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This chapter examines the role of forms of future planning in contemporary statist systems of knowledge creation. It suggests that forms of foresight and future anticipation have replaced older planning logics, while reiterating a statist concern with governmental knowledge and legibility of space and time. Future experts appear to be centrally involved in the constitution of the category of the “future,” a category that itself appears indiscernible and unknowable without certain synthetic, overarching, or conjuring forms of analysis. It has been suggested that the catastrophic charge and the call to urgency are what lend authority to particular forms of futuristic expertise. The chapter proposes, instead, that advanced capitalist societies make use of particular forms of future governance in which forms of expertise on and about the future play the role of preserving capitalist structures and management logics in the face of disturbing and undesired evolutions. Future expertise is thus involved in a governmental stabilization of the present, and oftentimes, its potential role as a basis for constructive social action is swallowed up by what appears as a deeply conservative function.

Context Both climatic extremes and land-use change constitute severe threats to biodiversity, but their interactive effects remain poorly understood. In forest ecosystems, the effects of climatic extremes can be exacerbated at forest edges. Objectives We explored the hypothesis that an extreme summer drought reduced the richness and coverage of old-growth forest species, particularly in forest patches with high edge exposure. Methods Using a high-resolution spatially explicit precipitation dataset, we could detect variability in drought intensity during the summer drought of 2018. We selected 60 old-growth boreal forest patches in central Sweden that differed in their level of drought intensity and amount of edge exposure. The year after the drought, we surveyed red-listed and old-growth forest indicator species of vascular plants, lichens and bryophytes. We assessed if species richness, composition, and coverage were related to drought intensity, edge exposure, and their interaction. Results Species richness was negatively related to drought intensity in forest patches with a high edge exposure, but not in patches with less edge exposure. Patterns differed among organism groups and were strongest for cyanolichens, epiphytes associated with high-pH bark, and species occurring on convex substrates such as trees and logs. Conclusions Our results show that the effects of an extreme climatic event on forest species can vary strongly across a landscape. Edge exposed old-growth forest patches are more at risk under extreme climatic events than those in continuous forests. This suggest that maintaining buffer zones around forest patches with high conservation values should be an important conservation measure.

Granitic rocks are durable materials sought after for the production of road and railroad aggregates. Granitic bedrock commonly, however, includes gabbroic components, which may enhance or decrease the aggregate performance. This study evaluates the variation in resistance to fragmentation (Los Angeles value, LA) and wear/abrasion (micro-Deval value, MDE) for the fraction 10/14 mm of gabbro in different metamorphic states. Samples were collected along a 150-km profile where metamorphic conditions grade from epidote–amphibolite to high-pressure granulite-facies, and the degree of metamorphic recrystallization varies with the amount of hydrous fluid. Rocks with no or incipient metamorphic recrystallization preserving their primary igneous fabric and interlocking texture meet the criteria for both asphalt base course and track ballast in railroad, with LA and MDE values below 25% and 14%, respectively. Mafic granulite and fine-grained amphibolite have LA values below 25% and can be used in unbound layers. Mafic granulites crystallize at high temperatures but commonly preserve a relict igneous texture due to limited hydration. Coarse-grained amphibolite and migmatitic amphibolite have the poorest performance. They recrystallized at hydrous conditions, leading to complete recrystallization, grain coarsening, and loss of interlocking igneous texture. This study shows that both temperature and infiltration of hydrous fluids significantly affect the technical properties. Even at high metamorphic temperatures, gabbroic rocks may yield aggregates of high technical performance. At hydrous conditions, however, recrystallization results in rock aggregates suitable for unbound layers only. The variation in metamorphic grade and hydration is easily assessed by the geologist in the field and by using standard petrographic microscopy.

This article examines the sociologist Daniel Bell's interest in future research. Future research, to Bell, had as its particular purpose to ensure forms of coordination and steering acceptable to a liberal society. By examining Bell's interest in future research and the activities of the Commission on the Year 2000, the essay proposes that future research played a role in Cold War intellectual history as a particular form of planning for the liberal polity. This idea of planning a liberal society changed decisively, however, between 1965 and 1975.

