Since the future is the arena of the possible and of the preferred, rather than of the foregone and predetermined, it is also the arena of dreams and of values. Ethical considerations are central to futures teaching and futures research.[1]
The question that lurks beneath this basic principle of futures work put forth by Jim Dator above is whose values and whose dreams? Are not the values and dreams of a member of the ruling elite different from a worker in a factory, which would be different from an indigenous farmer?
Zia Sardar writes that the future is colonized by a singular vision of humanity associated with the globalizing forces of neoliberal capitalism, forces that equate with “the values and canonical myths” of Western society. Indigenous cultures will not survive these globalizing forces Sardar warns, “… unless we start to think more concretely and imaginatively about the future, unless we transform future into a site of both real and symbolic struggles, and hence change the future by opening it to non-Western possibilities and move from ‘THE’ future to a plethora of futures.”[2]
Writing in an article posted to his website, Sardar imagines the futures as a well-tended garden “where all the vast and varied ways of being human, all the plethora of different cultures, past, present and future, exists in symbiosis … a vision of a globe of pluralistic identities. Of course,” he adds, “the garden has to be tended: the weeds have to be cleared, plants have to be pruned, we have to make sure that nothing grows so much that it ends up suffocating and endangering other plants.”
Unpacking Sardar’s powerful metaphor of the garden though brings up issues of values and structure. According to Sardar’s model, dreaming the future requires differentiating between weeds and valuable flora and fauna. Who (or what) is making these distinctions in the garden? Is this differentiation the beginnings of a structure for global governance? The question of global governance is a sticky one for indigenous peoples who have been marginalized by the global structures of colonialism for too long. In addition, the metaphor of an orderly garden does not encompass the creative chaos of the cosmos. My vision of the futures includes the wildness of a jungle, an ancient forest, or the vast oceans of the world. I would add deserts and frozen tundra to these wild images even though these are not landscapes that I am a part of or that are a part of me. These are places that hold deep meaning for groups of people. They are also eco-systems that are created by and dependent on forces beyond the control of humans.
Dator does discuss forces beyond human control using the metaphor of a tsunami of change. He makes the point that as important as images and dreams are, we cannot do anything merely by dreaming and wishing it was so. While nothing, good or bad, will happen without our dreams, “appropriate action” is also necessary to make these dreams come true. “Appropriate action” is driven by our dreams but in large part determined by our interaction with environmental factors that we may have little or no control over, but which we need to understand and deal with. This is what Dator refers to as “surfing the tsunamis of change.”[3]
A tsunami is a force of nature — a wave of energy generated by tectonic movement of the earth’s surface. These waves travel through the body of the ocean and only become dangerous when they meet an immovable landmass. The immovable force that the tsunami of change encounters in Dator’s metaphor is modern Euro-American society. Dator implies this when he observes:
If, as a society, we had paid serious attention to the waves earlier we perhaps could have diverted them before they became tsunami, but they are now too close, too big, and no longer divertible. We need to surf them, to use their power to help us go where we want to go, and to enjoy the ride.[4]
How do we recognize appropriate actions that allow us to surf the tsunami of change? Riding the tsunami of change entails actively engaging in envisioning and designing preferred futures that challenge the modern Euro-American power structures. These are power structures that support the neoliberal capitalist dream of endless profit through competition on the free market, and that compartmentalize human economic, political and spiritual activity as a means of discipline and control.
Sohail Inayatullah uses causal layered analysis (CLA) to challenge these power structures; to excavate the layers of understanding that we carry, from our memories of the past, to our experiences of the present, and our dreams for the future, and to open up the possibilities for envisioning and designing alternative futures. Inayatullah differentiates CLA from the other futures methodologies:
Causal layered analysis is concerned less with predicting a particular future and more with opening up the present and past to create alternative futures. It focuses less on the horizontal spatiality of futures—in contrast to techniques such as emerging issues analysis, scenarios and backcasting— and more on the vertical dimension of futures studies, of layers of analysis. Causal layered analysis opens up space for the articulation of constitutive discourses, which can then be shaped as scenarios. [5]
Causal layered analysis is a futures framework that disrupts hegemonic discourses of the futures. It is a critical process that is similar to the process used by indigenous scholars and activists to privilege both indigeneity as a global set of principles held in common by indigenous peoples and the knowledge system that emerges out of a particular indigenous culture and social milieu. Disrupting mainstream knowledge systems opens up the space for intervention, creating fertile ground for gardens of preferred futures that are not controlled by contemporary power structures but instead blossom into the diversity of independent cultures that Sardar envisions. As such CLA is an important methodological tool for my dissertation research.
[1] Jim Dator, “Introduction The Future Lies Behind! Thirty Years of Teaching Futures Studies,” American Behavioral Scientist 42, no. 3 (November 1, 1998): 298–319, doi:10.1177/0002764298042003002.
[2] Ziauddin Sardar, ed., Rescuing All Our Futures: The Future of Futures Studies (Praeger, 1999); Ziauddin Sardar, “Colonizing the Future: The ‘other’ Dimension of Futures Studies,” Futures 25, no. 2 (March 1993): 179–187, doi:10.1016/0016-3287(93)90163-N.
[3] Dator, “Introduction The Future Lies Behind! Thirty Years of Teaching Futures Studies.”
[4] Ibid.
[5] Sohail Inayatullah, “Causal Layered Analysis: Poststructuralism as Method,” Futures 30, no. 8 (October 1998): 815, doi:10.1016/S0016-3287(98)00086-X.
Incites for the week 