Critical Future Studies - A thematic Introduction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.2018102151Keywords:
IntroductionAbstract
Our 2017 essay “Beyond Capitalist Realism – Why We Need Critical Future Studies” (Goode & Godhe 2017), published in this journal, was intended as both a provocation and an invitation to scholars concerned with the ways in which cultural texts not only represent the future, but also actively shape it by opening up or closing down imaginative possibilities. The essays collected in this special section are both responses to our invitation and provocations in their own right. From our point of view, they each take Critical Future Studies forward and collectively augur well for the further development of this field.
This introductory essay contains three sections. First, we briefly situate Critical Future Studies within an intellectual and historical context. In the following section we discuss some relevant scholarship published very recently in cognate fields (specifically Anticipation Studies and Sociology) and which are pertinent to Critical Future Studies as a developing field of study. In the final section, we introduce the articles contained in this this special section: six diverse contributions on topics including green capitalism, artificial intelligence and automation, science fiction, post-scarcity societies and the future of work, and socialist futures.
References
Adam, Barbara and Chris Grove (2007): Future Matters: Action, Knowledge, Ethics, Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004161771.i-218
Attebery, Brian (2002): Decoding Gender in Science Fiction, New York: Routledge.
Bloch, Ernst (1995[1954]): The Principle of Hope, Volume One, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Bowler, Peter J. (2017): A History of the Future: Prophets of Progress from H.G. Wells to Isaac Asimov, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316563045
Frängsmyr, Tore (1990): Framsteg eller förfall: Framtidsbilder och utopier i västerländsk tanketradition, Stockholm: Allmänna Förlaget.
Godhe, Michael (2018): “’The Old Stories Had Become Our Prison’: Globalization and Identity Politics in John Barnes’s Science Fiction Novels A Million Open Doors and Earth Made of Glass”, Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, 5:1, forthcoming.
Goode, Luke and Michael Godhe (2017): “Beyond Capitalist Realism – Why We Need Critical Future Studies”, Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 9:1, 108-129.
Levitas, Ruth (2010): “Back to the Future: Wells, Sociology, Utopia and Method”, The Sociological Review, 58:4, 530-547. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2010.01938.x
Levitas, Ruth (2013): Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society, London: Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137314253
Miller, Riel (2007): “Futures Literacy: A Hybrid Strategic Scenario Method”, Futures, 39:4, 341-362. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2006.12.001
Miller, Riel (2018): Transforming the Future: Anticipation in the 21st Century, London & New York: Routledge. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0026/002646/264644E.pdf
Panchasi, Roxanne (2009): Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France between the Wars, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Poli, Roberto (2010), “The Many Aspects of Anticipation”, Foresight, 2010, 12:3, 7-17. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636681011049839
Schulz, Markus S. (2015): “Future Moves: Forward-Oriented Studies of Culture, Society, and Technology”, Current Sociology, 63:2, 129-139. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392114556573
Srnicek, Nick and Alex Williams (2015): Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work, London: Verso.
Son, Heonju (2015): “The History of Western Future Studies: An Exploration of the Intellectual Traditions and Three-Phase Periodization”, Futures, 66, 120-133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2014.12.013
Tutton, Richards (2017): “Wicked Futures: Meaning, Matter and the Sociology of the Future”, The Sociological Review, 65:3, 478-492. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12443
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