This paper takes its point of departure in recent literature around the Mont Pèlerin Society and the construction of the new Nobel Prize in economics, which was awarded to Milton Friedman in 1976. By following the reception of Friedman’s Prize in the Swedish debate, I argue that neoliberalism in Sweden was not a product of transnational circulation, but of endogenous debate and dissident economists in the mature social democrat welfare state. In the final section, I discuss the difference between social democracy and neoliberalism as ideal type construction and as empirical phenomenon, and I suggest that once the central idea of a social form of democracy was lost, social democracy could become neoliberal.

The Knaften area is situated in the northern part of the Bothnian Basin in the central Svecofennian province of Sweden. Sedimentary rocks are here conformably intercalated with mafic to intermediat...

"That Very Big Computer Known as Human Civilisation" : [Review of:] Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus – A Brief History of Tomorrow (Random House, London, 2017)

This chapter charts the development of the Future boardgame as a means to demonstrate the subtle combination of representations of science and narratives of imagination and storytelling in constructions of futures. In advocating the study of material histories of the future (as to opposed to studying the cultural history of future visions), this chapter identifies the central role of the future as artefact. Future artefacts, it concludes, are a central way of analysing repertoires of futures-making between scienticity and imagination, and they also provide important stories of circulation and exchange.

The concept of futurity requires critical perspectives that go beyond the literary. This introduction sets the context for the cross-disciplinary conversations between the arts and humanities, social sciences, and STEM disciplines on futures-thinking that are the subject of this volume, The introduction identifies the core themes of power, action, and shifting temporal modalities that underpin constructions of futurity and practices of futures-making, It outlines current debates over the extent of human agency within these larger processes. The second half of the introduction contextualizes the essays in the book within five thematic sections and demonstrates the increasing centrality of futures-thinking in all disciplines.

The Precambrian shield in southern Sweden exposes a granitic bedrock segment that represents a part of an ancient eroded mountain belt and expose a gradual change in metamorphic grade from cold (800°C) and partially molten sections at the west coast (Möller and Andersson, 2018). This area – the Eastern Segment – offers a large scale study of the interdependence of metamorphism, deformation, partial melting, and functional properties of crushed rock aggregates.In the petrological community, it is well-known that the evolution of a metamorphic unit (e.g. a high-pressure unit) with respect to pressure, temperature, time, and deformation holds key information on its tectonic history. It has rarely been emphasized, however, that the same factors determine the physical properties of the rock and thus, its technical properties. Basic research in metamorphic petrology thus contributes with a fundament to applied and technical science, e.g. by providing data that lead to quarrying of proper materials.This study assesses the variations of technical properties with the metamorphic state, primarily metamorphic temperature and partial melting during metamorphism. Our first results show the correlation between the petrological characteristics and technical properties of felsic orthogneiss within a migmatized eclogite-bearing terrane and its high-pressure granulite-bearing footwall.Measurements include the Los Angeles and Micro-Deval value tests. The Los Angeles value is a measure of the resistance to fragmentation (EN 1097-2, 2010). The Micro-Deval test measures the resistance to wear.High values of the Los Angeles and Micro-Deval analyses for felsic orthogneiss in the eclogite-bearing domain reflect poor technical properties and are largely linked to that the rocks underwent partial melting. Orthogneisses in the footwall, which recrystallized under high-temperature, dry conditions, and without partial melting, tend to have lower values. This group includes high-quality rocks for the production of aggregates suitable for asphalt base courses and unbound road layers.Micro-textures in the orthogneisses are linked with these metamorphic conditions. The clinopyroxene-bearing orthogneisses have complex grain boundaries and micro-perthitic feldspars, finer average grain size, lower biotite content, and absence of migmatitic segregation or penetrative veining. These textures in the footwall orthogneisses contrast with those in the migmatitic orthogneisses from the eclogite-bearing domain, which have a coarser average grain size, even-grained and granoblastic texture, and lack of perthitic texture in feldspars. Thus, these petrographic parameters govern the technical differences.Our ongoing research addresses the relations between macro-fabric, micro-texture and technical properties of felsic orthogneiss and metagabbro, respectively, along 120 km profile across the metamorphic field gradient from greenschist- to high-pressure granulite-facies in the Eastern Segment.

