connection—embracing solidarity, care, and interpersonal encounter, with or without the integration of technologies. By centering human experience and agency over machine agency, these films generate not only cautionary but also activating and empowering effects. In doing so, they respond to—and at times anticipate—current calls for science fiction to move beyond speculative far-future narratives and to engage with the urgent contemporary challenges posed by emerging technologies. Unpacking these alternative yet largely invisible visions is essential for imagining and collectively building more resilient, pluriversal, and just futures.

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Short abstract

Cinematic translation is used to challenge techno‑utopian fusion futures. By creating a speculative film concept, the work shifts focus from technological inevitability to alternative social and ethical imaginaries, broadening participation in envisioning energy futures.

Long abstract

Techno‑solutionist speculation has long shaped imaginaries of energy futures. Successive “new” energy resources—petroleum, nuclear fission, photovoltaics, ocean wave power—have repeatedly been framed as “ultimate” or “unlimited,” with nuclear fusion receiving prominence in ecomodernist visions of abundant, concentrated power (cf. Turrell, 2021). Such narratives persist because technological promises mobilise political and economic resources through an “option–promise–requirement–necessity” sequence (van Lente & Rip, 1998). Public institutions and private startups similarly advance speculative “energy futures” (Ngo & Natowitz, 2016) to justify continued investment (Brown et al., 2000), relying on an assumed link between energy supply and prosperity. Within this frame, fusion becomes techno‑utopian, envisioned as replacing all existing energy sources (Sadik‑Zada et al., 2024) and even “saving civilisation” (Manheimer, 2006). These framings limit critical engagement by prioritising technological growth over alternative social futures, leaving the materiality of energy systems unexplored (Kester, 2018). To develop alternative imaginaries, the authors employ cinematic translation as a method bridging STS and design. Drawing on fusion research and methodological work on cinematic translation (Miller, 2026), they create a speculative cosmic‑horror movie concept titled Matter, taking the form of a movie concept pitch presentation. The approach builds on work undertaken within STS concerning cinema’s role in shaping technoscience (Kirby, 2011), and practices of speculative design that draw on aspects of moviemaking (Bleecker, 2009; Dunne & Raby, 2013; Burnham-Fink, 2015; Candy & Dunagan, 2017). The paper argues that cinematic translation offers a distinctive STS alternativity by disrupting analytic conventions, widening participation, and stabilising alternative futures through narrative and visual form.