“While I would love to facilitate a revolution, that’s actually not my job”: the strategic imaginaries underpinning the “activist’s dilemma”

Abstract Both public discourse and academic work often focuses on whether activists help or harm their movement by using “radical” action. However, underpinning this question are frequently unexplored assumptions about who the audiences of an action are and what behavior will impact them. To analyze these assumptions, I develop the concept of strategic imaginaries—how movements collectively picture other actors, envision the consequences of actions, and coordinate futures, constrained and enabled by various structural and cultural factors, which shape how they select and deploy tactics they believe will achieve their aims. Using qualitative data collected on two environmental movements, I examine how their strategizing built on imagining other key players and constructing desired futures by envisioning pathways to success. Through this analysis, I demonstrate the value of incorporating collective imagination into our understanding of how and why activists choose the tactics they do.