No(w) future: Neo-farming and eco-anxiety in France

Abstract

Studying how people relate to the future and how it shapes individual or collective affects is a way to grasp what motivates social practices. What would be the effect of the climate crisis and democratic disillusionments on social mobilisations? What impact does the disappearance of the horizon of progress have on individuals' lives? Based on long-term fieldwork among a dozen neo-farming anarchist libertarian collectives in the Massif Central (France), I analyse how the future horizon of despair, anxiety, or abandonment is necessarily intertwined with utopian projection. This interaction between antinomic futures creates a paradoxical and Camusian ‘absurd' present that resonates with a shared temporality emphasising the ‘here and now' and prefigurative politics. Through this study of the ‘back-to-the-land' movement, I will propose a broader epistemological discussion related to how anthropology has historically approached incoherence and contradictions. I advocate for deepening our understanding of the meaning of social practices by interrogating the intrinsic multiple representations of time that impel them.