INTRODUCTION
Climate change has been described as “the world’s largest collective action problem” in which defection and inaction, rather than cooperation, have been the norm (Jamieson Reference Jamieson2014, 4, 99). While the precise nature of the collective action problem is debated (Aklin and Mildenberger Reference Aklin and Mildenberger2020; Gardiner Reference Gardiner2011, 52–63, 160–4), there is broad agreement that action has been stifled by the path-dependent phenomenon of “carbon lock-in,” in which fossil-fuel-based technologies, institutions, and behaviors reinforce one another such that alternative energy pathways become “locked out” (Dryzek and Pickering Reference Dryzek and Pickering2019, 28; IPCC 2023a, 95, 921; McKinnon Reference McKinnon2022, 155; Seto et al. Reference Seto, Davis, Mitchell, Stokes, Unruh and Ürge-Vorsatz2016; Unruh Reference Unruh2000). For climate egalitarians, a central political problem has become how to use collective action to achieve a “just transition” out of carbon lock-in (Cha Reference Cha2024; Dryzek and Pickering Reference Dryzek and Pickering2019, 114–5; McKinnon Reference McKinnon2022, 120–40; Whyte Reference Whyte2020), a question that has led many scholars to draw on Iris Marion Young’s theory of structural injustice for normative and critical insight (Eckersley Reference Eckersley2016; Goodhart Reference Goodhart2023; McKeown Reference McKeown2024; Sardo Reference Sardo2023; Sparenborg Reference Sparenborg2025; Young Reference Young2011). According to Young’s influential view, structural injustice refers to durable patterns of suffering with diffuse causes and impacts. Such patterns of suffering arise when some groups attain self-development and self-determination at the expense of other groups (Young Reference Young2002, 156; Reference Young2011, 52). Structural injustices are particularly characteristic of societies premised on capitalist exchange, consumption, and production (Young Reference Young2011, 49, 57–8). To challenge such broad forms of injustice, scholars and activists have recently emphasized two modes of collective action: a disruptive politics approach oriented around path destabilization (Goodhart Reference Goodhart2023; Hayward Reference Hayward2018; Reference Hayward2020; Young Reference Young1990, 81–95) and a prefigurative politics approach emphasizing alternative path creation (Lu Reference Lu2023, 156; Masin-Peters Reference Masin-Peters2022; Nuti Reference Nuti and ChiaraForthcoming; see also Graeber Reference Graeber2002; Raekstad and Gradin Reference Raekstad and Gradin2020; Sande Reference Sande2022; Zerilli Reference Zerilli2020, 18–20).
Given the active intransigence of the fossil-fuel regime, a just transition will likely require disruptive action to destabilize powerful incumbent actors (Geels Reference Geels2014; Shue Reference Shue2022, 117–36). Yet moving beyond the fossil-fuel status quo will also depend on the ability to prefigure alternatives (Beckert Reference Beckert2025, 173). How should we understand the relationship between these two repertoires of collective action? While recent arguments in the political theory of social movements, especially in this journal, have begun to ask about the relationship between different repertoires (Forrester Reference Forrester2022; Inouye Reference Inouye2022), the question has rarely been broached in the structural injustice literature (but see Nuti Reference Nuti and ChiaraForthcoming). In what follows, I argue that durable change depends on aligning disruptive and prefigurative approaches. To capture and clarify what happens when these repertoires operate in tandem, I introduce the idea of “counter-structural” collective action. Counter-structural action can potentially produce a counter-structure: a set of structural elements that, in concert, oppose a status quo structure and embody a new one. A counter-structure is constituted by the built environment, formal rules and informal norms, social positions, and the unintended consequences of habitual, everyday actions. I argue that counter-structural action can better respond to structural injustice than either prefigurative or disruptive repertoires performed alone. Drawing on sustainability transitions research (Geels Reference Geels2002; Reference Geels2026), I assert that disruption can open windows of opportunity or “ruptural moments” (Della Porta Reference Della Porta2020, 560) in the existing fossil-fuel regime, which can then be filled by egalitarian experiments that have been developed within interstitial “free spaces” (Törnberg Reference Törnberg2021; Wright Reference Wright2010) or “fossil-free zones” (Green Reference Green2022).
The concept of a counter-structure helps clarify several aspects of how to combat carbon lock-in. First, it helps overcome the structure-agency problem, which has weakened structural injustice theories of collective action. Much recent work assumes that structures are primarily forms of constraint, with action conceived of as “outside” and against structures, rather than as enabled and constituted by them (Marin Reference Marin2025; Sewell Reference Sewell1992, 3). In contrast, the idea of a counter-structure takes seriously Young’s argument that structures constitute and enable action and, in this case, egalitarian action. Second, the theory of counter-structures can address the problem of democratic transition. Radical democratic theory has often struggled with the question of how to “scale up” and make egalitarian experiments durable (Inouye Reference Inouye2022, 543), and this problem is especially acute for prefigurative and climate justice politics (Nair Reference Nair2025, 410; Whyte Reference Whyte2026). I argue that the interaction between disruption and prefiguration can help address this scale question, while also showing that the long “in between” periods between protest episodes can be constituted by modes of egalitarian capacity-building. Finally, the counter-structural approach models one way that political theorists can engage the relation between theory and practice. Should egalitarian theories use empirical cases to illustrate their concepts (Menser Reference Menser2018) or use concepts to evaluate movements (Forrester Reference Forrester2022)? This article does both. The cases in the latter half of the essay illustrate the theoretical concepts developed in the opening sections, while the concept of counter-structure provides a framework for evaluating the social movement cases.
A counter-structure differs from a counter-public, an idea sometimes used in structural injustice theory (Haslanger Reference Haslanger2021, 50–1). Counter-publics primarily focus on alternative public speech and discourse (see Fraser Reference Fraser1990, 67; Warner Reference Warner2002, 424). A counter-structure is broader, encompassing alternative norms, institutions, built environments, and social positions. I develop the idea from two sets of sources. First, I have reworked Young’s four-part definition of social structures, which she described in terms of objective constraints (rules, norms, built environments), social positions, habitual “recursive” action, and unintended consequences (Young Reference Young2011, 52–64). Second, I use primary and secondary sources from two UK climate action movements that emerged in the early 2000s: the Transition Town (TT) movement and the Camps for Climate Action (CCA). The TT movement tends to focus on small-scale, prefigurative experiments. The Climate Camps also have prefigurative aspects but are more oriented toward disruption. Both movements, I argue, help challenge fossil-fuel structures by creating windows of opportunity and alternative institutions, norms, and material infrastructures.
To begin to understand the concept of a counter-structure, the next section outlines the core elements of a structure, drawing on Young’s theory. I then show, in the subsequent section, how disruption can destabilize dominant structures, paving the way for alternatives to emerge and scale up. I follow that with a section discussing the interaction of disruptive and prefigurative politics, focusing on how TTs and CCA embody a counter-structural climate politics. I closely examine the elements of a counter-structure and its multiple scaling pathways. The section’s primary function is to illustrate the concept through the broad array of actions available to confront structural climate injustice. “Overcoming Helplessness” then shows how counter-structural actors can mobilize and instill a sense of efficacy among participants to foster long-term endurance. I next turn to the evaluative dimensions of the counter-structure concept, describing two ways it can help us understand, assess, and strengthen current movements on the ground. The penultimate section addresses objections, and I conclude by emphasizing the theory’s implications for challenging fossil-fuel dominance.
STRUCTURES AND THEIR ELEMENTS
The concept of structure pervades the social sciences and humanities, and despite criticisms of the term, its use is likely to continue because it captures something crucial about social and political life. As William Sewell notes: “Most social practices—whether international diplomacy, petty trade, or popular recreation—tend to be reproduced with considerable consistency over relatively extended periods of time” (Sewell Reference Sewell2005, 225). Evidence of the term’s use can be found in the most authoritative documents on climate change: the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports on carbon mitigation, adaptation, and impacts. While the first reports, starting in 1992, drew mostly on rational choice theory, more recent ones have drawn on a richer set of social scientific approaches and now explicitly refer to “structural injustice” as a crucial problem, calling for “structural change” and “structural shifts” to achieve decarbonization (IPCC 2023b, 86, 121, 158, 183). The reports themselves, however, do not offer the types of conceptual analysis that political theorists tend to provide. Young’s posthumous work, Responsibility for Justice (Reference Young2011), can illuminate these ideas. She outlines four constitutive elements of structures: (1) objective constraints, (2) social positions, (3) everyday, routine human action (“recursive action”), and (4) unintended consequences (Reference Young2011, 52–64). An injustice occurs when a constellation of these factors impedes the self-development and self-determination of certain groups while benefiting others (Young Reference Young1990, 38–9; Reference Young2002, 156; Reference Young2011, 52).