A major challenge to plant growth and survival are changes in temperature and diminishing water supply. During acute temperature and water stress, plants often express stress proteins, such as dehydrins, which are intrinsically disordered hydrophilic proteins. In this article, we investigated how the dehydrin Lti30 from Arabidopsis thaliana stabilizes membrane systems that are exposed to large changes in hydration. We also compared the effects of Lti30 on membranes with those of the simple osmolytes urea and trimethylamine N-oxide. Using X-ray diffraction and solid-state NMR, we studied lipid-protein self-assembly at varying hydration levels. We made the following observations: 1) the association of Lti30 with anionic membranes relies on electrostatic attraction, and the protein is located in the bilayer interfacial membrane region; 2) Lti30 can stabilize the lamellar multilayer structure, making it insensitive to variations in water content; 3) in lipid systems with a composition similar to those present in some seeds and plants, dehydrin can prevent the formation of nonlamellar phases upon drying, which may be crucial for maintaining membrane integrity; and 4) Lti30 stabilizes bilayer structures both at high and low water contents, whereas the small osmolyte molecules mainly prevent dehydration-induced transitions. These results corroborate the idea that dehydrins are part of a sensitive and multifaceted regulatory mechanism that protects plant cells against stress.

Background: Umeå University Faculty of Medicine (UUFM), Sweden, has a regionalized medical program in which students spend the final 2½ years of their undergraduate degree in district hospitals. In late 2018, UUFM started a "rural stream" pilot exposing students to smaller rural locations. Methods: The objectives are to deliver the benefits for medical education and rural workforce development that have been observed in longitudinal integrated clerkships (LICs) while maintaining consistency between learning experiences in the main campus, regional campuses, and rural locations. This article compares the UUFM rural stream with those typical of the LICs described in the medical education literature. Comparisons are made in terms of the four key criteria for LIC success, and additional characteristics including peer and interprofessional learning, "'continuity," and curriculum development. Results: The rural stream has elements of length, immersion, position in the degree program, and community engagement that are both similar to, and different from, LICs. Key challenges are to ensure that participating students create close relationships with host medical facilities and communities. The rural stream also has some potential advantages, particularly in relation to team learning. Discussion: Alternatives to the LIC rural stream model as typically described in the literature may be required to allow for immersive medical education to occur in smaller rural communities and to be suitable for medical schools with more traditional approaches to education.

This article examines the history of the Royal Dutch Shell scenarios, from the first horizon scan exercise in 1967. It proposes that forward-looking scenarios were integrated in planning at Shell as tools for managing uncertainty in global time and space relations of oil after 1967. Specifically, the article proposes that Shell strategically used the scenarios to respond to arguments, emanating both from OPEC and from the Club of Rome, of oil as a limited resource. Shell used the scenarios to create images of a future oil market dominated by innovation, creativity, and sustainable solutions.

The Swedish Social Democratic welfare state system that peaked during the 1970s was based on a common belief in the existence of strong and potent state with strong tendencies toward a de-commodification. However, with the Palme government in 1982, Social democrats accepted the idea that the welfare state should be reoriented around a prevailing notion of individualization, and be a vehicle in particular for a middle-class strategy of social mobility tightly entangled with consumer preference. In subsequent decades, a complex and multi-motivational process of privatization was carried out as a de facto alliance between Left and Right. In the 2000s, the Party has abandoned control of the welfare state as part of its reformist strategy or “power resource”.

