Imagining a post-crisis society through generative conversation

Realizing a sustainable and equitable world requires a shared vision of what that world should look like. Given the scale and complexity of the climate crisis, conceptualizing necessary societal transformations can be challenging for individuals, resulting in fatalism and disempowerment. In this work, I look at the ways in which generative conversations that center embodiment may help individuals move through this challenge to reclaim hope and agency around the climate crisis. The goal of this study is to better understand what conceptual and communicative strategies individuals use to imagine transformational change. Using Mental Spaces Theory and conceptual blending, I analyze 11 interviews with climate-concerned adults tasked with imagining a “post-crisis world”. Post-crisis world descriptions were assessed for detail and the degree to which their structure diverged from the input space(s). I show that imagined worlds that incorporate diverse embodied experiences are more generative according to these metrics. This work adds a new theoretical approach to our Positive Discourse Analysis toolkit by demonstrating the utility of mental spaces and conceptual blending to critical analysis and the creation of new beneficial narratives.