For the purposes of this essay, I reconstruct Young’s main structural categories in two ways. First, I separate her notion of “objective constraints” into two categories: norms and rules, on the one hand, and the built environment, on the other. Second, I treat Young’s idea of “recursive” or habitual action as underpinning each of these categories, sedimenting the other elements into everyday life. On my modified reading, then, we have four broad categories: (i) norms and rules, (ii) the built environment, (iii) social positions, and (iv) unintended consequences.
Norms and Rules
Norms and rules are two of the most invoked aspects of structural injustice. When discussing formal rules, the term typically refers to legal or constitutional rules backed by the state (Young Reference Young2011, 55). Young provides several examples. While analyzing Hurricane Katrina, she notes that years of anti-tax legislation undermined the ability to build safe infrastructure in New Orleans (Young Reference Young2006). In a later work, she suggests that zoning rules, in part, create housing insecurity for many urban residents (Young Reference Young2011, 47). She acknowledges that breaking rules also creates injustice, but her work is less concerned with such cases, since existing liability systems already account for them (Young Reference Young2006, 41).
In addition to formal rules, Young also discusses “implicit rules,” which she sometimes describes as norms (Young Reference Young2011, 46, 52). People follow norms for several reasons: unconscious habit, fear of social sanction, self-interest, or some combination of these and other factors (Young Reference Young2011, 55). Philosopher Stephanie Collins argues that norms can be distinguished from customs (Collins Reference Collins2023). Both are “behavioral patterns,” but norms have a “logic of appropriateness” that customs do not (Collins Reference Collins2023, 109). That is, norms create positive or negative judgments when they are followed or subverted; they create “reactive attitudes” (Collins Reference Collins2023, 109). For example, bicycle commuters and municipalities that seek to create norms of bicycle commuting receive negative appraisals from business owners and other residents but may also experience positive appraisals from the eco-conscious (Wolfe Reference Wolfe2023). At the same time, automobiles powered by internal combustion engines will receive both positive and negative appraisals depending on who is making the judgment (e.g., Daggett Reference Daggett2018).
A person can inhabit a norm in a better or worse way. To capture such fluency with norms, Sally Haslanger employs the term “cultural technē,” defined as a publicly available web of meanings that enables people to coordinate, cooperate, and interact (Haslanger Reference Haslanger, Browne and McKeown2024, 55–9). A cultural technē is not constituted by beliefs but practices (Haslanger Reference Haslanger2023a, 15). Fluency in a norm is ambiguous—it can become a dangerous form of “normalization” (Ackerly Reference Ackerly2018, 81–103; Connolly Reference Connolly1995, 91) but also can challenge the status quo (Butler Reference Butler1990; Redecker Reference Redecker2021).
Material Constraints and the Built Environment
An underemphasized feature of Young’s work is her materialism. She draws on Jean-Paul Sartre’s idea of the “practico-inert” objects that structure our everyday experience (Young Reference Young2011, 53–4). “Social objects and their effects are the results of human action; they are practical. But as material, they also constitute constraints on and resistances to action that make them experienced as inert. The built environment is a practico-inert reality” (Young Reference Young1997, 25, my emphasis). As an example, Young describes how narratives and norms of gender are “objectified” in shelter and housing in the United States, especially in architectural practices and urban spaces (Young Reference Young1990, 246; Reference Young1997, 137). “A multitude of artifacts and social spaces in which people act are flooded with gender codes. Clothes are the primary example, but there are also cosmetics, tools, even in some cases furniture and spaces that materially inscribe the norms of gender” (Young Reference Young1997, 29). The material world, in other words, channels and reinforces norms and rules.
In the United States, carbon lock-in relies upon the “grey infrastructures” of highways, pipelines, and combustion engines, which tend to be associated with masculinity, whereas renewable “green and blue infrastructures” are not. Cara Daggett’s concept of “petro-masculinity” highlights the gendered norms that help entrench such material environments (Daggett Reference Daggett2018). In turn, these norms are backed by rules and laws that subsidize highway construction. While the built environment may appear inert, this does not make it fixed, permanent, and determined. As Young notes, the built environments of everyday life “both constrain and enable action, but they do not determine or define it” (Young Reference Young1997, 29). Even though people often “experience themselves as powerless to alter this material milieu,” she also writes that “Objectives can be realized only through the mediation of already-there things” (Reference Young1997, 25). As I show in later sections, transforming the built environment is crucial for counter-structural action.
Social Positions
Social position refers to categories such as race, gender, and class, which are not individual attributes or preferences but social relations that “position people prior to their interactions, and condition expectations and possibilities of interaction” (Young Reference Young2011, 57). Different social classes, for example, follow different norms and habits. These positions are produced and reproduced by people acting according to the rules and norms by which such positions are defined, even if they do not consciously know they are reproducing the norms and rules. Using air travel for leisure and commuting, for example, is typically much more common among higher-income groups, resulting in higher carbon emissions (Oswald, Owen, and Steinberger Reference Oswald, Owen and Steinberger2020). At the international level, however, one’s social position as a US resident is likely to create a much higher carbon footprint than that of a resident of most other countries (Ritchie, Roser, and Rosado Reference Ritchie, Roser and Rosado2025).
Social positions matter for structural injustice because they often situate people in ways that make them vulnerable to wrongs and harms. “Within the social domain,” Sally Haslanger writes, “individuals are vulnerable to perpetrating or suffering injustice by virtue of their social positions” (Reference Haslanger2021, 36). An important aim of identifying and analyzing social positions “is to improve our social practices and social structures to eliminate this positional vulnerability” (Haslanger Reference Haslanger2021, 36). The point is not to blame the individual but to critique the position itself.
We can think of positions as “offices” and the individuals who occupy them as “office holders” (Haslanger Reference Haslanger2016, 118–9, 128–9). This distinction helps clarify how social structures operate, shifting the focus from individuals to the positions themselves (Haslanger Reference Haslanger2016, 119). In climate discussions, the concepts of Global North and South highlight different vulnerabilities (e.g., McKinnon Reference McKinnon2022), while the positions of consumer and producer are also significant.
Unintended Consequences
For Young, quotidian citizen behavior plays a crucial role in structural injustice, often leading to outcomes no one predicted. Although structures are produced in action, it is not enough, for Young, to look only at processes; one must also consider the “accumulated outcomes” (Young Reference Young2011, 62), which are often at odds with the intentions of the people involved. Young emphasizes the relevance of unintended consequences, or “counter-finalities,” in which adherence to norms can perpetuate injustices, as illustrated by traffic congestion and housing crises (Young Reference Young2011, 63). In ecological contexts, the pursuit of freedom from nature has inadvertently increased our dependence on unpredictable climate patterns (Amrith Reference Amrith2024; McKeown Reference McKeown2024, 103). There are certainly deliberate and avoidable dimensions to the climate change problem, as scholars have increasingly pointed out (McKeown Reference McKeown2024), especially in identifying the “carbon majors”—those firms that have most contributed to the climate crisis (Aronoff et al. Reference Aronoff, Battistoni, Cohen and Riofrancos2019, 33 ff; Heede Reference Heede2014). By contrast, citizens using their cars, appliances, and political votes have not necessarily sought to amplify natural disasters or create a carbon blanket in the atmosphere, but they have inadvertently contributed to doing so (Young Reference Young2006).
Unintended consequences make responding to injustice particularly tricky. Yet this does not mean that people have no agency over outcomes or that they cannot plan and create better ones. As I will show below, the Transition Town movement in particular is part of a tradition of “participatory planning” that works in an anticipatory fashion to address unintended consequences.
Beyond countering each structural element individually, it is crucial to consider how the four structural elements relate to one another and what political implications follow. Collective action across the four elements—whether by a single group or through coalitions—is crucial, since each element reinforces the others, enabling structures to maintain themselves (Young Reference Young2011, 59). That is, structures are “co-integrated” (Haslanger Reference Haslanger2023b). This integration of structural elements means that eroding only one element (e.g., norms or social positions) or constructing only one alternative element is likely to be insufficient (Zheng Reference Zheng2018, 876). Accordingly, disruption and prefiguration are most effective when operating conjointly, as I outline below.
