The future as disaster: Apocalyptic, preparatory, and visionary urbanism in the face of planetary insecurity

Abstract

What orientations towards the future are emerging as the intertwined ecological, social, and political crises of the Anthropocene intensify? This talk distinguishes three logics of societal response to the increasing uninhabitability of the planet – apocalyptic, preparatory, and visionary – and conceptualizes them in terms of their different relations to the future, the affectivity they rely on, the collectivity they mobilize, and the materiality of the city through which they operate. Drawing on concrete examples ranging from climate activism to luxury prepping to extreme urban adaptation projects, I argue for a ‘sociology of the end-times’ that takes the brokenness of the Anthropocene as its point of departure and investigates responses to a diminishing habitability of this planet on urban grounds.

Bio

Christine Hentschel is a professor of the sociology of security and resilience at the Department of Social Sciences, Universität Hamburg. She currently works on catastrophic and visionary imaginaries of the future as well as practices of in/security from sociological and cultural studies perspectives. Throughout her research she seeks to understand how societies make sense of, and prepare for, planetary insecurity in the face of climate crisis and species extinction and how they relate to a future of loss – affectively, strategically, and practically. This includes work on government and community plans to prepare for a crisis-ridden future, apocalyptic and postapocalyptic trends in different social and intellectual milieus, and emerging protest movements on urban grounds. Her methodological approach includes inventive affective and narrative methods as well as collaborative futures labs. She co-directs the Hamburg-based DFG Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Futures of Sustainability’ programme.