Ann Mische

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I have several overlapping clusters of research. See below for short descriptions of these research areas, along with links to related publications:

1. 
How futures steer thought and action
2.
Public interest scenarios in foresight intervention
3.
Partisanship, anti-partisanship, and civic mobilization
4.
Relational sociology, culture, and social networks

1. How Futures Steer Thought and Action

I have a longstanding theoretical interest in how people’s projections of the future influence their thoughts and actions. This research includes my early work on projectivity as a form of human agency (Emirbayer and Mische 1998) as well as more recent theorizations of modes of projectivity (Mische 2009)  and futures in public deliberation (Mische 2014, 2022). This work is informed by pragmatist and phenomenological theories (especially Dewey, Mead, and Schutz) and theories of narrative, interpretation, and ideology (with a particular shout-out to Sahlins, Ricoeur, and Koselleck). I am currently interested in exploring how human reflectivity and creativity in future construction relate to power, political contention, and projects of social control.

2. Public Interest Scenarios as Transnational Foresight Interventions

I am working on a book on the role of futures thinking in social and political change efforts related to democracy, development, peacebuilding, and climate change. A broad toolkit of “foresight” methods has diffused globally since the 1990s, ranging from quantitative simulation and forecasting techniques to participatory exercises in scenario-building and alternative visioning. I focus on public interest scenario projects, which convene diverse audiences in conversations designed to challenge assumptions about what will happen in the mid-to-long term future, while building new consensus about what future are plausible or desirable. Scenario workshops generate multiple stories about what could happen, rather than predictive or normative accounts of what will or should happen. These projects imaginatively frame the future as a set of diverging pathways, often juxtaposed in such a way as to highlight dilemmatic choices between competing public imperatives.

Scenario methods have been used around the world to facilitate conversation about a wide variety of public issues, including the future of democracy, transitions from armed conflict, urbanization, energy use, mass migration, food security, and adaptation to climate change. Scenario exercises convene heterogeneous – and sometimes adversarial – groups of participants with varying degrees of power and expertise, ranging from academic or professional experts to government and corporate leaders, social movements, civil society organizations, and local residents or citizens. Some are national in scope (the future of Kenya or Indonesia) while others have global, regional, or municipal foci (the future of global climate governance, democracy in Latin America or urban informality in Bangkok). These projects have been supported by transnational networks of researchers, consultants, and donors.

My research asks: how are networks of local and global actors using scenario-based deliberations to re-narrate collective futures amidst the entrenched problems and dilemmas of the contemporary world? How are these narratives reframing debates on how to intervene in these problems? How are they steering collectivities towards and away from particular visions of future possibilities, and which futures do they deem outside the realm of plausibility? Drawing on an analysis of 240+ scenario reports from around the world since the 1990s, along with participant interviews, transnational network analysis, and historical case studies, I examine the promise and the pitfalls of scenario work as collective exercises in re-imagining futures in the context of global crises, inequalities, and constraints

  • BOOK-IN-PROGRESS: Futures in Contention: Public Scenarios and Transformative Politics in the Global Arena (tentative title)
  • Mische, Ann and Şehrazat G. Mart. “Imagined Intervention: Critical-Ideational Strategies across Multiple Futures in Public Interest Scenarios.” Forthcoming in Time and Society.
  • Mische, Ann, Wesley Hedden, and Pedro Pontes “‘It’s a crossroads, not an arrow’: Scenario interventions as the imagination of dilemmatic events.” Article in progress.
  • Mische, Ann, Fabian D. Maldonado, and Zhemin Huang, “Ensemble Interventions: Public Interest Scenario Work as Field-bridging Projects”

3. Partisanship, anti-partisanship, and civic mobilization

Another research stream explores the relationship between political parties and civic mobilization. In particular, I focus on citizen distrust of parties and the tension that often emerges between partisan and civic styles of political communication. This was a core theme of my first book, Partisan Publics (and several related articles), in which I examine overlapping affiliations between political parties and other kinds of student and civic activism during Brazil’s democratic reconstruction. I examine how the expression or suppression of partisanship shapes communicative styles and the formation of different kinds of publics (Mische 2008, 2015a,b, 1996). 

In an article with Angela Alonso (2016), I examine strong ambivalence toward political parties in the massive wave of June 2013 protests in Brazil. This distrust of parties helped fuel the rise of right-wing movements in Brazil, contributing to the election of extremist-populist candidate Jair Bolsonaro as president in 2018 (as I discuss in an extended blog post in Mobilizing Ideas).  

In a recent article in the American Journal of Sociology (2024), Tomas Gold and I examine partisan responses to the intense skepticism about political parties expressed in many recent protests, in which people reject not just the party in power, but political parties more generally. We compare how political parties and politicians in 12 countries have responded to hostility towards parties and partisanship from citizens in the streets. We find that partisan actors often try to symbolically deflect strong anti-partisan sentiment from the protests onto political rivals, thus using generalized distrust of parties to gain political advantage. This has contributed to four different pathways that represent disruptive shifts in political alignments:( (1)) the rise of new internal party factions (as in the rise of Corbyn in the UK and Sanders and the Tea Party in the US; (2) the formation of new parties (as with Podemos in Spain or Syriza in Greece); (3) the emergence of new anti-incumbent coalitions (as in Argentina or Bulgaria); and (4) the ascension of extremist populist leaders (as in Brazil, India, and the Philippines). Our paper helps to address the puzzle of how leftist movements’ horizontalism and right-wing populist gains can sometimes be oddly linked. (See a write-up about our article here.)

4. Relational sociology, culture, and social networks

A fourth research area concerns the relationship between culture, networks, and social interaction. I have written numerous articles on the dynamic construction of social networks through cultural processes of communication and interaction. This was a core theme of my work on Brazil (see above), and also appears in several more general theoretical and methodological statements, including my co-authored articles with Harrison White (1998) and Philippa Pattison (2000), and my discussion of “crosstalk” in social movement networks (2003). See also my handbook chapters on relational sociology for Sage (initial version in 2011, 2022 update with Jan Fuhse), on networks in social movements for Oxford (2015, with Mario Diani), and on narratives, networks and publics for Routledge (2018, with Matt Chandler). 

The relationship between networks and culture – and how to measure relational processes – are also core themes in Measuring Culture (Columbia 2020). my co-authored book with John Mohr, Christopher Bail, Margaret Frye, Jennifer Lena, Omar Lizardo, Terry McDonnell., Iddo Tavory, and Frederick.Wherry.