DISRUPTIVE CLIMATE POLITICS
To the extent that structures such as contemporary fossil-fuel regimes are unjust, how might they be dismantled? How is it possible to shift from a vision of justice to “likely paths” of its achievement (Hayward Reference Hayward2018, 396)? These questions animate Clarissa Hayward’s recent work on structural injustice, and her answer is that disruptive politics can intervene to transform habitual modes of behavior, though indirectly. “By ‘disruptive politics,’” she writes, “I mean boycotts, mass protests, sit-ins, die-ins, and other forms of unruly political action” (Hayward Reference Hayward2018, 405). From a disruptive politics perspective, moral suasion tends to be insufficient, as those in advantaged social positions rarely desire to relinquish their positions. People can often be conditioned by a “motivated ignorance” that prevents them from acknowledging a need for action. As such, disruptive politics is about “the political power of the oppressed,” working to “interrupt motivated ignorance” (407) and making sure those in advantaged social positions “know the political claims of the oppressed” (406). In doing so, disruption can sometimes succeed in “creating political openings for structural change” (407).
A strength of this view is that it also shows how longer-term, entrenched habits can sometimes be transformed. Hayward provides a concise principle for how this can work: “Change the incentive structure, and you can change the habit” (407). For her, this works through a disruptive threat to withdraw cooperation, for example, by threatening to withhold votes from elected officials. In theory, officials can be influenced to advance laws and policies that change external incentive structures. Because habits are not necessarily changed by conscious reflection, one’s intrinsic motivation may matter less in changing them. In contrast, external motivations, such as material rewards and sanctions, as well as external praise or blame, play an important role in changing routine practices (407). Disruption, then, is less about persuading all antagonists to adopt one’s viewpoint and more about building power and transforming habits through external incentives.Footnote 1
In relation to the theory described in the previous section, disruptive politics might be said to work in the following way: by soliciting public attention, disruption can open up windows of opportunity and call into question the norms of those in advantaged social positions. In doing so, officials can be pressured to transform formal rules and laws. To some extent, these rules can also sometimes change various forms of infrastructure (e.g., housing or transportation), which can, if “effectively institutionalized,” transform habits (407).
Notably, Hayward’s work focuses on structural racial injustice, but we can also see similar dynamics in climate politics. Several structural injustice theorists have taken up disruptive politics to craft responses to climate injustice. Michael Christopher Sardo, for example, combines the role of Fossil Fuel Divestment campaigns that “put pressure on larger organizations” with larger Green New Deal policy proposals (Reference Sardo2023, 42). Likewise, Michael Goodhart, in a modification of Young’s work on political responsibility, argues that kayaktivism, in which activists try to blockade fossil-fuel shipments, is an exemplary style of politics in the face of indifference to climate change (Reference Goodhart2023).
The emphasis on pressure campaigns as opening windows of opportunity is shared by leading scholars of carbon lock-in, such as Karen Seto and colleagues, who argue that “Transitioning from lock-in is more likely if conditions have increased institutional plasticity, opening windows of opportunity during which policy entrepreneurs can promote carbon-reducing policies more successfully” (Seto et al. Reference Seto, Davis, Mitchell, Stokes, Unruh and Ürge-Vorsatz2016, 434). Similarly, the most recent UN climate report argues for disruption combined with policy: “Collective action and social organizing are crucial to shift the possibility space of public policy on climate change mitigation” (IPCC 2023b, 121). On the IPCC’s view of collective action, which they go on to describe as climate strikes and mitigation policy, windows of opportunity open as the “possibility space” shifts.
Hayward sheds light on how these windows open: disruptive politics entails a withdrawal of cooperation with incumbent actors and regimes (Reference Hayward2018, 405). It works in part via sticks and carrots: sanctioning powerful actors for noncompliance by withdrawing necessary support, followed by an incentive to deliver support if there is compliance. To some extent, the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, considered by some to be the most radical climate legislation in US history, was spurred in part by an active and militant labor movement, set against the backdrop of global climate strikes. It also sought to target behavior change via indirect market mechanisms such as tax rebates (Battistoni and Mann Reference Battistoni and Mann2023).
Yet dominant regimes are dominant for a reason: they are powerful and often resistant to change (Geels Reference Geels2014). When they do accommodate change, they often maintain the fundamental background conditions of injustice. Hayward herself notes this, writing that disruptive politics can be impermanent and partial and that it does not necessarily challenge “internalized background beliefs” (406). It also focuses primarily on path destabilization, rather than path creation. But if disruption is insufficient for challenging structural injustice, how might it be strengthened? What alternatives exist? Here, we can take a cue from some suggestive comments in the 2023 IPCC reports. At one point, for example, the most recent mitigation report discusses the importance of “community energy groups” and the Transition Town movement specifically (2023b, 467). I suggest that the practices of prefigurative climate groups expand our understanding of collective action and, when successfully combined with disruptive politics, constitute counter-structural action.
COUNTER-STRUCTURAL ACTION AND STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION
Thus far, I have described how disruptive approaches characterize an important element of counter-structural action. In the rest of the article, I show how disruptive and prefigurative climate politics can operate in tandem. In this section, I describe the practices and concepts of counter-structural climate action in detail, using the case studies of the Transition Town (TT) movement and the Camps for Climate Action (CCA) to illustrate the theory. In doing so, I address the question of “scaling,” describing three different scaling paths. In the subsequent section, I continue to illustrate the theory with the cases, showing how and why disruption and prefiguration can work together over time to enhance participants’ sense of agency. The section titled “Evaluating Disruptive and Prefigurative Climate Action” shifts gears, moving from illustrating the theory through the cases to evaluating the cases with the theory.
Climate Camps and Transition Towns
At around the same time that Hurricane Katrina catalyzed a shift in US activism from environmental to climate justice (Schlosberg and Collins Reference Schlosberg and Collins2014), the UK witnessed the emergence of two climate movements: the Camps for Climate Action (CCA) and the Transition Town (TT) movement. The former combined protest with prefigurative organizing, while the Transition initiatives tended to focus on prefiguring post-carbon futures in the here and now. The literature on prefigurative politics is growing; on my reading, it refers to political movements that attempt to give form to small-scale egalitarian structures that these movements desire to see on a larger scale in the future (see Yates and de Moor Reference Yates, de Moor and Monticelli2022, 183). The starting point of the Camps is typically marked as 2005, when roughly 5,000 activists established the “HoriZone” camp in Stirling, Scotland, to protest the G8 Summit occurring July 6–8 of that year (Haran Reference Haran, Moore and Hurwitz2023, 135). The camp itself lasted from July 1 to 9. The more formal establishment of British CCA came in 2006 in Yorkshire, England (Frenzel Reference Frenzel2014, 911–2). Simultaneously, in the town of Totnes, England, the first TT initiative was established during 2005–06 (Hopkins Reference Hopkins2008, 176–93).
Both movements saw themselves, in part, as attempting to model a small-scale version of the democratically decarbonized world they hoped to see in the future. They argued that market and state-based solutions were not only failing to address climate change but were, in fact, part of the problem, enabling the continued consumption and emission of carbon-based energy.Footnote 2 Both movements have also described their motivations as trying to establish a more affirmative mode of politics. For example, Rob Hopkins, the founder of the TT movement in Totnes, argued in his influential first book, The Transition Handbook, that “We have become so accustomed to campaigning against things that we have lost sight of where it is we want to go” (Reference Hopkins2008, 98). Similarly, in a letter to the residents of Stirling, HoriZone participants wrote, “We created the HoriZone Eco-Village to demonstrate what we are working and struggling for, not just what we are against” (cited in Haran Reference Haran, Moore and Hurwitz2023, 135). The core idea for both has been to embody the logic of “oppose and propose,” in which it is essential not only to oppose existing norms, institutions, and practices but also to propose alternatives (Cornell Reference Cornell2011). Both movements have proposed counter-structures that expand our notion of collective action.
Eco-Egalitarian Norms and Rules
In the United States and the United Kingdom, everyday life is heavily mediated by fossil-fuel consumption and production—what we might call a “fossil-fuel technē.” The two climate movements above are responding to the normative ideals and practices embedded in the fossil-fuel technē. An important danger for these movements is the highly concentrated nature of decision-making and agenda-setting about fossil energy. It is therefore bound up with democratic deficits in political and social spheres. How might a counter-structural approach challenge this fossil-fuel technē and its norms, rules, and forms of common sense? In his recent work, Rob Hopkins has highlighted legal mechanisms (i.e., formal rules) such as “civil asset forfeiture” and a “climate superfund” to hold fossil-fuel firms liable for damages from carbon emissions (Hopkins Reference Hopkins2025, 7, 170, note 12). However, since structural injustice theory is less oriented around legal liability models of justice and more around habits of everyday life, I will focus primarily on norms.
