Strategic Planning in the ‘Empire of Speed’

Abstract

This article examines the impact of the latest wave of the social acceleration of time on the capacity for long-term strategic planning within contemporary global justice movements. Drawing upon the interdisciplinary body of literature on time and temporality, the article begins by delineating the changes to the future time perspective wrought by the shift from the modern ‘age of progress’ ruled by ‘clock time', to a global ‘network society’ characterized by speed, risk, and uncertainty. In the second, substantive part, the article draws upon several dozen semi-structured interviews with social activists in order to shed light upon the challenges to contemporary social justice movements posed by the pervasive sense of precarity and futurelessness associated with life in high-speed, global risk society.

Keywords:

• time
• globalization
• social acceleration
• strategic planning
• social movements

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada through the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship.

Notes

1 In terms of methodology, I examine the practice of strategic planning within Canadian activism by drawing upon interviews with activists of different ages and backgrounds who have engaged, in a leadership capacity, in the various movements comprising in the alter-globalization movement. The interviews were semi-structured and secured using the snowball method, starting with the author's own contacts in Canadian social movements. The transcribed interview data were coded using the Nvivo software on themes related both to the history of this movement in Canada over the past 15 years and to its temporal orientations, values, and practices, particularly those related to movement building, collective memory—and long-term strategic planning. Together, these make up the contents of the author's doctoral dissertation (Pietrzyk, 2013).

2 Drawing on the work of many people, the handbook was ‘written for unions, but the principles of campaign planning apply to all social movements', according to the authors (Fairley & Balkwill, 2011, p. 2). Inside the handbook the reader can find advice on creating, implementing, and evaluating campaigns, as well as a number of planning tools, such as Force Field Analysis, Spectrum of Member Support, and Power Mapping.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kamilla Petrick

Kamilla (Pietrzyk) Petrick completed her Ph.D. dissertation in 2013 on the topic of ‘Fast Activism’ and the alter-globalization movement in Canada, under the supervision of Dr Leo Panitch. Her work has appeared in Fast Capitalism, Convergence, and Time & Society.