Abstract
There has always been a critical, emancipatory tradition
within futures studies. Although those voices can still
be heard, there has been a growing tendency for futures
studies to be driven by more utilitarian needs in
business and government. Whilst it is positive that
futures thinking and research is increasingly valued
within corporate and policy-making settings, much of that
work appears to lack genuine plurality of worldviews and
interests.
The paper traces the changing contexts for futures
research over the past 25 years. It argues that futures
research needs to be viewed as part of the
re-politicisation - in the Habermasian sense - of
technocratic decision-making. It suggests that there are
three particular reasons for revisiting the need for
criticality in futures research: the increasing
acknowledgement of systemic interrelatedness (ecological,
social, economic), a growth in the forward-looking
socio-economic paradigm that permeates both business and
policy, and the challenge of theory development. Drawing
on social theory and futures research, we suggest three
pathways for revived critical futures research:
socio-technical practices, future-oriented dialectics,
and socio-economic imaginaries. As a result, the paper
calls for development in futures studies that would
dialectically integrate and overcome the dichotomy
between instrumentalisation and (critical) theorising
that can be currently understood as somewhat
antagonistic. In order to find a balance between these
antagonistic dimensions, futures research should be more
engaged in enabling critique and revealing assumptions
and interests.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 91-104 |
Journal | Futures |
Volume | 71 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2015 |
MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Keywords
- critical theory
- social theory
- critical futures research