Futures‑oriented writing and research
by Tony Stevenson and
Sohail Inayatullah
The Communication Centre,
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane Queensland, Australia.
1998
In the many years of
being engaged in futures research, attending futures studies
conferences, workshops and courses, we remain surprised and dismayed at
the lack of "futures" in futures research. Papers, while scholarly,
often merely restate the present, with the last page or the final
paragraph devoted to the future. Thinking about the future appears to
be an unnatural, but not impossible, act, unlike thinking about the
past.
In editing the World
Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) Futures Bulletin and in
planning the 1997 WFSF Brisbane World conference, we devised a list of
what we believe are the criteria for futures-oriented research and
writing. Writers, however, often commented that the list scared them
off. This is partly the effect we desired. Writing about the future
should be novel and rigorous. There are established methods and theories
about the future. These need to be understood. Excellence in a
particular field of knowledge does not necessarily mean one can say
sensible things about the future or the study of the future.
At the same time, this
list is written not to close the futures field/discourse or framework
but to help evolve its knowledge base, to help create some semblance of
shared views on what constitutes futures research, to distinguish it.
We invite surfers of
metafuture.org to offer their own approaches as to what
futures-oriented writing and research should ideally be about.
In our view,
futures-oriented writing and research should constitute:
(1)
visions/scenarios of the future, preferably more than a generation
ahead, and preferably alternative visions/scenarios;
(2) methodologies
of futures studies, that is: (a) how to engage in a study of the future
or alternative futures; (b) ways to research how people and
civilizations (as well as other units of analysis) study or otherwise
think about the future; or (c) analyses of procedures for forecasting
and anticipating;
(3)
epistemological assumptions of studies of the future, for example, the
layers of meaning hidden in various forecasts;
(4) means for
attaining a vision of the future, for example, backcasting (certainly
going beyond strategic planning and strategy in general);
(5) explicit
consideration of the longer‑term (from 25 to 1000 years, from one to
seven to 30 generations) consequences of today's actions;
(6) implications
for the present and past of particular visions and scenarios;
(7) theories of
social, spiritual, economic and technological change that directly
examine where and how society is moving and can move to, ie the shape of
time, space and perception;
(8) analysis of
events and moments in human history where a different future could have
been followed and why it was not, that is, historical or genealogical
alternative futures;
(9) deconstruction
of texts explicitly on the future to show what is missing from a
particular scenario, image of the future, that is, critical and
value‑oriented analyses of a particular future or alternative futures;
(10) novel social
analysis or social innovation that can create different or
unconventional futures different from today;
(11) differences
and similarities in how civilizations, men and women imagine, create and
know the future including historical changes in the idea and the
practice of the future;
(12) how ought the
future be like and who should make such decisions including discussions
of the ethics of forecasting.
Thus, in our minds, to
be futures‑oriented does not involve a critique, analysis or other
social commentary which dwells mainly on the past or present, merely
making an oblique reference to the future. It should integrate into the
very work itself an explicit consideration of the future (however
defined), or how to get to the future, or a range of futures or visions.
Traditional academic papers often conclude with a mention of the future;
futures studies research should begin with the future.
Futures studies may
examine such contexts and issues, preferably across civilizations,
disciplines, fields and paradigms. It does not exclude history, but
definitely includes foresight, preferably longer than the next financial
year, the next election, or the next five‑year plan. Indeed, a central
dimension to futures research is contesting traditional perspectives on
temporality and exploring alternative futures of time.
Thus while we believe
it is important to have a wide-ranging debate on theories and methods of
futures studies, futures research in itself must be quite specific about
what it is and what it is not. Futures research can certainly use
history, and other disciplines, and it can borrow from the research
perspectives of different perspectives - including action-research,
feminist, empiricist, interpretive or poststructural - but it cannot and
should not be reduced to a particular research tradition. It is, and has
become, if not its own research tradition, at least, a research
perspective or framework.