The Opening of Historical Futures

Futures, 2021

This chapter examines and critiques the changing socio-political implications that accompany the shift from the concept of a singular future to the pluralization of futures. From the 1960s onwards, the emergence of multiple futures enabled larger sections of society to envision and create ‘alternative futures’ to the status quo. In this chapter Gidley brings to bear the democratizing effect of multiple possible futures upon the evolution of theory and practice across academic disciplines. In particular, Gidley illuminates how the theory and practice of futures studies has paralleled developments in the evolution of science and the social sciences, to incorporate critical futures, cultural futures, participatory futures, and integral futures. She concludes with reflections about how the field of futures studies will continue to evolve so that it can diversely represent the future conceptualizations and actions of scholars, practitioners and researchers, globally.

2022

In this chapter, I argued that while “make America great again” and “Friday’s for future” point in opposing directions in terms of politics, they are very much alike with respect to their shared concepts of time and their combination of past, present, and future. This also applies to optimistic and pessimistic views on the future, which, in general, share the same basic narrative: that the future has to be “modeled” on decisions taken today, that narratives about the past inform decisions about the future. Modern utopias and dystopias offer a solution to the same problem: they provide strong narratives that “channel” the radical openness of time in all three directions (past, present, and future). In doing so, they provide the present with an enormous power not only over times to come, but also over the past. However, modern historiography since its early days has written about breaks, about new epochs, even, and establishing analogies is its favorite way of doing so. “Analogy” does not mean that history repeats itself, but, so the story goes, ruptures do. In a way, they become less intimidating, because something similar already occurred “back then”. Nevertheless, the event as such is exposed as a rupture, and if “the present” is in the middle of a rupture or an epochal shift, phrases like “we do not know how the world will look tomorrow, after the event” are often heard. No comfort here. In the course of argumentation, I made three points: first, within a fractioned society, history is becoming increasingly important, inside and outside academia. Second, from a medieval perspective, and in line with Simon (2019a), I discussed how modern historical time considered as a process tames the future. Third, with a processual understanding of time during the Sattelzeit comes the break, the rupture, the epoch, even, and what follows is not the outcome of a development. There is some taming here, too, by pointing to analogies in history. However, even analogies underline that unexpected ruptures have taken place and will take place again, without foreseeable consequences.

Futures, 1996

Futures & Foresight Science, 2020

This commentary is written as much for individuals already established in the field as it is for scholars beyond the relatively small world of futures studies. In addition to underscoring the programmatic agenda for research implied by Schoemaker’s (2020) new work and the curricular implications of the article for how students of futures and history are trained, our reply provides additional context regarding the scholarly conversations and scientific controversies that animate and bring meaning to research in futures studies and provides us with our collective sense of self as an academic community. At core, the notion that learning about the construction of history aids in constructing futures (e.g., through scenario planning), and, in parallel, that learning about the construction of futures aids in (re)constructing the past (e.g., through historical assessment), implicates a symbiotic analytical and academic practice world at the interface between history and futures studies that has yet to be realized through intensified intellectual traffic between these two mutually reinforcing enterprises.

Futures, 1990

Futures, 1993

World Futures Review

This article reflects on four decades of activity in the futures arena. Overall, it tracks a process of deepening insight and growing appreciation for the richness and complexity of life in all its myriad forms. Coupled with this is what I have come to regard as our inescapable responsibility for being active in ways that protect and nurture our natural and cultural heritage, both of which are under-sustained and ever-deepening threat. To do so, we need to recover a clear perception of how extreme and “abnormal” our present situation vis-à-vis Planet Earth really is. This entails removing the veils from our eyes, setting aside convenient fictions, and gaining the courage to face reality. This view can also be framed as “finding ways forward in impossible times.” It is a kind of “sub-text” for the kind of Futures Studies I have pursued. Part 1 provides an overview of early influences and experiences. Part 2 summarizes some core learnings. Part 3 provides examples of the kinds of “dep...

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2024

Futures, 1993

The evolution of futures studies since World War II has followed a well defined pattern: at each phase of its development, futures studies has used the dominant relationship between Western and non-Western cultures to define itself and delineate its scope and areas of research. By an examination of abstract journals, study guides and established works in the field, this article tries to show that futures studies is increasingly becoming an instrument for the marginalization of non-Western cultures from the future. Both wittingly and unwittingly, an elite of white, mainly American, male scholars are being promoted-not just to the exclusion of non-Western writers and thinkers on the future but also by almost total exclusion of women-as 'authorities' whose work decides what is and what is not important in futures studies.

2016

Kalle Pihlainen Editorial: Futures for the past (‘This is a stub’) pp. 315-318 FREE E-PRINT ACCESS TO EDITORIAL HERE: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/PyzssC93QB7GtHArZRMi/full * Hans Kellner Narrativity and dialectics revisited pp. 319-333 * Martin L. Davies Cognitive inadequacy: history and the technocratic management of an artificial world pp. 334-351 * Berber Bevernage Tales of pastness and contemporaneity: on the politics of time in history and anthropology pp. 352-374 * Jonas Ahlskog Michael Oakeshott and Hayden White on the practical and the historical past pp. 375-394 * María Inés La Greca Hayden White and Joan W. Scott’s feminist history: the practical past, the political present and an open future pp. 395-413 * Kalle Pihlainen The distinction of history: on valuing the insularity of the historical past pp. 414-432 * Ilkka Lähteenmäki and Tatu Virta The Finnish Twitter war: the Winter War experienced through the #sota39 project and its implications for historiography pp. 433-453 * Ketil Knutsen A history didactic experiment: the TV series Anno in a dramatist perspective pp. 454-468 *