TY - JOUR
T1 - Looking backward to the future
T2 - On past-facing approaches to futuring
AU - Bendor, Roy
AU - Eriksson, Elina
AU - Pargman, Daniel
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - While the past is present in all futuring activities it tends to remain implicit and has not received adequate attention by futures scholars and practitioners. In response, this conceptual paper offers a novel framework with which the past can be brought into futures studies in a structured and comprehensive way. We begin by providing a brief account of how the past already figures in futures studies as part of efforts to understand the lingering effects of the past on the future; as part of a drive for ontological pluralization; and as a way to augment more mainstream futuring exercises. We then introduce two past-facing approaches to futuring, recasting and pastcasting, and illustrate their symmetry with the more familiar future-facing approaches, forecasting and backcasting. The symmetry, we argue, is based on shared aims and a shared style of inquiry. We then compare the different approaches and illustrate the landscape of futuring as an interplay of two dimensions: the focus of the activity on outcomes or pathways, and the stakes involved in it.
AB - While the past is present in all futuring activities it tends to remain implicit and has not received adequate attention by futures scholars and practitioners. In response, this conceptual paper offers a novel framework with which the past can be brought into futures studies in a structured and comprehensive way. We begin by providing a brief account of how the past already figures in futures studies as part of efforts to understand the lingering effects of the past on the future; as part of a drive for ontological pluralization; and as a way to augment more mainstream futuring exercises. We then introduce two past-facing approaches to futuring, recasting and pastcasting, and illustrate their symmetry with the more familiar future-facing approaches, forecasting and backcasting. The symmetry, we argue, is based on shared aims and a shared style of inquiry. We then compare the different approaches and illustrate the landscape of futuring as an interplay of two dimensions: the focus of the activity on outcomes or pathways, and the stakes involved in it.
KW - Counterfactuals
KW - Futures Methods
KW - History
KW - Pastcasting
KW - Recasting
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85097465360&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.futures.2020.102666
DO - 10.1016/j.futures.2020.102666
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85097465360
VL - 125
JO - Futures: the journal of policy, planning and futures studies
JF - Futures: the journal of policy, planning and futures studies
SN - 0016-3287
M1 - 102666
ER -