Norm erosion provides an initial step and is often achieved through a “disidentification” process, in which a person comes to see their identities, social positions, and ways of life as no longer natural or fixed but as constructed and imposed (Redecker Reference Redecker2021, 164–5). Disruption can play a crucial role in this process of disidentification, raising awareness of unjust forms of life (Hayward Reference Hayward2018). Central to such awareness-raising have been the practices associated with anti-fossil-fuel norms (Green Reference Green2018). These obtain among groups that “challenge organizations that extract, burn, fund and invest in fossil fuels” (Collins Reference Collins2023, 115). Recent blockades by groups such as Extinction Rebellion and the climate strikes by numerous youth movements are exemplars of such an approach. Militant activism among workers in transportation, electrical, and care sectors—“ecological unionism”—is also gaining traction as a disruptive strategy (Huber Reference Huber2022, 230–3). Much of this recent disruption was preceded by the CCA, which deployed the logic of occupation and public spectacle to challenge banks that financed oil firms and development projects that sought to expand airports and power plants (Harding Reference Harding2015; Stewart Reference Stewart2008). Central targets of the protests were the concentrations of power—firms and G8 summits—that undermined egalitarian decision-making and agenda-setting. In raising awareness and challenging dominant assumptions, such repertoires can sometimes open windows of opportunity.
Yet alternative norms are unlikely to stick if they are underdeveloped (Haslanger Reference Haslanger2021, 28; Redecker Reference Redecker2021, 164). The “fossil-free zones” (Green Reference Green2022) provided by both the TTs and, more temporarily, by the climate camps, allow participants to develop, rehearse, and experience alternative norms (Swain Reference Swain2019, 57–60, and Redecker Reference Redecker2021, 81–2). Alternatives can be disseminated and learned visually, discursively, or by direct participation (Redecker Reference Redecker2021, 42–6, 191). The aim is to disidentify, in part, with fossil-fuel-dependent lifestyles.
What kind of norms are these? In addition to the anti-fossil-fuel norms (AFFs) described above, there are emission reduction and offsetting norms (EROs), which “include veganism, anti-driving, anti-flying, pro-cycling, pro-solar, and general anti-consumption norms” (Collins Reference Collins2023, 115–6). Both ERO and AFF norms are largely focused on mitigation—that is, the reduction or elimination of emissions. The less confrontation-oriented Transition initiatives tend to organize around norms closer to EROs. Yet they also seek to inculcate new norms of economic democracy, organized around the idea of resilience. Resilience is about not only mitigation but also building adaptive capacity. Transition founder Rob Hopkins writes that “cutting emissions without resilience-building is ultimately futile” (Reference Hopkins2008, 12). For Hopkins, norms of resilience focus on communities’ ability to be self-sufficient, especially in producing and consuming carbon-free energy, food, and clothing. Although he does not typically use the language of adaptation, his account of resilience overlaps with the IPCC’s concept of anticipatory adaptation, which foregrounds long-term, planned adjustments to actual and expected climate shocks, rather than temporary, reactive adaptations (IPCC 2023a, 5–6).
The discourse of resilience has been criticized for implying a return to a status quo equilibrium after a shock (Dryzek and Pickering Reference Dryzek and Pickering2019, 37–8; Neocleous Reference Neocleous2013). Yet Hopkins uses the term in a way that is consistent with how social movements often seek to transcend the status quo—by exposing problems, creating new constituencies, and setting new horizons (see Forrester Reference Forrester2022, 1279). The term resilience helps Hopkins disclose how fragile and vulnerable existing political economies are in the face of climate change. And he uses it to set a norm around which a new constituency can organize, creating a post-carbon technē. Most importantly, he uses it to set a new horizon. Whereas mitigation focuses on activities that we should stop doing, resilience norms, in Hopkins’s use, are alternative practices that prefigure a carbon-free way of life while enhancing adaptive capacities. Hopkins’s three criteria for resilience include (1) democratic decision-making and inclusion, (2) re-skilling, and (3) planning. On this view, it is not possible to address climate change simply by substituting a new form of fuel or energy. Rather, the very practices of everyday life require transformation. Individuals and communities are resilient to the extent that they are involved in deciding, planning, and constructing carbon-free social relations and infrastructures. This is far from a return to equilibrium but requires broad social transformation.
We can amplify this democratic theory by turning to the CCA, who provide guidance on egalitarian decision-making norms. Scholars have distinguished two types of “horizontalism” among camp activists: (i) organic horizontality (OH) and (ii) horizontal decision-making (HDM) (Feigenbaum, Frenzel, and McCurdy Reference Feigenbaum, Frenzel and McCurdy2013, 159). OH refers to implicit forms of decentralized democracy that enable social movement groups to function. HDM, in contrast, is explicit and formalized. HDM typically has three core components: affinity groups, spokescouncils, and consensus decision-making (Cornell Reference Cornell2011, 37; Feigenbaum, Frenzel, and McCurdy Reference Feigenbaum, Frenzel and McCurdy2013, 168; Maeckelbergh Reference Maeckelbergh2009, 43–53). These components go back at least to US anti-nuclear movements in the 1970s (Epstein Reference Epstein1991, 1–20; Feigenbaum, Frenzel, and McCurdy Reference Feigenbaum, Frenzel and McCurdy2013, 55).
The spokescouncil form is seen as more durable than public assemblies and seeks to incorporate both participatory and representative practices (Sande Reference Sande2022, 81–3). The basic idea is that, within a large group of people, whether in a temporary convergence space or a more permanent community, all participants should have a voice, whether that means proposing, affirming, or negating a proposal. The general structure involves forming affinity groups of six to eight people before or during camps to work on specific issues. Affinity groups are often housed in different “neighborhoods” of the camps, meaning that the spatial layout is also meant to contribute to democracy. The groups pick a representative or spokesperson, and these “spokes” meet with representatives from other groups at spokescouncil meetings. A spokesperson from each affinity group then presents their ideas to the larger group and reports back; the process is repeated until decisions are made. Norms of consensus drive decision-making, both in small and large groups (Maeckelbergh Reference Maeckelbergh2009, 50). Consensus has sometimes meant unanimity, or “true consensus,” but in recent years, groups have loosened the unanimity requirement. For instance, Occupy Wall Street employed a “modified consensus” of 90% (Bray Reference Bray2013, 83). The representative dimension means that people need not participate in every meeting (Maeckelbergh Reference Maeckelbergh2009, 50).
While these alternative norms have thus far not broken through in a way to displace dominant hierarchical norms, they are beginning to scale up. The most recent UN IPCC reports, for example, now place a strong emphasis on participatory democracy and community inclusion as a necessary precondition for making carbon-free norms stick. Yet if existing built environments and infrastructures are imbued with older norms, they are likely to persist. Recognizing this, the Transition movement and the CCA also seek to challenge and construct alternative built environments.
The Built Environment
In the 1990s, disruptive ecological activism was in many ways oriented around the prevention of “grey infrastructure,” especially new roads and airport runways (Doherty Reference Doherty1999a, 276–7). Protests were particularly prevalent in England, beginning in 1992 at Twyford Down, which was followed by at least eleven other large protests throughout the country, culminating in Manchester between 1995 and 1997 (Doherty Reference Doherty1999a). Activists used spectacular, dramatic protests to draw public attention to government spending on such infrastructure. Protesters impeded construction sites, contractor offices, shareholder meetings, and urban centers (Doherty Reference Doherty1999b, 78). As activists stated at the time, the aim was not only to create traffic jams or affect policy but “to create windows into a future world” (Do or Die Editorial Collective 1998, 38, 53, note 36). Much of the climate camps’ activism in the 2000s continued this repertoire, focusing on impeding airport expansion at major hubs such as Heathrow (Schlembach Reference Schlembach2011, 204–5).
