Preemption, precaution, preparedness: Anticipatory action and future geographies

Abstract

The paper focuses on how futures are anticipated and acted on in relation to a set of events that are taken to threaten liberal democracies. Across different domains of life the future is now problematized as a disruption, a surprise. This problematization of the future as indeterminate or uncertain has been met with an extraordinary proliferation of anticipatory action. The paper argues that anticipatory action works through the assembling of: styles through which the form of the future is disclosed and related to; practices that render specific futures present; and logics through which anticipatory action is legitimized, guided and enacted.

Anticipating ubiquitous computing: Logics to forecast technological futures

“…This performative aspect of language is therefore 'a direct avenue for the passage of expression into content' (Massumi, 2002). At the same time, such anticipatory action must be based on a readiness to identify alternative possibilities, which may lead to radically different futures playing out (Anderson, 2010c). Those performative projections may subsequently become discursively aligned with a particular perspective on desirable attributes for a future.…”

“…Within contemporary human geography Anderson has formulated an agenda for the study of 'anticipatory action' (2010c, p. 4) to question how 'the future' is being related to and how futures are 'known and rendered actionable' and 'to thereafter be acted upon'. Anderson (2010cAnderson ( , 2010dAnderson ( , 2010aAnderson ( , 2010b) addresses anticipatory action principally in relation to undesirable circumstances, such as the mitigation of terrorism, disease pandemic and natural disaster. However, these conceptual tools can also be brought to bear on aspirational forms of future oriented action, in this case ubicomp R&D. There accordingly exists a nascent literature that can be rudimentarily classified through the themes of anticipatory 'knowledge' (Anderson, 2007(Anderson, , 2010c(Anderson, , 2010aShields, 2008), anticipatory 'governance' (Anderson, 2007(Anderson, , 2010bBarben et al, 2007) and anticipatory 'logic' (Anderson, 2005(Anderson, , 2010cKraftl, 2008).…”

“…In cultural geography, specifically, an agenda for addressing geographies of anticipation has been opened up by Ben Anderson, regarding the development of nanotechnology (2007) and the practices of pre-emption and preparation of and for climate change, disease pandemic and, particularly, acts of terror (Anderson, 2010c(Anderson, , 2010d (Barry, 2001, p. 207), which become institutionalised and thus regulatory (Foucault, 1991a), then we must also understand the 'political' as distinct, following Agamben (1993). In this case, by political I mean a 'space of dissensus and contestation which is not reducible to politics' (Barry, 2001, p. 207 (Bell and Dourish, 2007, p. 142).…”

Short horizons and obesity futures: Disjunctures between public health interventions and everyday temporalities

“…It is not that people do not have hopes or aspirations for the future but rather that they are shaped by the reality of the present and may be limited and situational. The final section details how participants are able to create alternative futures, and how improvisational practices create innovations and necessities that bring about living presents (Anderson, 2010) e of opportunities to do and to manage with what is in reach. In conclusion we suggest that there are different dimensions of time beyond the public health progression of linear and catastrophic futures that need to be considered in public health obesity interventions in disadvantaged communities.…”

Widerstreitende Temporalitäten: Recht in Zeiten des Risikos/Conflicting Temporalities: Law in Times of Risk

“…Gerade vor dem Hintergrund aktueller Forschungen im Bereich einer Soziologie der Zukunft verdichten sich die Hinweise, dass ein entsprechendes Programm, vielleicht sogar zum ersten Mal, in der Nationalen Sicherheitsstrategie der USA von 2002 entwickelt wurde (Anderson 2010;Cooper 2006;Massumi 2007). In dem Dokument, dessen wesentliche Aussagen ebenfalls in der Sicherheitsstrategie von 2006 wiederholt wurden, heißt es: "America will act against […] emerging threats before they are fully formed.…”