Lower continental plates of collision zones are normally inaccessible and their properties inferred by geophysical surveying. By contrast, the eastern margin of the deeply eroded 1-billion-year-old Sveconorwegian Orogen in Scandinavia exposes an underthrusting lower continental plate that records the metamorphic evolution and behaviour during collisional orogeny. A 200 km wide structurally coherent belt of the mid- to upper levels of the underthrusting lower plate, composed of Proterozoic igneous protoliths, exposes the gradual transition from unmetamorphosed to high-P granulite facies. Metamorphic assemblages in Fe–Ti-rich metagabbro in a continuous ~120 km wide transect across the lower continental plate define a regional metamorphic zoning by eight zones. Significant metamorphic recrystallization is first recorded at conditions of lower to middle amphibolite facies (550–600°C), progressing successively towards the contact with the upper plate to high-P granulite facies at ~850°C and 10–11 kbar, the latter corresponding to ~40 km depth. An eclogite-bearing tectonic terrane, detached from the leading edge of the underthrusting plate and extruded back along the interface with the overlying crust, occurs just beneath the lithotectonic contact of the overriding plate. The gradual metamorphic transition demonstrates that, with the exception of the eclogite-bearing terrane, the underthrusting plate remained essentially structurally coherent despite highly ductile deformation and partial melting. The metamorphic rocks record that, by and large, the underthrusting plate underwent short-lived metamorphic recrystallization and deformation that started first at an advanced stage of collision, at c. 980–970 Ma; this is in contrast to the eclogite-bearing terrane which records more protracted metamorphic recrystallization both through prograde metamorphism and decompression. The investigated section is the first described in situ exposure of a coherent underthrusting lower continental plate, and defines a metamorphic field gradient at higher temperatures and P/T than the classical Barrovian style. The exposed section provides potential for increasing understanding of the thermal evolution, rheology, petrophysical properties and distribution of volatiles in an elsewhere inaccessible part of Earth's collisional systems. The data demonstrate that the underthrusting lower continental plate differs in metamorphic character from other parts of orogenic systems in that the crust is relatively dry, competent and responds by significant metamorphic recrystallization first at elevated temperatures (middle amphibolite facies) and that metamorphic recrystallization is largely coupled to deformation that facilitates the entry of hydrous fluids into the crust. (Less)

Granitic rocks constitute a global raw material key asset for aggregate production. Their technical performance is, however, highly variable and knowledge on the aggregate functionality of granites in different geological settings is incomplete. This study investigates systematic variations in resistance to fragmentation (Los Angeles value) and wear (Micro-Deval value) for granitic rocks along a 150 km long east–west trending metamorphic gradient across the Eastern Segment of the Sveconorwegian Province in Scandinavia. In essence, the metamorphic gradient represents a transition from pristine granite to stromatic migmatitic orthogneiss and granulite. Along this profile, the aggregate functionality is governed by the behaviour of quartz and feldspar during metamorphic recrystallisation. Two critical metamorphic variables were identified: temperature and hydrous fluids. Recrystallisation at comparably low metamorphic temperatures, ≤ 600 °C, result in irregular grain shapes and fine-grained quartz aggregates that in turn result in low Los Angeles and Micro-Deval values, i.e., high-quality materials for road construction. At higher metamorphic temperatures, > 600 °C, grain coarsening and smoothening of grain boundaries result in significantly higher Los Angeles and Micro-Deval values. At high temperatures, high availability of hydrous fluids promoted extensive partial melting and post-deformational crystallisation which resulted in remarkably poor aggregate performance, with Los Angeles and Micro-Deval values consistently above 40% and 12%, respectively. In contrast, deformation at high temperature but low availability of hydrous fluids resulted in inequigranular textures with high proportions of very fine-sized crystals, interlocking textures, and aggregates with Los Angeles and Micro-Deval values down to 19% and 5%. The consistent variation in metamorphic microtextures correlate with macro-fabrics at the outcrop scale, allowing assessment of aggregate functionality already in the field. For migmatitic gneisses, the proportion and strain state of leucosome are the most critical parameters.