In different ways, however, the Transition Towns and Climate Camps also recognize that disruption is insufficient. They propose alternative green and blue infrastructure and do so in a way that promotes the involvement and participation of ordinary people in design, stewardship, and reconstruction. This is also connected to ideas of self-development and re-skilling that are central to both prefigurative politics and Young’s structural injustice theory. For instance, transition initiatives seek to involve people in reconstructing the built environment in accordance with the principles and practices of “permaculture.” According to Hopkins, permaculture was developed in the 1970s, around the time of the oil crisis. It is based on old-growth or “climax” forests, which have persisted for centuries and require little to no human intervention. They are primarily self-sustaining. The name combines the terms “permanent” and “culture” and can also be considered in contrast to monoculture, which has led to significant ecological degradation via large-scale industrial agriculture (Hopkins Reference Hopkins2008, 137–40). The idea of old-growth forests is that complex ecosystems function without heavy human intervention. While human societies and communities require human energy inputs, Transition advocates argue that energy use could be vastly reduced. “Permaculture,” according to Hopkins, “can be thought of as the design ‘glue’ and the ethical foundations we use to underpin Transition work, to stick together all the elements of a post-peak [oil] settlement” (Hopkins Reference Hopkins2008, 137). The Transition movement therefore focuses its work, in part, on developing built environments that are both carbon-free and self-sufficient. However, it is also crucial that those using these environments are involved in their design, construction, reconstruction, and maintenance. Part of what counts as participation, then, involves people actually planning and building physical infrastructures. In his Transition Handbook, Hopkins refers, in part, to the idea of a “vernacular architecture” to describe the sort of participation and involvement he has in mind.
The Climate Camps are more temporary, so can not develop built environments over months, years, and decades like TTs can. However, because of their temporary nature, they reveal the essential “prototypes” of infrastructure necessary to underpin and enable protest and political demonstrations. There are typically four infrastructures within the climate camps: (1) media and communication infrastructures, (2) protest action infrastructures, (3) governance infrastructures, and (4) recreation infrastructures (Feigenbaum, Frenzel, and McCurdy Reference Feigenbaum, Frenzel and McCurdy2013).
Notably, these require a range of skills beyond those typically required for the common forms of decision-making associated with participatory democracy. In doing so, they expand the range of people who may contribute. For example, protest camps require tents, plumbing, media centers, and recreation and childcare facilities. People who provide such labor can be described as engaged in “direct action” to develop post-carbon relations and infrastructures (Harding Reference Harding2015, 149–55). Within the climate camps, some militant actors describe actions of care and infrastructure maintenance as apolitical. In contrast, feminists and anarchists in the camps view such work as direct action—a standpoint more conducive to climate egalitarianism (Harding Reference Harding2015).
Social Positions
There are a range of possible ways to analyze the function of social positions in counter-structural climate movements. Here, I focus on two categories that climate action groups help us rethink: consumer and producer. The idea of the consumer is sometimes seen primarily as a harmful, apolitical category, a social position that represents waste and self-interest. Relatedly, the activity of consumption itself is viewed only as compensatory, that is, as an activity that primarily functions to compensate for alienation in other spheres of life, especially work (see Soper Reference Soper2020, 56, for a critique of this view). Yet the power of one’s structural position as a consumer or producer is more expansive than often realized and includes both disruptive and prefigurative dimensions.
Boycotts and strikes are the more familiar parts of the repertoire of disruptive action and derive, respectively, from the positions of consumer and producer. Boycotts involve the withdrawal of purchasing, investment, and financial power, interrupting the circulation and exchange of capital, while strikes tend to withdraw labor power—interrupting the production of capital. Both tactics can enhance the bargaining power of even the most marginalized citizens. They can also exact material and moral sanctions on offending institutions while at the same time building participants’ sense of efficacy and dignity, as Martin Luther King Jr., argued in his defense of consumer boycotts (Reference King2010, 152). Combined, the effects of such actions can help erode existing regimes. In the case of the fossil-fuel regime, one idea advanced in recent years is identifying and boycotting banks that finance the fossil-fuel industry. Whereas divestment campaigns have focused on stigmatizing fossil-fuel firms, boycotts have targeted the banks that finance them (Shue Reference Shue2022, 128–30). Strikes in particular economic sectors—especially electricity—could become effective in challenging fossil-fuel dominance (Huber Reference Huber2022, 233–42), but scholars have shown that workers are unlikely to engage in these tactics unless alternative forms of production and work become available—which the idea of a “just transition” was originally meant to address (Cha Reference Cha2024). What might alternatives to existing forms of consumption and production look like?
The Transition movement tends to recognize that people are both consumers and producers but has tried to expand the social scripts associated with these terms. To be a consumer, on this view, one must first become aware that many current practices rely on cheap fossil fuels as their primary energy source. In seeking to refrain from this mode of consumption, however, Transition advocates do not advocate a new ascetic ideal. Instead, they seek to imagine different ways of consuming that would be less destructive but still fulfill people’s needs for recreation, fun, and interpersonal interaction. This is why some participants speak of the Transition movement as one of “collaborative consumption” (Hopkins Reference Hopkins2011, 77).
At the same time, Transition initiatives also recognize that central to modern capitalist societies has been a “deskilling” process that separates most citizens from the technologies that enable their everyday lives (Braverman Reference Braverman1974; Young Reference Young1990, 214–22). As a result, Hopkins writes that re-skilling is also crucial to the Transition Movement’s notion of resilience and he seeks to expand the notion of what it means to be a producer. His concept of production is primarily encompassed by Iris Young’s two principles of justice—self-determination and self-development. To be a producer is to take part in the decisions that affect oneself and one’s community—self-determination. However, engaging in the actual work required to construct and modify the built environment in a climate-resilient manner is also essential and contributes to self-development. It can often involve engaging in a process of “material” or “visceral” participation with the non-human world and the built environment (Schlosberg and Craven Reference Schlosberg and Craven2019).
In general, an alternative view of production might accord with the idea of “fractal responsibility,” in which collective action is divided up, to the extent possible, into meaningful and localizable activities that people can do, while knowing they are contributing to a broader, valuable project (Maguire Reference Maguire2025, 3, 9). One need not be producing a commodity in the traditional sense of laboring production but might be providing care and service work that support broader goals of climate mitigation and resilience. Low-carbon jobs are not only those directly related to renewable energy, for example, but also include teaching and caring professions (see Aronoff et al. Reference Aronoff, Battistoni, Cohen and Riofrancos2019, ch. 2). What counts as a “green job,” in other words, might be expanded within a counter-structural framework.
For both the Transition and Climate Camp movements, however, the ability to bring about these alternatives is impeded by the production imperatives of capitalist accumulation and the market-based forms of regulation that constitute it. These run on very long supply chains, creating great geographical distance between production and consumption and masking many of the exploitative relations along the commodity chain (Hopkins Reference Hopkins2008, 14). Markets are also highly “anarchic” or volatile, because they exhibit a high degree of “oil dependency”—the opposite of resilience (14). They leave many people insecure in their jobs and alienated from decision-making processes. Such practices tend to rely on an underlying assumption that the unintended consequences of everyday market-based activities aggregate into a set of consequences that is beneficial. Claims for a spontaneous order, however, are belied by the fact that the unintended consequences of much of the history of capitalist orders have been destructive rather than salutary (Malm Reference Malm2016, 1–2). To counter such unintended consequences, disruptive and prefigurative politics can play distinct roles.
Unintended Consequences
The structure of capitalist production, consumption, and exchange tends to produce two unintended, yet common outcomes, in most sectors of the economy: monopolization and privatization. Large-scale firms tend to concentrate and centralize power, especially in the face of state regulation (Masin-Peters Reference Masin-Peters2023, 26–36). The energy sector is no exception, with a great deal of concentration in the firms that control most of the world’s oil wealth and are the highest emitters—often referred to as the “oil majors” or “carbon majors” (Heede Reference Heede2014). At the same time, privatization is a common outcome of market-based societies, as firms capture the value of resources that were previously held as a common resource. Disruptive ecological politics tends to target both of these trends. For instance, targeting and holding responsible the carbon majors has been crucial to the kayaktivism studied by Michael Goodhart (Reference Goodhart2023, 557–8). And breaking monopoly control over energy has been central to opening up windows of opportunity for community energy groups and renewable energy cooperatives (Huybrechts and Mertens Reference Huybrechts and Mertens2014). However, if these windows are filled by new market entrants who are simply following the rules of the game, then structural change will not occur but revert back to a more competitive market-based system (Anfinson Reference Anfinson2023). Therefore, disruptive protests against market anarchy do not simply take the form of anti-monopoly but are also anti-privatization, in the sense that they resist attempts to make energy resources subject to the imperatives of capital accumulation, extraction, and profit. This too opens up windows of opportunity for community energy groups and other forms of social innovation in contrast to market innovation. What might these alternatives look like?
