Covid is the future arrived
Notes on Activating Civic Futures
The future. A time that is still to come. Unlike our histories that have gone before us, we are in a position to shape what comes next; how we can manifest futures for all? Day 2 of PRIMER2020 explored Civic Futures: what do futures look like in the civic space? The three talks were very different in substance, but shared an understanding of global inequalities, inequities and injustices that shape our global society.
Building a Future of Global Equity
Chloé Roubert, Melanie Wendland and Tracy Pilar Johnson shared their experiences directing the field of global health toward a deeper understanding of social and environmental vulnerability through their project Pathways. Their work is about understanding the development of more equitable access to care. Health is not just biomedical. Health is social and environmental. In addressing global health, we need to address social and environmental disparities. During this pandemic, we were confronted by deciding who was most vulnerable to disease. Our civic spaces were shut down as we vied to protect the most vulnerable in society.
In their project, Pathways, Chloé, Melanie and Tracy changed the unit of analysis, and analysed themes such as education, couple dynamics, household structure, health and risk perception. All of these may also influence each other.
They also analysed through time, a lens very much related to analysing through relationships. What happens over a woman’s lifetime impacts and creates stresses and shocks. These areas of overlap create critical moments of vulnerability. Perhaps we need a vulnerability index, one that can be used by frontline workers to access and provide care to the most vulnerable women.
Speculative Rural Flyover
The subsequent talk was given by Ash Eliza Smith, an artist-researcher who uses storytelling, simulation, and world-building to shape new realities. She discussed Southern Devices, a project in Appalachia that examines data centres (Apple, Google, Facebook) and mineral mining where the physical internet has transformed the landscape from furniture and agricultural industries. Ash spoke of the events of Covid-19 over the past few months, and the resulting ‘food deserts’ that have emerged across the United States, in part due to the breakdown of supply chains. What’s the effect when local stores shut down? When people no longer have access to fresh produce? There are more ‘Dollar General’ stores in the USA (30,000) than Starbucks and McDonalds combined. These stores sell only dried goods and canned goods.
As a species we compete for resources: food, money, space, wellness. When schools and colleges were forced to go online during Covid-19, what happened to the millions living in rural areas? The divide of the haves and have nots seemingly grows. This is reflected in global inequality statistics. But Ash reminded us: ‘the future is ours to shape.’ We need to think about futures both culturally and geographically. She posed a really interesting question:
Is getting to think about the future a privilege or a right?
When we have other more urgent and pressing concerns, of health, of safety, of having enough to eat, thinking about designing the future may well feel like an impossible luxury to most.
Civil Society, Facilitating Futures for All
Note: The next talk was postponed and later uploaded as a video due to the 7.5 magnitude earthquake that hit Mexico on Tuesday morning.
Nonso Jideofor and Anca Matioc are co-founders and co-directors of Agency, a south-by-south organisation that works to advance the resilience and future-preparedness of civil society. They spoke about the perceptions, hopes, desires, and experiences of civil society organisations from Africa and Latin America.
Viewing futures through a Southern lens was a crucial element of the conversation. This talk reminded us that activating futures is not new, but the point of this conference is to not do what we’ve always done, but to look more into the interests of all. At the moment, we are familiar with polarised views, power dynamics, silenced voices; us versus them. It shouldn’t be civil society versus other sectors. Nor should it be Global North versus Global South. We must embrace complexity and see past ‘us’ versus ‘them’.
We need to activate inclusive futures, rather than activate futures that are mere extensions of present colonised systems of knowledge and power.
Our governance systems have created inequities that continue to worsen. This is not an accident. Too many of us live life without equality, without equity and without justice. Historically civil society is the sector that has paid the most attention to this neglect. It’s constantly and consistently held power to account. But civil society is mostly reactive, not proactive. It reacts to corruption like the misuse of public funds. It reacts to things that have already happened. Because of this reactiveness, it’s hard to make a dent in the status quo. As Nonso said, ‘it’s hard to move the needle towards justice.’ Activating inclusive futures gives us an opportunity to change this.
We understand that history has a narrative. This is reinforced early, by our parents, our grandparents, and the history that we are taught as young children at school. In deciding who gets to write the future, this too will have a narrative. Living in the backdrop of Covid-19, it is difficult for families and communities to envisage what their life will look like next week. Uncertainties about our own futures linger and we have to learn to live with these uncertainties that this pandemic has created.
The most vulnerable are hit the hardest. Whether these are the women in the Pathways project, the poor living in food deserts across North America, or marginalised communities across the Global South. But speaking in binaries is unhelpful as these are deeply complex subjects.
Activating inclusive futures means a world where civil society is a co-creator in designing futures. Nonso and Anca call this ‘inclusion with agency’, where people are left to figure out what inclusion means in their own geographies, their own groups, culture, their own politics. A world where the world powers step aside and let homegrown vision take root.