The Sveconorwegian orogeny is a representative Grenvillian orogeny, involving multiphase reworking of the margin of Fennoscandia at the end of the Mesoproterozoic, between 1150 and 900 Ma. The asthenosphere was possibly c. 100C hotter than today, having a major impact on tectonic style in the lithosphere. Two geodynamic models compete: a collision between Fennoscandia and another continent to contribute to Rodinia assembly, versus an accretionary (tectonic switch) model at the margin of Fennoscandia. Here we provide an analysis of the structural, metamorphic and magmatic record across the entire Sveconorwegian orogenic belt, through time, supporting the collision model. Convergence-related metamorphism is observed in narrow belts, with increasingly high pressure signature eastwards, towards the (cratonic) Fennoscandia foreland, with time. Peak P-T-t conditions of 1.15 GPa - 850 C - 1145 Ma are recorded in the Bamble-Kongsberg Lithotectonic Units, 1.5 GPa - 740 C - 1046 Ma in the Idefjorden Unit, and 1.8 GPa - 870 C - 990 Ma in the Eastern Segment. Peak metamorphism is followed by isothermal decompression and partial melting. These events are attributed to the pull effect of delamination and foundering of the heavy continental lithospheric mantle in three steps towards the east. This delamination is paired with the formation of an orogenic plateau, growing with time from the centre of the orogen towards the east and west, and associated with protracted mantle upwelling, magmatism, crustal melting, low-pressure metamorphism and upper crustal extension. Orogenic plateau construction started with bimodal magmatism between 1280 and 1145 Ma, overlapping with demonstrably extensional intramontane basin sedimentation between c. 1210 and 1050 Ma, in the Telemarkia Lithotectonic Unit. In the east of the orogen, it was eventually limited by the mid crustal ramp (Mylonite Zone) overlying the Eastern Segment. In the westernmost exposed part of the orogen, the 1066–1020 Ma Sirdal-Feda high-K calc-alkaline magmatic suite is interpreted as voluminous crustal melting (with inherited volcanic arc signature), coeval with (mantle-derived) mafic underplating. This magmatism was followed by two ferroan plutonic suites, the hydrous hornblende-biotite granite (HBG) suite between 990 and 925 Ma and the anhydrous anorthosite-mangerite-charnockite (AMC) suite between 935 and 915 Ma. Anorthosite plutons contain xenocrystic 1040 Ma-old high-alumina orthopyroxene megacrysts, and therefore are interpreted as product of remelting (at 1.3 GPa) of 1040 Ma mafic underplates. The crust was affected by prolonged granulite-facies metamorphism peaking twice in ultra-high temperature conditions, at 0.6 GPa - 920 C - 1029–1006 Ma and 0.4 GPa - 920 C - 930 Ma, overlapping in time with magmatism. The extreme temperature in the crust implies that the asthenosphere was located directly under the crust between 1030 and 925 Ma, under the orogenic plateau. The consistent shallow pressure of c. 0.4 GPa for emplacement of (exposed) plutons and granulite-facies metamorphism between 1066 and 925 Ma implies little differential exhumation at the end of orogeny. A wide orogenic plateau speaks up for a collision orogeny. Isotopically, the Oaxaquia margin of Amazonia is possibly conjugate to the Sveconorwegian margin of Fennoscandia during collision.

The interpretation of whether a dated metamorphic zircon generation grew during the prograde, peak or retrograde stage of a metamorphic cycle is critical to geological interpretation. This study documents a case at Herrestad, in the eastern part of the 1±0 Ga Sveconorwegian Province, involving progressive metamorphic recrystallization of gabbro to garnet amphibolite and associated behaviour of Zr-bearing minerals. In this case, textures show that baddeleyite is by far the main source of Zr for metamorphic zircon growth. The amount of metamorphic zircon formed was primarily controlled by the degree of metamorphic recrystallization, which in turn was controlled by deformation and the presence of a fluid as a transport medium. Zircon in the Herrestad rocks shows a range of morphologies and internal textures at different degrees of metamorphic recrystallization. Igneous zircon occurs together with baddeleyite in coarse-grained olivine-free facies of the gabbro. Metamorphic polycrystalline zircon rims on baddeleyite and minute (

In 1975, the OECD created a research committee entitled ‘Interfutures. Research project into the development of the advanced industrial societies in harmony with the developing world’. The purpose of Interfutures was to examine how the new tools of futures research could be put to use in order to shape strategies for dealing with a new phenomenon of ‘interdependence’, and to set out a ‘long-term vision’ of the Western world. This article argues that Interfutures was appointed in order to draft an alternative image of the future to two radical visions of the early 1970s. The first was the so-called New International Economic Order. The second was the 1972 Club of Rome report,The limits to growth. As a response to these two visions, Interfutures presented a vision of globalization as a process oriented around an expanding world market, piloted by Western interests and continued resource extraction.

