A reminder worth repeating: Why big-T transformation must be differentiated and more granular from the get-go

Initiatives that appear novel in certain geopolitical contexts may represent established practices elsewhere. For instance, calls for socio-ecological transformation considered ‘radical and advanced’ in the Global North have been embedded in the Global South ‘ecopedagogy’ since the 1990s (Hjorth Warlenius, 2022). The ‘right to repair’, now gaining traction in the West (Graziano and Trogal, 2019), is deeply rooted in subaltern practices of maintenance and continuity. Likewise, the concept of precarious work in neoliberal contexts presumes a lost past of stability and an uncertain future, whereas in other settings the same labour is simply situated in an enduring present with no expectation of change (Tilly, 2021). . . To regard repair as ‘innovative’ or work as ‘precarious’ is to normalise a progressive, linear temporality that may obscure other cyclical or continuous ways of inhabiting the present. . . .Experiences of post-communist transition sit alongside experiences of neoliberal precarity, colonial legacies, climate anxiety and so on. These are not merely different perspectives on a shared present but distinct temporalities: some students inhabit futures of promise while others carry legacies of loss; some experience time as acceleration and pressure, others as interruption or delay to something else entirely.

(accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507626141; my bold)