Forty years is a long time in publishing, so the journal Futures is to be congratulated not only for having survived this time but also for having continued to break new ground and to maintain its role as the ‘flagship’ journal of the field. That said, the field it represents has passed through several stages and is currently in a state of what might be called ‘structural ambiguity’. Why is this?

A recent study into the State of Play in the Futures Field (SOPIFF) confirms that futures ideas, thinking and methods have diffused into countless different contexts around the world. There are few people anywhere who have not heard the term ‘scenario’ and, indeed, many thousands have actually used them in one or more of many varieties. Similarly, few would nowadays be unaware of the profoundly diminished futures that are heralded almost daily in the world’s news media by the latest reports on climate change, global warming, peak oil and so on.

And yet if we look for evidence of any moderation in the underlying growth dynamic that is driving the current diet of ‘bad news’ then one must say that such evidence is very difficult to find. The point was made rather pointedly by Thomas Friedman in a column in which he suggested that the growth in impacts from a couple of new cities stood to counteract pretty much all of the efforts of those in rich countries to reduce their own environmental impacts. The piece did not mention China’s current dependence on coal for baseline energy, the continued destruction of tropical rainforests or other key factors.

The SOPIFF study should be considered as a pilot study based on a sample of available work so its conclusions are suggestive rather than authoritative. Yet these provisional results do provide a fascinating window on activities worldwide through several novel criteria that include: social interests (in FS work), methods, focal domains and capacity building. Very briefly, the rank order of results in these areas is as follows.

Social interests

1. Pragmatic (here and now, status quo oriented) work
2. Progressive (looking for innovative solutions) work
3. Civilisational (big picture, longer term) work

Methods

1. Systemic (integrating systems thinking and tools)
2. Linear (straightforward extrapolations)
3. Critical (including social construction tools / methods)
4. Integral (systematic and in-depth coverage of ontologically different domains).

Focal domains

1. Structural (dealing with the external collective world)
2. Inter-subjective (dealing with societies and cultures)
3. Behavioural (dealing with individual behaviours)
4. Psychological (dealing with individual interior worlds)

Capacity building

1. Establishing conceptual foundations
2. Focusing on methods and tools
3. Attention to enabling structures and processes
4. Attention to the social legitimations of futures work.

While these categories provide only a simple gloss on a much more detailed picture, they do very clearly show some of what appear to be structural distinctions in the field. To typify the two ‘poles’ of current activity, therefore, we can say that the first of the two following profiles is dominant, while the second characterises only a small minority.

Profile 1:

Pragmatic social interests, systemic and linear methods, structural focus on the collective external world and conceptual / method-and-tool-oriented with respect to capacity building.

Profile 2:

Civilisational social interests, uses of critical and integral methods, considers individual behaviours and meaning-making capacities, and pushes forward beyond methods and tools to consider the social legitimation of futures / foresight work.

While this is an avowedly simple summary, I submit that it fits into an overall picture in which the great majority of futures work being currently undertaken is largely conventional, short-term, pragmatic and therefore, to varying degrees, subordinated to the economic and political powers of the day. If this is correct then what might be called its ‘intervening power’ is minimal and it will do little to serve humanity’s deeper underlying interests. It will not be able to help society ‘change course’ or realise ‘alternative futures’. Profile 2 characterises a very different type of work in that it is clearly more innovative, far-reaching, in-depth and concerned to establish futures / foresight work as a socially validated form of action and work.

One of the most positive things that can be said about the development of futures work in general is that it has given rise to an exceptionally wide range of specialities in many different fields. These, in turn, have in some cases given rise to new university courses with their own literature and journals. So one way of interpreting the performance of the field is to point to its nascent offspring and give it credit for having had some part in their creation. On the other hand, the futures field has had its failures. One of these is the failure to have futures concepts, tools, thinking and appropriate methods incorporated into educational systems as part of parcel of their work and modus operandi. This is not entirely the fault of futurists, of course, since bureaucracies are legendary in their ability to resist innovations of all kinds. Still, the lack of progress here does involve profound social costs such as: lack of awareness of solutions to global problems; arrested capacity in succeeding cohorts of students to respond; much lower levels of support in societies generally for the minority of politicians who would act more effectively, and so on.

To summarise, humanity is now very clearly set on an ‘overshoot and collapse’ trajectory and, over the last forty years, the field of futures and foresight activity has not been able to make a detectable dent in this process. The prospects for humankind and its world grow ever more dystopian. As always, however, the widespread recognition of this fact would certainly galvanise hitherto-unprepared societies to act in far greater concert than is now the case to manage the now-inevitable transitions that lie ahead. If ever there was a time for the species to ‘wake up’ and ‘pay attention’ to the changes being inscribed ever more deeply upon its world, then that time is now.

If we change the focus to the journal Futures, we can see that it has a significant part to play in this process. It has a high quality international board, albeit one that is less involved in policy and decision-making than it was a decade or two ago. For forty years it has showcased new and leading-edge work while, at the same time, attending to the more technical nuts-and-bolts work carried out within the many sub-specialities. It has provided a stream of special issues, some of them highly innovative in their own right and forerunners of later publications that emerged from them. It also has a wide international audience and readership although, once again, the details are unclear due to commercial-in-confidence restrictions that have become more onerous with passing time.

Conclusion

The futures field is at an advanced stage of development internally with a broad suite of tools, methods, practitioners and an impressive literature. Yet the differences that clearly exist between practitioners often seem to become more important than the pressing concerns for humanity’s future that in fact underlie them. Perhaps this is inevitable in any field, the games and traps of the human ego being what they are. Yet, at the same time, the challenge has never been greater to transcend conflicts, disputes and divisions and to re-focus on the dynamics of the transitions ahead.

What is certain is that the latter will test humanity as never before. In this context what the world needs is not inter-tribal rivalry but a coherent, convincing and capable futures / foresight community to help with the many tasks at hand. Whatever the future actually holds, the journal Futures, will have a hand in preparing for it.

Published in Futures 40, 10, 2008, pp. 912-914.

Copyright (C) Richard Slaughter, 2008, all rights reserved.