Jeopardised futures:scanning the horizon in a changing climate

In this chapter, Annist et al. present several case studies of the ways in which people articulate their concerns for the future, particularly in response to the emerging discourse of climate change. The authors provide an overview of the anthropology of the future and the ways in which it merges with climate topics, to consider how contemporary horizons are crowded with different concerns, placed at different distances, which come into focus according to the immediacy of the need to respond. As awareness of the climate crisis increases, this becomes spotlighted, galvanising emotions and actions. Such a spotlight can, however, come at the expense of seeing it in the context of concurrent environmental and more mundane crises. It is only, they argue, through simultaneous attention to the broader landscape of multiple concerns showing the interlinkages of crises people face that enables properly understanding and articulating the future.