This paper examines a struggle over the future use of Nordic forests, which took place from 2009 to 2012 within a major research program, Future Forests—Sustainable Strategies under Uncertainty and Risk, organized and funded by Mistra, The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research. We explore the role of strategic environmental research in societal constructions of long-term challenges and future risks. Specifically, we draw attention to the role played by environmental research in the creation of future images that become dominant for how societies structure action for the long term. We also show that this process is on several accounts problematic. Research labeled “strategic” or “relevant” is intended to manage long-term risks and challenges in a sustainable way, by taking into account the “open” and “plural” nature of the future. The case of Future Forests suggests, rather, that by contributing to the emergence of dominant future images, environmental research is entangled with a process of gradual consensus creation around what may be highly selective or biased narratives of the long term, which may conceal or postpone key forms of future conflict.

The aim of this study was to explore and analyze how cultural/ethnic minority students at a Swedish medical school perceive and make sense of educational experiences they viewed as related to their minority position. We interviewed 18 medical students (10 women, and 8 men), who self-identified as coming from minority backgrounds. Data were collected and analyzed simultaneously, inspired by constructivist grounded theory methodology. The concepts ‘everyday racism’ and ‘racial microaggressions’ served as a theoretical framework for understanding how inequities were experienced and understood. Participants described regularly encountering subtle adverse treatment from supervisors, peers, staff, and patients. Lack of support from bystanders was a common dimension of their stories. These experiences marked interviewees' status as ‘Other’ and made them feel less worthy as medical students. Interviewees struggled to make sense of being downgraded, excluded, and discerned as different, but seldom used terms like being a victim of discrimination or racism. Instead, they found other explanations by individualizing, renaming, and relativizing their experiences. Our results indicate that racialized minority medical students encounter repeated practices that, either intentionally or inadvertently, convey disregard and sometimes contempt based on ideas about racial and/or cultural ‘Otherness’. However, most hesitated to name the behaviors and comments experienced as “discriminatory” or “racist”, likely because of prevailing ideas about Sweden and, in particular, medical school as exempt from racism, and beliefs that racial discrimination can only be intentional. To counteract this educational climate of exclusion medical school leadership should provide supervisors, students, and staff with theoretical concepts for understanding discrimination and racism, encourage them to engage in critical self-reflection on their roles in racist power relations, and offer training for bystanders to become allies to victims of racism.

La prospective est un objet pertinent pour comprendre les savoirs et formes d’expertises mobilisés par l’action étatique contemporaine. Reposant sur des instruments allant de la quantification à la production qualitative de scénarios d’avenir, elle émerge dans les années 1960 comme une forme d’expertise étatique capable d’ordonner le champ social et gouverner le changement social. La catégorie du « long terme » résulte d’une circulation des idées entre les courants français et américains qui travaillent au tournant des années 1950 et 1960 à la formulation d’outils pour la décision. Cet article étudie cette genèse et l’institutionnalisation du long terme au sein de l’État français, depuis le « souci d’avenir » qui préoccupe les élites au lendemain de la crise de Mai 1968 jusqu’au développement de l’État-stratège. Les idées managériales qui ont donné naissance à la prospective se transforment dans une réflexion de New Public Management, attestant de la continuité d’une approche entrepreneuriale de l’État. Governing the “long-term” Prospective and the bureaucratic production of futures in France This article examines French strategic foresight, as a way of understanding how contemporary states make use of forms of knowledge and expertise in order to govern. Relying on a series of quantitative and qualitative instruments, from indicators to scenarios, prospective emerged in the 1960s as a particular form of state expertise aiming at ordering social change. In doing so, it carried mainly American conceptions of decision science into the French planning apparatus. This article examines the genesis of the “long-term” as a category of action, and as question of bureaucratic future production in the French state. It examines the changing role of prospective from the preoccupation with societal discontinuity and social crisis in the wake of 1968, to the more recent concern with strategic planning. It argues that the strategic state understands change as directly related to its own agency, and governing the long term thus implies governing and managing the state itself. La constitution du long terme comme horizon d’action de l’État : ordonner le changement social Genèse d’une expertise de l’action Étendre la prévision au social : le cas des indicateurs sociaux Des récits d’avenir qualitatifs dans des contextes de crise sociale La prospective stratégique : le souci d’avenir de l’État Des méthodes issues du secteur privé au secours de la bureaucratie De la planification à la stratégie gouvernementale : prospective et réforme de l’État La création de France Stratégie Conclusion

