Time and innovation are intrinsically related in capitalism via the imaginative anticipation of the future. Fictional expectations, as Jens Beckert has argued, are important for understanding the dynamics of capitalism, including its colonization of alternative, creative expressions of agency. So what about the role of fictional expectation for social innovation? The chapter pursues this question in a practical social innovation context: the sustainability challenge. It reveals varieties of temporal orientation: next to the fictional expectation, there are precautionary expectations advanced by sustainability science and social imaginaries of civil society that are just as much about ‘present pasts’ than they are about ‘future presents’. A comprehensive account of temporal orientation in social innovation, sensitive to the colonising tendencies of capitalist dynamics, needs to investigate the role of fictional expectations but also explore their relation to other types of future and temporal orientation.
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Front Matter