A pillar of the Transition movement is the idea of planning (Hopkins Reference Hopkins2011, 45). Planning incorporates both a focus on the built environment and norms but is also vital in addressing, in part, the unintended consequences that produce structures. Both the Climate Camps and Transition initiatives acknowledge the role of uncertainty and contingency, albeit to varying degrees. Climate Camp participants are more likely to target the intentional actions of fossil-fuel companies and nation-states in bringing about a climate crisis. At the same time, Transition initiatives tend to focus more on quotidian habits. Nevertheless, each recognizes the uncertainty of responding to the problem. Both, therefore, try to build flexible planning into their movements. Climate Camp activists have been highly adept at planning both their camps and more spectacular forms of protest against summit meetings of world leaders. Rather than spontaneous protests, Climate Camps often spend months, and sometimes years, planning their actions (Maeckelbergh Reference Maeckelbergh2009). But, as noted, the uncertainty of action means that flexibility is essential, so it is “planned” into the very structure of agenda-setting and decision-making.
Planning manifests itself in the Transition movement via Energy Descent Action Plans (EDAPs). Several steps are involved, starting with collecting data about one’s community energy consumption and then studying local municipal strategic plans. Meetings ask: “What would your community look like in fifteen or twenty years if it were emitting drastically less CO2?” (Hopkins Reference Hopkins2008, 173). Working groups are then established to provide more detail for various sectors, from food to transportation to energy (174). Plans are drafted and combined with visual and narrative media to communicate the ideas. Ultimately, the point is to present the EDAPs to the public and to elected officials (174–5).
One way to think about the focus on planning in the Transition movement is as part of a tradition centered around “participatory planning” (Cordelli Reference Cordelli2025, 1818–9; Davis Reference Davis2018, 151). Although planning throughout much of the twentieth century was associated with the centralized economies of state socialism, there has also been a participatory, decentralized tradition of planning. Urban theorist Mike Davis highlights the “quasi-utopian” planning efforts undertaken by the Allende government in Chile during the 1970s. Using new computer technologies that were emerging at the time, Allende’s government “aimed to solidify worker participation in management, not only by putting the workers in charge of the system but also by incorporating worker knowledge in its software” (Davis Reference Davis2018, 152). The project failed; however, Davis argues that today’s computer technology provides the “requisite informatics for democratic planning” (Reference Davis2018, 152). The use of technology, ranging from listservs to discussion forums to digital media, has been central to the planning of climate camps and the EDAPs of the Transition movement. This use of technology is one way that counter-structural movements have sought to overcome the problem of scale. But the Internet does not seem to have enabled a major upscaling of these alternatives, at least thus far. How then might we think about questions of scale in relation to counter-structural action, especially given the scale-oriented definition of prefigurative politics above?
The very approach I have argued for, in which disruption opens up windows of opportunity for prefigurative innovations, implies a scaling up of the latter. But other considerations of scale remain, since “diffusion” and upscaling neither occur automatically nor necessarily advance egalitarian aims.
Counter-Structures and Scaling Pathways
The original Transition Handbook (Hopkins Reference Hopkins2008) contains a section titled “Issues of Scale” that attempts to get at this important question. “I have come to think,” Hopkins writes, “that the ideal scale for a Transition Initiative is one over which you feel you can have an influence,” suggesting towns or urban neighborhoods in the range of 5,000 people. Further, he cautions against “try[ing] to start too big, thinking at the scale of Transition Yorkshire or Transition Scotland” (Reference Hopkins2008, 144). At the same time, he writes, “I do not wish to be seen as idealising local communities: I have lived in deeply insular rural communities, and am familiar with their not-so-good as well as their good qualities” (72). Instead, Hopkins frames his small-scale focus as an empirical matter, premised on the “inevitable” end of cheap oil (72–3). However, deeper into the twenty-first century, there seems to be no end in sight to cheap fuel. Given this situation, the question remains about the connections among different scales, and Hopkins himself concedes that all are needed, from international protocols to national legislation (75). Yet for the latter to happen, civil society needs to act, as governments “are reactive, not proactive” and responses at scale are much “more likely in an environment where community responses are abundant and vibrant” (76). Yet the common response by Hopkins and others about the need for multi-scalar solutions still does not tell us much about how scaling can work.
The first point to note is that an energy transition away from fossil fuels must differ from prior transitions. Fossil fuels did not replace existing energy sources but were added to them. Given the damaging effects of fossil fuels, however, it makes little sense to add renewables on top of fossil fuels, even if the latter are curbed (Hughes Reference Hughes2021). A green transition will require the cessation of fossil-fuel drilling and burning altogether. This has implications for the question of scale, since scaling up alternatives is not sufficient—the incumbent fossil-fuel regime must also be downscaled and challenged. As I have argued throughout, disruptive politics plays a crucial role here. But downscaling can only potentially open, not determine, windows of opportunity. How do these alternatives get upscaled? I want to suggest three pathways.
The first is through the radical flank effect (Malm Reference Malm2021). Actions like blockades are quite costly for participants and can disrupt everyday routines. As such, they are likely to be castigated as too extreme or radical by advocates of incumbent structures. If movements that seem more moderate at first can successfully distinguish themselves from radical positions, they are likely to become more palatable for adoption at a larger scale. At the same time, the specter and demands of the radical position remain. Andreas Malm defends such a view for climate politics, drawing on the historical precedent of the Black Power movement, which made the Civil Rights Movement appear more moderate (Reference Malm2021). In the present case, TTs might serve as a more moderate position regarding tactics of disruption. Yet, for an alternative to take hold at scale, it typically needs to meet a broader set of needs.
A second aspect of scaling, then, might be called reallocation. One of the more promising movements for scaling up has centered not just on divestment but also on the reallocation of investment through reinvestment in more justice-oriented initiatives and by providing material resources to the general population through co-benefits. The Red Nation in the United States is an indigenous movement that combines both disruptive and prefigurative organizing. Central to their view is a divest-invest strategy that calls for drawing down funds, especially from military and carceral spending, to reinvest in communities that have suffered racial and ecological injustice (Red Nation 2021). Such a move is important because prefigurative experiments need material resources to both emerge and persist. Rather than subsidizing ecologically damaging industries and firms, the idea is to reallocate resources to more sustainable projects.
Other movements have also called for co-benefits. One of the more interesting examples has been by climate justice groups in California, who argued that climate change activism should not focus solely on carbon reduction but also on demonstrating how fossil-fuel emissions affect public health (Méndez Reference Méndez2020). They did this in part by linking the burning of fossil fuels not just to carbon dioxide but also to other “co-pollutants” that have had harmful health effects. For example, in addition to carbon dioxide, the burning of fossil fuels emits carbon monoxide, ground-level ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and other particulate matter. These co-pollutants pose a range of health risks, including chest pain, lung inflammation, bronchitis, asthma, and increased risks of cardiovascular disease and cancer (Méndez Reference Méndez2020, 21). Some groups have linked carbon reduction strategies to these public health concerns, which has been somewhat successful in garnering greater support. Activists have also pushed to siphon off resources from cap-and-trade schemes, in which polluting firms pay into a carbon offset fund, allocating a percentage of those resources to a community benefits fund. These funds can then be used to help create green jobs, enhance public transit, and amplify urban afforestation and renewable energy initiatives (Méndez Reference Méndez2020, 116). The co-benefits approach has not been foregrounded as extensively by the Transition movement or the Climate Camps, but it is an important upscaling strategy.
Finally, the time frame of energy transitions is an important consideration for scaling. Typically, large-scale transitions take generations to develop (Geels Reference Geels2002). One way of thinking about long-term transitions is in terms of “scaling deep,” in which people work on certain “leverage points” that represent sites of intervention in a structure or system. Deep leverage points are places “where small interventions can lead to large change” and are typically described in terms of root problems (Abson et al. Reference Abson, Fischer, Leventon, Newig, Schomerus, Vilsmaier and Von Wehrden2017). Surface leverage points refer to “interventions that are easy to make, but have limited potential for transformational change” (Abson et al. Reference Abson, Fischer, Leventon, Newig, Schomerus, Vilsmaier and Von Wehrden2017, 30). Tax incentives are one example of a surface leverage point. Such interventions can sometimes transform habits in the long run. But this is more likely to work only when connected to deep leverage points that focus on “underpinning values, goals, and world views of actors that shape the emergent direction to which a system is oriented” (Abson et al. Reference Abson, Fischer, Leventon, Newig, Schomerus, Vilsmaier and Von Wehrden2017, 32). It is precisely these deep leverage points that I have identified in spelling out the core elements of a structure and a counter-structure. Disruptive politics often shifts surface-level leverage points, affecting deeper ones indirectly, while prefigurative politics works directly on these deeper leverage points.
