Paper short abstract:

By focusing on the story of a displaced family in the face of a stinkbug invasion in a disputed borderland, I explore how the stinkbug crisis transformed the affective dimensions of time and space, and argue that such crises in a zone of uncertainty render the future convulsive and spasmodic.

Paper long abstract:

Displaced Georgians in the de facto Georgia-Abkhazia borderland have lived in a zone of protracted uncertainty and conflict for more than two decades. During the Georgian-Abkhaz war, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgian residents of Abkhazia were forced to flee into Georgia proper. However, members of the displaced community in the borderland maintain their long-existing socio-economic ties with both sides of the border despite shifting legal and military attempts to constrain their rights and mobility. The question of the contingent is a matter of everyday concern that people have to actively navigate in contexts where lives are economically precarious, governance is tactical, and legality is shifting. In this ambivalent terrain, seemingly a harmless group of stinkbugs or a swine flu virus unexpectedly becomes eventful and politically transformative by closing borders, creating new crises, and impacting livelihoods across a disputed border. By focusing on the story of a displaced family in the face of recent stinkbug invasion in the disputed Georgia-Abkhazia borderland, this paper explores the ways in which the stinkbug crisis as a totally unanticipated contingent event transformed the affective dimensions of time and space, and argue that such crises and periods of emergency in a zone of continuous uncertainty render the future convulsive and spasmodic as the spaces and present problems appear to be more intrusive, and future anxieties become closer and imminent.

Paper short abstract:

In a context defined by constant performances of future imaginaries, research in an inner-city occupation in Cape Town suggests that people enact their individual future imaginaries precise-ly in distancing themselves from these imposed alter-politics by creating spaces of ordinary eve-ryday lives.

Paper long abstract:

Ismail, whom I quote in the title, is one out of around 800 persons currently living in the old hospital of Woodstock, a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in the center of Cape Town. Sharp increases of rents and the lack of governmental assistance and regulations pushes many long-term residents into precarious living conditions, often ending in homelessness. Formed in 2016, the social movement "Reclaim The City", occupied the hospital as a form of protest against these processes. However, over time, the occupied hospital evolved to a space in which new ideologies and alternative modes of cohabitation are performed, forming what Hage (2015) called a space of 'alter-politics'. This space, thus, epitomizes both crisis as well as the struggle to overcome this crisis.

How do people, who are being pushed to live in a context of constant 'alter-politics' incorporate these narratives of hope, struggle and resistance into their very own constructions and performances of future imaginaries?Based on my long-term fieldwork I argue that it is precisely the withdrawal from movement participation and the construction of an ordinary everyday life that constitutes the performance of future imaginaries: Walking one's kids to their familiar school, keeping one's job at the supermarket, having a secure place to cook for family and friends are all examples of everyday practices under threat and at the same time performances of future imaginaries. (Re)constructing these spaces of the Ordinary thereby binds both the maintenance and restoration of an (imagined) past as well as ideas of personal and political transformations.

Paper short abstract:

The presentation explores how inhabitants of rural regions are called upon to imagine their future life against the backdrop of meta-narratives about uncertainties caused by the dissolution of traditional family and neighbourhood support.

Paper long abstract:

Rural regions in today Western European societies are confronted with the cultural, social and economic effects of demographic change. The European Union addresses those transformations with neo-endogenous policy programmes such as the EU development programme LEADER for rural regions. LEADER confronts inhabitants of rural regions with threatening future imaginations or meta-narratives in order to invoke inhabitants to proactively counteract the risks of demographic change and to envision and create alternative future scenarios for their communities.

On the example of a LEADER project in the German Federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia that aims to create new forms of community and neighbourhood support, I will explore how inhabitants in rural regions are called upon to imagine and approach their future life against the backdrop of meta-narratives about uncertainties caused by the dissolution of traditional family and neighbourhood support. The presentation thus considers local people's "cruel optimism" (Berlant 2011) of staying attached to vanishing yet familiar helping structures in rural areas by re-inventing them today for the future.

Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in three rural LEADER regions in Germany I will present findings of my dissertation project as part of the research project 'participative development of rural regions' funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).