Techniques of futuring: On how imagined futures become socially performative

Abstract

The concept of the future is re-emerging as an urgent topic on the academic agenda. In this article, we focus on the ‘politics of the future’: the social processes and practices that allow particular imagined futures to become socially performative. Acknowledging that the performativity of such imagined futures is well-understood, we argue that how particular visions come about and why they become performative is underexplained. Drawing on constructivist sociological theory, this article aims to fill (part of) this gap by exploring the question ‘how do imagined futures become socially performative’? In doing so, the article has three aims to (1) identify the leading social–theoretical work on the future; (2) conceptualize the relationship of the imagination of the future with social practices and the performance of reality; (3) provide a theoretical framework explaining how images of the future become performative, using the concepts ‘techniques of futuring’ and ‘dramaturgical regime’.

Imagining Futures: Theorizing the Practical Knowledge of Future-making

“…Literature on imagined futures argues that entrepreneurs, managers and workers aim to construct credible images to shape the future through them (Beckert & Bronk, 2018; Beckert & Suckert, 2021). Imagined futures thus become performative in the present (Oomen et al, 2021) by structuring decision-making, relationships and expectations within and between organizations (Beckert, 2016; Komporozos-Athanasiou, 2020). In this sense, organizational and entrepreneurial activities, such as strategic planning, capital budgeting, technology projections, economic forecasting, perceptual maps and business modelling, are ‘instruments of imagination’ (Beckert, 2021) or ‘scopic systems’ (Knorr Cetina, 2006) through which actors create the future and make it visible from a specific perspective in the present.…”

“…Instead, they create and use imagined futures to attend to questions of possibility rather than epistemology (Gartner, Bird, & Starr, 1992; Riles, 2010). If deemed credible more broadly, imagined futures create ‘fictional expectations’ (Beckert, 2016) that performatively structure decisions within organizations, competition between firms, and decisions of crucial stakeholders like investors, consumers, regulators, courts and employees (Beckert, 2021; Komporozos-Athanasiou, 2020; Oomen, Hoffman, & Hajer, 2021). In this regard, the study of future-making has become a topic of keen interest in organization, strategy and entrepreneuring studies given that imagined futures gauge and guide diverse organizational relations and processes (Flyverbom & Garsten, 2021).…”

A framework to harness effective partnerships for the sustainable development goals

“…Alternatively, priorities could come from deliberative procedures, e.g., deliberative mini-publics (Curato et al 2021;Farrell et al 2019;Elstub et al 2021) or collective visioning processes (Beck et al 2021;Scoones et al 2020;Beck and Forsyth 2020;Beck and Mahony 2017). Since partnerships are a mechanism to deliver "agreed" goals, regardless of how the goal is actually agreed, a partnership approach can align either with expert-centered ("bring the stakeholders on board" views) or "co-productionist" approaches ("bring the stakeholders together") (Oomen et al 2021;Jasanoff 2004).…”

20 Years of global climate change governance research: taking stock and moving forward

“…While the question of power is central to how contemporary forms of governance emerge, new kinds of scholarship have also started to explore the power of visions of postfossil futures to shape action in the present (e.g., Jasanoff & Kim, 2015;Yusoff & Gabrys, 2011). To grasp the role of imagination in the making of climate politics, a growing group of scholars are turning their attention to the concept of imaginaries (e.g., Hajer & Versteeg, 2019;Oomen et al, 2021;Pelzer & Versteeg, 2019). Overall, however, the process of translating imagined futures into action remains relatively underexplored and should therefore become a focus for future research.…”