Up to this point, however, I have discussed how counter-structural movements might scale up during windows of opportunity. But how do disruptive and prefigurative repertoires operate prior to and after windows of opportunity open and close? And how is collective action made possible, sustained, and renewed under structural conditions that actively produce powerlessness? In the next section, I argue that counter-structural action can rebuild and sustain collective agency under conditions of powerlessness by enabling practical mobilization and a sense of efficacy before, during, and after windows of opportunity open and close.
OVERCOMING HELPLESSNESS
Research in the social sciences has increasingly noted the problem of “climate apathy” (Norgaard Reference Norgaard2019, 236) or “climate change helplessness,” in which “the gravity of the threat may be too great for people to believe their actions matter” (Salomon, Preston, and Tannenbaum Reference Salomon, Preston and Tannenbaum2017, 15). How might counter-structural action help address climate apathy? The Transition movement foregrounds this problem, linking inefficacy to feelings of powerlessness: “Among the key barriers to engagement are the sense of powerlessness, isolation, and overwhelm that environmental issues can often generate. These do not leave people in a place from which they can generate action…” (Hopkins Reference Hopkins2008, 142). Self-efficacy, defined by Hopkins as “an individual’s estimate or personal judgment of his or her own ability to succeed in reaching a specific goal,” is central to Transition initiatives (Reference Hopkins2008, 92).
Efficacy tends to be much lower in contexts with hierarchical power structures and is closely linked to political quiescence, whereas a high sense of efficacy is correlated with greater political mobilization. In contrast to “fixed” notions, one’s sense of efficacy can be developed over time and changed through “sociopolitical learning” or the “observations and experiences” we internalize during participation (Beaumont Reference Beaumont2011). Counter-structural climate movements offer a similarly dynamic model of internal efficacy. By deliberately cultivating it, they can increase movement durability, strengthening movements before and after critical junctures (see also Breines Reference Breines1982, xi–xii).
The interaction between disruption and prefiguration can be a crucial precondition for protest. While disruptions may appear spontaneous, they are often the result of extensive and egalitarian planning (Maeckelbergh Reference Maeckelbergh2009; Polletta Reference Polletta2002, 6–7, 205). Prefigurative spaces typically provide the “activist infrastructure” necessary for such planning. The anti-summit demonstrations against the G8 in 2005, for example, relied upon the HoriZone Camp, which was planned far in advance using spokescouncil procedures (Maeckelbergh Reference Maeckelbergh2009, 52–3). The spokescouncil model helped participants identify protest tactics, goals, and commonalities (Feigenbaum, Frenzel, and McCurdy Reference Feigenbaum, Frenzel and McCurdy2013, 129). Activists underscored the effects of egalitarian practices on their sense of agency, noting they created “a sense of potency…something which the legal channels of protest had failed to create” (cited in Feigenbaum, Frenzel, and McCurdy Reference Feigenbaum, Frenzel and McCurdy2013, 55; see also Zamora and Herzog Reference Zamora and Herzog2022). A sense of efficacy can also sometimes be created among nonparticipants, helping movements to scale. Free spaces can do this via a “demonstration effect,” in which nonparticipants become motivated by seeing alternative exemplars (see Lane Reference Lane2012, 181–2, on exemplarity). “The whole point of the work we do here,” one activist has stated, “is to show that another way is possible…If we can do it, others can too. That is the whole point” (Schlosberg and Craven Reference Schlosberg and Craven2019, 82).
Finally, counter-structures can enhance a sense of agency even in the face of failure and intransigence from dominant structures. One activist in Bristol, England, stated that “Our backs are to the wall…And so it feels important in terms of my own psychology and morale to do some creative things as well…So, it doesn’t feel as though they [disruption and prefiguration] exist side by side. It just feels as though they’re an integrated part of a whole…” (cited in de Moor Reference de Moor2020, 138). The sentiment voiced here might give additional meaning to the idea of “resilience” discussed earlier. Counter-structural action can help build the political resilience of climate activists. Although TTs and Climate Camps have not been able to stop carbon emissions, and many individual experiments have not succeeded, activism on climate change is relatively new in absolute terms, and movements’ influence can remain in the face of failure and after organizations themselves disappear (Staggenborg Reference Staggenborg2020, 206). This can happen because Transition movements cultivate efficacy continuously, even in the absence of windows of opportunity. The sense of agency has spillover effects on disruption, sometimes amplifying participant militancy and functioning as “protest gateways,” rather than “get-aways.” Within environmental movements in Bristol, England, for example, “Alternatives have functioned as gateways into resistance, and through resistance, many activists have developed a desire to develop alternatives” (de Moor Reference de Moor2020, 137).
EVALUATING DISRUPTIVE AND PREFIGURATIVE CLIMATE ACTION
Up to this point, I have used the cases of TTs and the CCA to illustrate the broad array of collective action repertoires that are available for addressing structural injustice. Existing accounts tend to focus on disruption, so I have tried to broaden the theoretical possibilities of structural injustice theory by drawing on empirical cases. However, the theory of counter-structure developed here can also be used to evaluate movements and their demands.Footnote 3 The idea here is twofold. First, theorists and activists might assess climate action according to whether it integrates, or at least seeks to integrate, prefigurative and disruptive repertoires, either within movement organizations or across them. Second, movements can assess themselves according to which elements of the existing or alternative structure they are primarily focused on. Is a particular movement focused primarily on rules and norms, on the built environment, on rethinking social positions, or on addressing the unintended consequences of market anarchy?
Regarding the first point, we might critically assess a tendency to downplay the role of militant protest in favor of building alternatives. For example, in the Transition Handbook, Rob Hopkins has a theory of the fossil-fuel regime’s erosion, but it is based primarily on the “inevitable” exogenous shock of “peak oil.” Hopkins adopted an influential idea in the early 2000s that the world supply of oil was reaching its limit and that an energy crisis and transition were inevitable. The Transition alternatives were, in part, developed in response to peak oil. But by relying only on an exogenous shock to open windows of opportunity, Hopkins overlooked the role that disruptive action could play in eroding the existing regime. In contrast, a counter-structural analysis would push the Transition movement toward an emphasis on the political agency of disruptive politics in creating critical junctures.
On the other hand, Hopkins rightly points to a problem that has weakened disruptive climate action movements: what scholars have increasingly called “imaginary lock-in” or the inability to imagine desired futures. As one recent study notes, “even within climate movements, alternative visions tend to remain marginalized relative to more ‘pragmatic’ ideas…[and] visions tend to focus on what needs to be opposed or on apocalyptic scenarios to be avoided” (de Moor et al. Reference de Moor, Wahlström, Schack, Uba and Wennerhag2026, 8). Activists and scholars sometimes assume that urgency overrides the articulation of a desirable future, while others express concern that it is politicians, not social movements, who need to come up with solutions and “do their job” (de Moor et al. Reference de Moor, Wahlström, Schack, Uba and Wennerhag2026, 87). Yet we can better evaluate these claims from the standpoint of counter-structural action, which shows that disruption alone is likely to result in reversion to the status quo in the absence of a developed alternative.
As one participant at the Heathrow encampment reflected, “we had opened up an existing political space from where to challenge the status quo, but it was being filled with a message that was no longer our own” (Shift Magazine 2010, 7). The Camp had become, for some, too focused on gaining publicity through mass action. The same participant questioned, “Where is our political vision? Are we just a movement against carbon?” (Shift Magazine 2010, 8–9). Without an alternative to “Green capitalism,” another set of participants noted, “we leave ourselves exposed to recuperation by existing political organizations and elites (whether from Right or Left)” (Anarchist Federation 2010, 18). My suggestion is that articulating a shared horizon through prefigurative politics could help address this vulnerability of disruption-focused actions (see also Forrester Reference Forrester2022, 1287).
With respect to the second evaluative point, movements might assess whether and to what extent they are addressing each dimension of counter-structural action and how this might weaken or strengthen their existing practices. My own view is that movements that address the built environment are especially necessary today, in part because this has been overlooked in much of our theory, which has focused a great deal on norms and normalization, but also because the built environment presents a particularly durable set of constraints and may appear as the most difficult to change. Theorists and activists might therefore assess the extent to which they are addressing this element of structural injustice. And they might work more intently to disrupt grey infrastructure and experiment with green and blue infrastructures, such as permaculture. Transforming the built environment tends to be the domain of climate adaptation measures, and at least in the current moment, voters are more in favor of adaptation over mitigation practices, “because the former are much more likely to be experienced as a practical benefit” (Beckert Reference Beckert2025, 165). This route could therefore provide a good initial place for movement ideas to diffuse more broadly.
