An Introduction to Futures Studies[i]
Alternative Global and South Asian Futures

Introduction:

     The task of this article is to introduce futures studies methods using as data, alternative global and regional futures.  I will first touch upon the history of futures studies, compare futures studies to planning and policymaking, propose a typology of futures studies, present a range of methodologies and then conclude with scenarios for the futures of the world and South Asia. 

     In most cultures humans have had a deep interest in what will happen. Glossing over human history, we can identify three types of attempts to understand the future.

     (1)  Astrology: In this view, life has patterns as evidenced in the stars.  The basic ontological position was: as above, as below; heaven and earth should match.  Not only could the world within be predicted but so could the world without.  By and large, astrology helped individuals avoid dangerous circumstances by providing an early warning system.  However, it helped to believe in the system since warnings and forecast as well as psychological analysis were of a general nature.

     (2)  Prophecy: Prophecy assumes that certain individuals have access to deeper levels of mind, thus allowing them to see the future--to give glimpses of not only might be but more importantly, the seer as social change activist, of what can be. The world for the few, those with higher, or more complete mind, can be predicted. Unlike astrology, prophecy was not based on the relationships between stars or other criteria, rather it was visionary in nature, used to create new systems, new worlds, rather than predict specific events. Prophecy was often located in one individual or a group of individuals.

     (3)  Forecasting:  While astrology and prophecy are given less credence by the moderns, it is forecasting that has become the technique par excellence of planners, economists and social scientists.  Behind this is a perspective that desires to make the world more stable, to control the future.  The assumption behind forecasting is that with more information particularly more timely information decisionmakers can make wiser decisions.  Having more information is especially important now since technology has broken with or cultural life; since the rate of change has increased; and since the world is controlled by powers that seem larger than us. Because of these factors, we need to determine what might be, the strategic future environment. 

     In recent times, futures studies has particularly grown. It has been modernised and adopted by corporate planners, policy institutes and government planning bureaus.  Futures studies has become linked with short and long range planning. But there are some real differences between futures studies and planning.  

Planning and Futures:

     When compared to planning, in general, the futures approach is (1) longer term, from five to fifty instead of one to five (2) more concerned with creating the future instead of predicting the future, (3), committed to authentic alternative futures where each scenario is fundamentally different from the other while planning uses the language of alternatives but scenarios are often mere deviations from each other, (4) is less located in a particular bureaucracy, for example, in the Ministry of Economic Development; (5) committed to multiple interpretations of reality (role of unconscious, of national mythology, of the spiritual, for example, instead of only views of reality for which empirical data exists); (6) futures is more participatory attempting to bring in all types of stakeholders instead of only powerbrokers; (7) futures is more concerned with working together with different stakeholders so as to build legitimacy in a plan and the planning process, which is, if not more so, as important as the elegance of the plan itself; (8) is less instrumentalist, concerned with more than just profit or power; and, (9) while a technique, like planning, futures studies is also very much action oriented. It is as much an academic field as it is a social movement.

     From the planning discourse, futures studies is merely one approach among many in creating a good plan. Planning can have many dimensions of which four are critical: Problem Orientation (challenges ahead), Goal Orientation (what we want, objectives), political orientation (to assuage the administration or leader) and futures orientation (long term). Futures studies is useful as long as it aids in planning for the future and not in making problematic the politics of planning and policymaking.  

Policy Analysis, Planning and Futures Research:

