On 7 February at 12:00 there will be an ODA seminar by Sunny Mosangzi Xu (from CBS) entitled:

Regenerating Imaginaries of an Alternative Dairy Future

Abstract
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 RegenPilot involves actors experimenting with regenerative farming practices on farms to make an alternative sustainable dairy future. The study shows that actors constructed an imaginary of the future that was simultaneously 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 utopian-dystopian 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, and (ii) by conceptually distinguishing temporal, teleological and affective as three constitutive dimensions of future-making practices. The paper offers an organizational explanation for the green transition challenges in the agriculture sector and suggests ways to potentially facilitate a faster transition.

Please contact Susan Hilbolling if you want to talk to Sunny one-on-one.

Bio
Sunny Mosangzi Xu is a postdoc at Copenhagen Business School (Dept of Organization Centre for Organizational Time). Sunny is a trained organizational anthropologist and obtained her PhD in Management and Organization from University of Copenhagen. Boundary, temporary organizing, interorganizational collaboration, and research and innovation are core to her research. Currently, Sunny is working on the Actionable Futures project, funded by Novo Nordisk Foundation. Specifically, she studies the food system and how major organization actors translate between present-day emerging innovative solutions and distant climate goals across the value chain in dairy production. In this seminar she will share with us results from this project.

Everyone is welcome!