Chapter 2 argues that historians need to reengage with the future. It sets out an argument for a transnational history of the future, which traces the circulation of forms of predictive knowledge and expertise as part of a powered claim on world futures and as part of a struggle over the “long term.” The chapter revisits Reinhart Koselleck’s futures past argument, and challenges it universalistic dimensions while engaging with a recent historiography of world temporalities, modernization, and planning. It also proposes that a situated and contextualized intellectual history of the future is an alternative to the “annalistics of the long term” proposed recently, and that such a history needs to be thought of as a situated intellectual history of circulation of forms of knowledge and expertise deeply involved with world making.

Chapter 5 examines the experiments at RAND with a new future science, a “general theory of the future” capable of explaining human behavior and developments in the world system. The chapter also proposes that futurology was ultimately a failure, as forms of prediction encountered criticism and led to a discussion within RAND about the epistemological limits of prediction. As RAND researchers came to the conclusion that prediction was logically and empirically impossible, they shifted their interest from predicting actual future developments, to prediction as a “social technology”—a means of actively intervening into the future and shape desirable developments. The chapter zeroes in on the so called Delphi technology, the purpose of which was to conduct an expert driven reflection on a possible wide array of social futures, produce judgments on desirable and undesirable futures, and choose the optimal future.

The book proposes that the Cold War period saw a key debate about the future as singular or plural. Forms of Cold War science depicted the future as a closed sphere defined by delimited probabilities, but were challenged by alternative notions of the future as a potentially open realm with limits set only by human creativity. The Cold War was a struggle for temporality between the two different future visions of the two blocs, each armed with its set of predictive technologies, but these were rivaled, from the 1960s on, by future visions emerging from decolonization and the emergence of a set of alternative world futures. Futures research has reflected and enacted this debate. In so doing, it offers a window to the post-war history of the social sciences and of contemporary political ideologies of liberalism and neoliberalism, Marxism and revisionist Marxism, critical-systems thinking, ecologism, and postcolonialism.

Alvin Toffler’s writings encapsulated many of the tensions of futurism: the way that futurology and futures studies oscillated between forms of utopianism and technocracy with global ambitions, and between new forms of activism, on the one hand, and emerging forms of consultancy and paid advice on the other. Paradoxically, in their desire to create new images of the future capable of providing exits from the status quo of the Cold War world, futurists reinvented the technologies of prediction that they had initially rejected, and put them at the basis of a new activity of futures advice. Consultancy was central to the field of futures studies from its inception. For futurists, consultancy was a form of militancy—a potentially world altering expertise that could bypass politics and also escaped the boring halls of academia.

East European futurists were part of the transnational networks of futures research. The Ford Foundation sent Daniel Bell on a study trip in 1960 during which he made contact with some of the key milieus of revisionist Marxist thought: the Polska 2000 group led by Andrej Sicinski as well as the group of sociologists under the leadership of Radovan Richta in Prague. After 1968, futurologists helped introduce forms of management and computer science into the planning systems of the socialist economies under the banner of prognostika. The chapter examines the way that East European futurists used the future as a way of constructing an argument about the need to revise Marxism, and how future research became a space of protest and dissidence.

What marks the idea of the future in the post-war period is not, as historians have suggested, a sudden shift from progress to decline after 1973, but rather, a struggle between conceptions of world temporalities as singular or plural. The chapters of this book have shown that the post-war period was marked by heterogeneous and often times directly rivalling conceptions of the world future. These were marked by the opposition between representations of the future as a teleological and foreseeable narrative of a stage driven logic of modernization, and representations of the future as infinitely plural—because of the variety of human life, politics, and imaginations. The world futures that emanated from the different strands of future research tell an important story of how conceptions of the world, and of human influence on that world, changed during the post-war decades.

The Commission for the Year 2000, created in 1964 in the American Academy of Arts and Science under the chairmanship of Daniel Bell was a key site for the domestication of the predictive technologies developed at RAND, in particular Delphi and the scenario method. Bell moved, in the years of the 1960s, from his notes on the end of ideology at the beginning of the decade to his conclusion that post-industrial society was a society prone to new forms of social conflict and in need of a new mechanism of coordination. Bell thought that he had found this mechanism in the area of forecasting and futures research—activities which might substitute a planning mechanism in American society and provide a new set of “decision tools” for American politics.

