TY - JOUR

T1 - Imagining Life Beyond a Crisis

T2 - A Four Quadrant Model to Conceptualize Possible Futures

AU - Power, Séamus A.

AU - Schaeffer, Merlin

AU - Heisig, Jan P.

AU - Udsen, Rebecca

AU - Ordóñez-Bueso, Liisalotte

AU - Morton, Thomas

N1 - Funding Information: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study is supported by University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Social Science. Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2023.

PY - 2023/3/29

Y1 - 2023/3/29

N2 - In this article we report evidence from a series of semi-structured interviews with a broad sample of people living in Denmark (n = 21), about their perspectives on the future during the first months of the global Covid-19 pandemic. The thematic and discursive analyses, based on an abductive ontology, illustrate imaginings of the future along two vectors: individual to collective and descriptive to moral. On a descriptive and individual level, people imagined getting through the pandemic on a myopic day-by-day basis; on a descriptive and collective level, people imagined changes to work and socializing. Their future was bound and curtailed by their immediate present. On a moral and individual level, respondents were less detailed in their reports, but some vowed to change their behaviors. On a moral and collective level, respondents reported what the world should be like and discussed changes to environmental behaviors such as traveling, commuting, and work. The model suggests the domain of individual moral imaginings is the most difficult domain for people to imagine beyond the practicalities of their everyday lives. The implications of this model for comprehending imaginations of the future are discussed.

AB - In this article we report evidence from a series of semi-structured interviews with a broad sample of people living in Denmark (n = 21), about their perspectives on the future during the first months of the global Covid-19 pandemic. The thematic and discursive analyses, based on an abductive ontology, illustrate imaginings of the future along two vectors: individual to collective and descriptive to moral. On a descriptive and individual level, people imagined getting through the pandemic on a myopic day-by-day basis; on a descriptive and collective level, people imagined changes to work and socializing. Their future was bound and curtailed by their immediate present. On a moral and individual level, respondents were less detailed in their reports, but some vowed to change their behaviors. On a moral and collective level, respondents reported what the world should be like and discussed changes to environmental behaviors such as traveling, commuting, and work. The model suggests the domain of individual moral imaginings is the most difficult domain for people to imagine beyond the practicalities of their everyday lives. The implications of this model for comprehending imaginations of the future are discussed.

KW - Covid-19

KW - Denmark

KW - future

KW - imagining

KW - morality

KW - social change

U2 - 10.1177/1354067X231177459

DO - 10.1177/1354067X231177459

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85163017052

JO - Culture & Psychology

JF - Culture & Psychology

SN - 1354-067X

ER -