by Sohail Inayatullah
This special issue of the Journal of Futures Studies is focused on Macrohistory and the future. Macrohistory is the study of the grand patterns of change.1 Macrohistorical analysis asks: what are the shapes of historical processes? Are they linear, meaning that the critical changes are irreversible and that evolution is progressive. Or are they cyclical, meaning that history is constituted by a rise and fall or expansion and contraction pattern, such that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Or is history spiral-like, with the shape of history folding back on itself: tradition is critically transformed with progress in some areas possible. (…continue)