The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) took up the theme of the future from its very first seminars devoted to the future of liberty and the role of planning in post-industrial societies. The phrase the “future of liberty” referred not only to the Cold War struggle, but also to the idea that expanding state structures and new patterns of action in liberal democracies posed new conditions for individual freedom and required new means of coordination and control. The spread of futurology by the CCF, the Ford Foundation, and the so called Futuribles project in Paris was a conscious attempt, the chapter proposes, to create a liberal alternative to the theory of history (and future) of Marxism.

Chapter 8 explores the making of futures studies as a counter reaction to futurology and protest against the Cold War world order. Taking as its focus the World Futures Studies Federation, created by the West German journalist and peace activist Robert Jungk and the philosopher and international relations theorist Johan Galtung, the chapter returns to futurism as an interrogation into the nature of humanity, and to the future as a fundamental utopian category. Futures studies were an example of a kind of neo-utopianism, which not only claimed that alternative worlds were possible but also tried to construct new ways of envisioning and realizing such worlds. Futures studies were constructed as a kind of militancy that straddled the boundaries of social science and politics, and mixed in religious and eschatological notions too. Crucial to this enterprise was the willingness to transcend the Cold War world order and create a united Mankind.

Chapter 3 traces the emergence of futurism to a range of writings by intellectuals such as Hannah Arendt, Ossip Flechtheim, and Lewis Mumford immediately after the Second World War. It explains the relevance of the idea, prevalent among key intellectuals after 1945, that the rise of totalitarianism, the invention of the atomic bomb, and the destruction of European Jewry had amounted to a severing of links between past and future that threatened all forms of human being. Humanity found itself in a state of profound moral and cultural crisis, a crisis explained as a complete loss of future. The chapter shows that futurists understood the future as squeezed by a new source of power over time, which they identified in new technologies of prediction and linked to totalitarian tendencies on a world scale.

The Arctic region is the site of a geopolitical scramble for two major future assets: the opening up of the Northeast Passage and access to enormous gas reserves. Meanwhile, many other possible futures define the ongoing struggle to establish claims to the Arctic among a variety of ‘Arctic nations’, including the rights of indigenous people, the preservation of pristine nature, future tourism, and the reestablishing of historical connections with previous colonizing countries in Scandinavia and Russia. The chapter discusses a wide repertoire of future making, including scenario gaming, forecast technologies, and forms of nation branding used as geopolitical instruments for defining expectations and future interests in the Arctic. At a theoretical level, the chapter examines the mutual constitution of imaginaries and interests and highlights ways in which actors attempt to ‘close’ the future by establishing the dominance of particular expectations or scenarios that suit their interests.

Uncertain Futures considers how economic actors visualize the future and decide how to act in conditions of radical uncertainty. It starts from the premise that since dynamic capitalist economies are characterized by relentless innovation and novelty, they exhibit an indeterminacy that cannot be reduced to measurable risk. The organizing question then becomes how economic actors form expectations and make decisions despite the uncertainty they face. The current microfoundations of standard economics cannot handle genuinely uncertain futures. Instead, uncertainty requires an entirely new model of economic reasoning. This edited volume helps lay foundations for this new model by showing how economic actors in practice form expectations in conditions of uncertainty. It draws on groundbreaking research in economic sociology, economics, anthropology, and psychology to present theoretically grounded empirical case studies that demonstrate the role of imaginaries, narratives, and calculative technologies—and their various combinations—in enabling economic actors to form expectations and cope with uncertain futures. The book examines risk management techniques, finance models, and discounted cash-flow models as well as methods of envisaging the future that overtly combine calculation with narrative structure and imaginaries. These include central bank forward guidance, economic forecasts, business plans, visions of technological futures, and new era stories. Considerable attention is given to how these fictional expectations influence actors’ behaviour, coordinate action, and provide the confidence to act, and how they become instruments of power in markets and societies. The market impact of shared calculative devices, social narratives, and contingent imaginaries underlines the rationale for a new form of narrative economics.