This special issue on the futures of Africa seeks to provide critical thinking about the futures of Africa that can support a range of new development strategies. It aims to explore key drivers of transformation, and the futures these point towards. And it aims to refresh analysis and change mindsets by providing a deeper understanding that there are new and different ways to think about the futures of Africa. Too often the popular image of the futures of Africa is subject to binary and reactive clichés. When there is a commodity crash the pundits resort to doom images – the…
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Welcome to the JFS Virtual Symposium landing page. Here you’ll find basic information on the virtual symposium. This symposium was born in an effort to draw upon the strengths of futures studies and related perspectives perspectives: a critical assessment of images of the future, an understanding of macro-history and the longue durée (long term social change processes), the role of worldviews and narratives. In short the challenge for authors and interviewees was twofold: on the one hand explain the Trump phenomenon from a long term historical perspective, revealing deeper patterns and processes, and on the other hand begin to articulate…
1. We Are All Mad Here It is a strange new world in which we find ourselves, where down is up and what was outrageous is now merely normal. While bookshops sell out of George Orwell’s 1984 with Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World a close second, perhaps the best advice might be found in reaching for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. “It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” Society was different then. The election of Trump in spite or because of his racism, his treatment towards women, his bullying and his poor…
Reburg is a fictional city in which the concept of circular futures comes to life. The concept and content has been developed by Pantopicon, a studio for design and foresight with offices in Antwerp (Belgium), and a satellite studio in Toronto (Canada). The project has further been developed in collaboration with Plan C, Belgium’s circular economy hub. The goal? To render tangible a vision on the future of sustainable material management as a means to provide a framework for (entrepreneurial) innovators and society, to provoke and extend their thinking on what a circular economy is and could be. What would…
Abstract Using causal layered analysis (CLA), a critical futures methodology, this paper maps and analyses a number of competing discourses relating to accountability to community within the scholarly literature. The focus is on the multiple perspectives expressed by scholars as viewed through the lens of corporate-community accountability. The aims are to challenge current dominant views, introduce a range of other views, and reflect on implications. Particular attention is on accountability issues where the impact on community is currently most obvious. This is business concerned with extracting raw materials from the earth. The scholarly literature is ordered along a continuum according…
Abstract Pathways toward ‘overshoot and collapse’ futures are not always or exclusively determined by international trends, national governments, wars and large-scale events. While these gain considerable attention their overall impact is arguably no greater than the constant ‘drip, drip, drip’ of conventional decision-making around more mundane activities that fall under familiar headings like ‘business strategy’, ‘economic growth’ and ‘development’. While cities have master plans and strategic goals most of them evolve within, and are expressed through, a continuous series of commercially inspired projects founded on narrow short-term economic assumptions. They emerge from a typically up-beat, entrepreneurial (profit-oriented) and finance-based worldview…
Introduction How can Futures studies in Asia be different from Western offerings? How can it be localized in native languages, ways of knowing, and experiences? Can Asian futures, if such a thing exists, address emerging challenges, raise new questions, and disrupt systems of knowledge and power as they currently exist? What capacities exist to create and enhance futures thinking? How can Asian philosophies, cultures, and experiences shape alternative flavors of Futures Studies and practices? What ought to be the thrusts of an Asia Pacific Futures Network (hereafter APFN)? What types of educational models and researches should it pursue? How can…
Scope of This Review This review focuses on the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies’ Report No. 22 on Arab Futures: Three Scenarios was issued in February of 2015. The report is a summary report of a larger 200-page book that was published after it was issued. The book is not part of this review, however, given that it is presumed to be an elaboration of the report and, conversely, the report contains the essential points of the book, there may not be a significant discrepancy between the two over the points raised in this review. The report’s institutional affiliation…
Abstract Business schools, according to certain measures, have been a major success story in the recent past of the university, enjoying significant demand growth. We suggest that their future may be more problematic. We offer different possible scenarios for business schools and identify seven key risks that they face. We argue that the most significant challenge business schools must negotiate is to redefine and clarify their mission and redesign themselves to meet these risks. We conclude that the business schools best able to survive and prosper in the future are likely to be very different from those that…
Abstract This article examines the prospect of replacing EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers with technology in Iran. It has adopted the approach of Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) to analyze the data collected from interviews with 10 EFL experts in Iran. The four layers of CLA do suggest that it is unlikely that technology will replace EFL teachers in Iran by 2030. Iran, being a hierarchical, collectivist, and restrained society with a normative cultural orientation and preference for avoiding uncertainty, will be reluctant to accept technological innovation so quickly which would replace EFL teachers. Further research covering a time frame beyond 2030 would be…