Regenerating Imaginaries of an Alternative Future

In the midst of an ecological crisis, futures are typically imagined either as a doomsday dystopian scenario or an idyllic utopian one. This paper takes a practice perspective and examines how actors navigate the dystopian-utopian tensions in future making in the context of dairy farming. The study empirically examines the ongoing Regenerative Farming Pilot Network (RegenPilot) at Arla, a Danish multinational dairy cooperative, during its first year. The study shows that actors constructed a paradoxical imaginary of the future that was both utopian and dystopian. This imaginary guided the actors in enacting three future-making practices of different temporalities and teleoaffectivities – remembering a proud but doubtful past, performing a potential but limited present, and imagining a promising but unknown future – to make an alternative sustainable dairy future. By enacting the future-making practices, actors created a contested site for future making, where the paradoxical imaginary was maintained and reproduced. The paper contributes to organization studies and future making (i) by proposing three genres of futures – expected futures, imaginative futures and alternative futures, providing conceptual clarification, (ii) by conceptually distinguishing temporal, teleological and affective as three constitutive dimensions of future-making practices, and (iii) by suggesting a paradoxical approach toward working with rather than resolving utopian-dystopian tensions in imaginaries. Finally, the paper offers an organizational explanation for the green transition challenges in the agriculture sector and suggests ways to potentially facilitate a faster transition.