Towards a minor sociology of futures: Shifting futures in Mass Observation accounts of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This article argues for a ‘minor sociology of futures’, which focuses on the significance of futures in and to everyday life by attending to minor shifts in temporal rhythms and patterns that illuminate how futures are imagined and made. We draw on Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of the major and minor, to attend to how major time is ruptured and remade and how minor temporalities can be productive of new relationships with the major and different futures. Our analysis focuses on the intricate and ambivalent relations with futures articulated in written reflections submitted during the early phase (March–November 2020) of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK to a Mass Observation directive on COVID-19 and time. Nourishing a sensitivity to the minor helps us develop a minor sociology that takes futures seriously, which we argue matters in times of uncertainty that stretch beyond the pandemic.