Contemporary grassroots movements operate within diverse organizational structures, ranging from local initiatives to centrally coordinated transnational action. Many initiatives within socioecological and regenerative activism are organized through Translocal Networks (TLNs) connecting locally embedded communities while facilitating the circulation of practices, knowledge and affective ties across scales. Prominent examples include the Transition Network (TN), the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) and Extinction Rebellion (XR) which employ hybrid repertoires bridging digital and physical spaces. While existing research highlights their decentralized structures, the cultural logics and affective sensibilities sustaining engagement amidst ontological and planetary crises remain underexplored. In this paper, this gap is addressed through the oscillatory approach of metamodernism (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010) to social movement research. Beyond modern idealism and postmodern irony, metamodernism foregrounds a sensibility of simultaneously holding contradictory orientations - hope and doubt, sincerity and reflexivity, critique and construction. Drawing on affect theory , hybrid activism and visual communication, the study examines how these movements enact metamodern sensibilities through visual-discourse culture. It is argued that TN, GEN and XR enact metamodern sensibilities through oscillatory repertoires that hold contradictory orientations together, distinguishing these practices from other movements and resistance aesthetics based on critique by framing contradiction as an ongoing mode of political and affective engagement. Methodologically, the research employs an exploratory Visual Grounded Theory approach, treating newsletters, memes and images as visual-‘affective artefacts’ shaping participation and belonging. Analytical categories are generated inductively through iterative engagement with visual material rather than textual-content coding schemes, enabling to capture how images shape meanings, emotions, and movement identities. This study proposes and analytically tests METAMOV-Beta to explore metamodern sensibilities in movement discourses, visual cultures, and organizational practices. Initial findings suggest that metamodernism offers a productive lens for examining TLNs such as TN, GEN and XR by identifying oscillatory repertoires through which contradictory orientations are held together. The framework demonstrates how social movements perform oscillation, sincerity amid irony, pragmatic utopianism, and affect/interiority alongside commitments to systemic change. Existing literature often lacks systematic methodologies for analysing how metamodern sensibilities are expressed and circulated through hybrid repertoires. By placing metamodernism in dialogue with social movement studies and political ecology, the paper operationalizes these sensibilities through observable cultural, affective, and visual indicators. This research makes a two-fold contribution: it provides a metamodern reading of TN, GEN, and XR, and it introduces and pilots the METAMOV-Beta framework as a heuristic device for future research; it also operationalizes metamodernism as an empirical lens for analysing contemporary activism and identifies cultural, affective and visual indicators of metamodern sensibilities within TLNs. Preliminary results suggest that metamodernism provides an innovative lens: its focus on oscillatory repertoires reveals how movements sustain engagement by holding critique and construction, uncertainty and hope, and political action with affective experience in productive tension. And it reframes prefigurative politics by foregrounding the emotional and aesthetic resources required to inhabit ‘unfinished futures’ amid persistent crisis. By highlighting activism as an expression of metamodern culture, the study enriches theoretical discourse on social movement innovation in an era of ecological and ontological uncertainty.

--

metamodernism theory,social movements innovation,affect and activism,embodied hybrid repertoires,both/and oscillation,visual grounded-theory

Esta publicação está associada ao registo seguinte:

• Metamodern Activism: Both/And Oscillations and Affective Hybridity in Translocal Social Movements