Where is the future? Time and space as categories in analyses of young people's images of the future

Abstract

The article explores how thoughts about environmental problems facing the global community are embedded in and connected to the way young people envisage the future. It is based on analyses of in‐depth interviews with young Norwegian men and women about their expectations for the future. Current theoretical conceptualizations of time, and of time‐space are central in the discussions. In the analysis a distinction between the everyday terms plans, hopes, and dreams is made to conceptualize lime horizons on the personal level. This kind of perspective demonstrates how environmental issues related to on the personal level, can be understood and problematized with reference to the wider theoretical discussion within sociology in general and in environmental sociology in particular. Special emphasis is put on the perspectives developed by Ulrich Beck and his conceptualizations of risk and threat.