OBJECTIONS
Although the category of counter-structural action is an ideal type, a legitimate objection might still be raised that there is greater conflict between the two repertoires than I have described. In some Climate Camps, for example, disputes between disruption and prefiguration have emerged around questions of urgency. As one scholar glosses the point: “The Earth cannot wait while an alternative way of doing things is peacefully prefigured” (Harding Reference Harding2015, 141). The urgency objection is clearly important, yet one implication of the analysis presented here is that “urgent” action can sometimes prolong the problem and delay the implementation of a solution. For example, dominant structures can quickly close windows of opportunity if there are no viable alternatives, creating legitimacy problems for future attempts at changing the status quo. A better understanding of the mutually beneficial relations among counter-structural actors can focus more attention and resources on alternatives.
A related issue concerns the role of authoritarianism. Small-scale initiatives can seem naive in the face of authoritarian political regimes. There is some validity to this claim but only if authoritarianism is understood as a phenomenon of government actors. State repression against movements is a major threat. But there is another way of thinking about the authoritarianism question. A common refrain of prefigurative accounts of means and ends is that authoritarian relations in the public sphere result, in part, from their pervasive presence in everyday habits (Sande Reference Sande2022, 24–5). The point of the egalitarian decision-making processes described above is to address quotidian hierarchies and to immerse people in egalitarian decision-making and agenda-setting. Democratizing the private sphere, on this view, will likely have positive spillover effects.
Terminological and methodological objections might still be raised. First, do we really need a concept of counter-structure at all? Why not simply describe the modes of collective action in terms of existing ideas of disruption and prefiguration? Second, why frame the problem around questions of structure, rather than collective action problems of conflict and cooperation?
Regarding the first question, adding the adjective “counter-structural” to collective action has several advantages. The idea of collective action on its own does not tell us much about what the action is doing—it does not orient us toward specific tasks. This is a problem on the ground, as one of the issues encountered by some Transition movements has been a lack of division of labor within groups, as well as a need for greater concrete actions (Staggenborg Reference Staggenborg2020, 206–9). The idea of a counter-structure and its different elements, however, provides an orientation as to what the collective action is trying to accomplish. As noted in the previous section, participants may at one or another time be oriented toward addressing formal policy, norms, the built environment, or be engaged in planning activities. Each mode of collective action requires different skills and practices but can nevertheless contribute to addressing structural injustices.
Regarding collective action problems, they have become “the standard analytical model” for environmental issues, especially the tragedy of the commons framework (Gardiner Reference Gardiner2011, 28). Standard collective action models assume temporally bound actors who can be compelled to overcome free-riding and engage in cooperation. But actors and victims of climate change are temporally dispersed: not-yet-existent future generations will be victims of past and present generations’ emissions. There is a “tyranny of the contemporary” over future generations (Gardiner Reference Gardiner2011, 36). Thus, the possibility of cooperation between the actors in the dilemma cannot be assumed. Yet even the most sophisticated works on collective action, such as Stephen Gardiner’s “perfect storm” (Reference Gardiner2011), which does account for the intergenerational dimension, tend to overlook the historical and structural elements of power that make some groups more vulnerable than others (Sparenborg Reference Sparenborg2025, 1102–8). The nature of climate injustice, therefore, suggests that deep path dependencies and “lock-ins” from one generation to the next are more persuasive ways of conceiving the issue. Structural injustice theory clarifies the different elements of lock-ins and the prefigurative dimension of counter-structural action explicitly seeks to theorize desired futures.
A second issue with the tragedy of the commons analysis is that it tends to view the problem as rooted in global population dynamics. In his seminal article, for example, Garrett Hardin writes that “No technical solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all” (Reference Hardin1968, 1248). This sort of analysis is not helpful regarding carbon emissions, which are not a problem of global populations but, in large part, a result of the per capita emissions of affluent populations in countries such as the United States (Gardiner Reference Gardiner2011, 453–4). Rather than focusing on overpopulation, the structural injustice approach helps us see quotidian habits of consumption and production in affluent countries as central to climate change.
Finally, what about the question of responsibility, which has been central not only to Iris Young’s way of responding to structural injustice but also to much of the subsequent climate injustice literature influenced by her work? Young’s commitment to a focus on responsibility grew out of her methodological commitments as a “normative critical theorist” (Reference Young2002). On such an approach, one’s normative concepts, problems, and claims emerge from an analysis of social movements and their implicit and explicit values. The focus on responsibility emerged from Young’s attention to anti-sweatshop activists on her campus at the University of Chicago (Reference Young2004). She found that anti-sweatshop activists articulated an implicit critique of liability-based models of responsibility, which university administrators and others used to deny responsibility for global sweatshop conditions. In turn, she also found that they worked with a broader ideal of political responsibility. Yet responsibility need not be the only concept we can derive or analyze with respect to social movements. In this article, I have, in part, followed Clarissa Hayward’s (Reference Hayward2018) approach, which analyzes social movement actions not in terms of the moral claims they articulate but in terms of the organizational forms they mobilize. This is still consistent with the methodology of normative critical theory but addresses a different aspect of social movement activity. Both are needed to deal with the scope of contemporary injustice.
CONCLUSION
Fossil-fuel dependence and carbon lock-in are produced and maintained, in part, through routine practices that entrench carbon-based norms into the habits and infrastructures of everyday life. To the extent that these practices produce structural injustice, change at the level of everyday routine is crucial, alongside broad-scale institutional transformation. I have argued that these changes can be stimulated, though not guaranteed, by disruptive and prefigurative politics operating conjointly. The concept of counter-structural action captures this integration of repertoires. The idea is that neither is sufficient on its own: whereas disruption can open windows of opportunity, prefigurative alternatives can potentially fill them (Törnberg Reference Törnberg2021). Without viable alternatives, dominant fossil-fuel regimes will likely return to a dangerous status quo (Geels Reference Geels2014; Geels and Schot Reference Geels and Schot2007).
I have set out several pathways by which alternatives might infiltrate and displace dominant structural elements. The first is “downscaling” initiated by disruptive politics within dominant fossil energy structures. The second is a “radical flank” effect that can make alternatives seem attractive, and the third is a path of reallocation and reinvestment. Finally, through the use of egalitarian practices, I suggest that counter-structural action can create and sustain a sense of agency over the long, often disappointing, life cycle of political protest and social transition. This is especially crucial given the prevalence of “climate apathy” today (Norgaard Reference Norgaard2019, 236; Salomon, Preston, and Tannenbaum Reference Salomon, Preston and Tannenbaum2017).
The implications of this research are both theoretical and practical. Theoretically, the case studies of Transition Towns and Camps for Climate Action broaden the scope of collective actions that structural injustice theory might analyze and defend. Both disruptive and prefigurative politics should be central to the question of how to address structural injustice. Practically, the theoretical concepts of counter-structure and counter-structural action can help activists, organizers, and theorists evaluate movement strategies and demands. In addition to assessing the extent to which a movement is attuned to the interaction of repertoires, the four elements of a counter-structure may orient concrete actions and scaffold a division of labor among climate activists. Depending on one’s social positions, skills, and resources, one might work to challenge and create new rules, while other participants might embody new, post-carbon norms, and yet others might turn their attention to reimagining and reconstructing the built environment. Such a division of labor can orient citizens politically amid institutional failures, enabling a sense of contribution and agency (Maguire Reference Maguire2025). An egalitarian energy transition is unlikely to occur in the absence of these conditions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2023 Boston University Political Science Research Workshop, the 2024 APSA Annual Meeting, and the 2024 Harvard Social Studies Research Workshop. I thank the audiences at these events and Erin Tatz, Sonny Kim, Gaby Nair, and Vatsal Naresh for the invitations. Benjamin McKean and Sally Haslanger served as insightful discussants. I am grateful to David Armitage and my colleagues in Social Studies at Harvard for creating a fantastic research and teaching environment. I also thank Julie Rose and the three anonymous APSR reviewers for exceptionally careful and constructive feedback. Conversations with PJ Brendese, Angus Burgin, Kevin Duong, Vatsal Naresh, Alasia Nuti, and Matt Reichert strengthened the argument. Patrick Giamario and Whitney McIntosh provided invaluable editorial advice on the final revision. I cannot thank Gina Schouten enough for her mentorship and detailed feedback, which shaped the project throughout. Anna Wherry, Eleanor Masin-Peters, and the late Herbert Peters offered encouragement and support at many stages. My late advisor, William E. Connolly, supported this research over many years, and I hope the final result does some justice to the experimental spirit and political urgency of his work.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The author declares no ethical issues or conflicts of interest in this research.
ETHICAL STANDARDS
The author affirms this research did not involve human participants.
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