Pursuing prefigurative collective action on climate change

This article reviews recent empirical and theoretical work on prefigurative climate action, emphasizing psychological dimensions and implications of constructive methods that contrast with a politics of opposition to the status quo. We synthesize recent descriptions of prefigurative actions on climate change, highlighting four common characteristics or principles identified from recent literature. Emphasizing the importance of means-ends coherence, we discuss prefigurative climate actions from a systems perspective across social ecological levels of analysis. Finally, we consider the potency and potential for scaling prefigurative climate actions and their effects, including the long-term path of transformation envisioned by these modes of action and possible limitations. The aim of this review is to inform further contributions from psychology to the knowledge base on prefiguration, climate action, and social transformation.