     The growth of futures studies is also a result of the desire of government to find information that can aid in making better policy, specifically toward the long term and toward projects that might have second or third order affects.  For many, futures research is merely long term policy analysis or research.  But from our perspective, there are real and important distinctions between futures research and policy research/analysis. Some of these are: (1) While policy analysis is short range, futures studies is long range in its theoretical and action orientation; (2) Instead of choosing one policy, examining the range of futures is the focus of futures studies.  However, as with policy research, the goal is not only to create new organisational directions but clarify current management decisions.  While we may not know the future, we can determine what we want; (3) Futures studies is much more concerned with making basic assumptions problematic. Through what-if questions and scenarios, the intention is to move us out of the present and create the possibility for new futures. Policy analysis is concerned with analysing the viability of particular policies not calling the entire discussion or the framework of decisionmaking into question.  Like planning, policy analysis is more technical in its orientation; (4) Futures studies is more vision oriented than goal oriented (which is central to policy analysis and planning). Futures studies attempts to move from goals to visions.  Visions work by pulling people along. They give individuals and collectivities a sense of the possible. They also inspire the noble within each of us by calling individuals to sacrifice the short term for the longer term, for the greater good.  Finally, they help align individual goals with institutional goals. Moreover, while goals or objectives can be operationalized, visions cannot. An organisation or nation or civilisational will decline without a vision as Fred Polak as argued in his The Image of the Future.  A vision thus must be extra-rational, must include a leadership dimension, a spiritual dimension and a material dimension. This clearly is more than the traditional planner or policy analyst is willing to consider in his or her planning process. (5) The role of the policy analyst/planner and futurist in an organisation often differs. Within most planning exercises, plans are written so that the nation or organisation can appear modern, so it can give the appearance that the future is under control.  The futurist might want actual fundamental transformation while the planner might want to fulfil economic targets that the Leader or Chief Executive Officer has set out to reach. (6) While futures studies attempts to acknowledge the different ways individuals construct the world, policy analysis often takes a limited view of knowledge approaches. For example, individuals behave quite differently in learning situations, whether at conferences or boardroom meetings. Some are creative; some are critical; some are practical; and others are passive.  Different strategies mean different things to different people.  There are different knowing styles and different leadership styles.  To gain consensus in any policymaking process it is crucial to acknowledge these differences.  This is especially important when placed together in one room are those who want to get something done today; those who want create a new future; those who want to criticise past, present and future; and those who want to do nothing.  Good planning, policy analysis and futures research needs to acknowledge contributions from all these sorts of people.

     In general, in planning and policy analysis, the future is often used to enhance the probability of achieving a certain policy, the task is to make the future less certain.  The future becomes an arena of conquest, time becomes the most recent dimension to colonise, to institutionalise and domesticate.  Futures research, however, intends to liberate time for strict technique, from instrumental rationality.  It asks what are the different ways one can "time" the world?  How, for example do different cultures, groups, organisations imagine time? 

     Of course policy analysis itself is a dynamic field.  For example, new models of policy development have attempted to go beyond muddling through (as needs or problems come up), rational-economic decisionmaking (material goals) and satisficing (do what you can given limitations), arguing primarily that these strategies are not useful during times of rapid change and dramatic crisis.  Muddling through, in particular, is not useful during times of rapid change since incremental policy change does not help the organisation or nation transform to meet dramatic new conditions.  The rational-economic model is useful at setting and achieving objectives but it does not into account extrarational efforts. It is overly dependent on quantitative factors, reinscribes self-interest and national self-interest (balance of powers). Satisficing, while getting the job done, does not ask was the job worth doing?  Interest in finding ways to include the possibility of discontinuous change, of forecasting trends before they emerge, has been a natural progression in the evolution of the policy sciences.  Futures studies fits well into the effort of finding better ways for government and business to incorporate the unknown within dicisionmaking. 

     Policy researchers and planners believe that the forecasts and visions of futurists are often not useable.  Among other suggestions, the following are given to make forecasts more useful.

(1)  The forecast must be credible, the policy must be achievable or if apparently unachievable, research into what shifts might increase the probability of the event occurring need to be determined.

(2)  Forecasts need to give adequate time for the desired      outcome to be achieved or the undesired event to be avoided--enough lead time is a crucial criteria for a useful forecast.

(3)  Feedback and monitoring need to be including in the policy impact cycle so as to be able to judge the accuracy of forecasts as well as to determine if organisational responses to emerging issue were effective.

(4)  The forecaster needs to be aware of the limitation of the methodology employed.

(5)  Forecasts must be clear and in language that the policymaker can understand.  The language should be accessible to the policymaker.

(6)  The structure of the forecast should be compatible with the politics and the culture of the organisation.

(7)  The forecast must create an image that will inspire and challenge the organisation or nation if it is to be of use to more than those in the Planning Office.

     However, by and large, futures research is often less concerned with predicting the future than with attempting to envision novel ways of organising how decisions are reached and who participates in these decisions.  It does this by asking participants to envision their ideal organisational world, and then aid in creating strategies to realise that world.     

The Politics of Forecasting:

     Moreover from a critical view, to suggest that policy futures statements must be clear to the policymaker is at some level, just banal.  Institutions create obscure language because that language serves particular interests.  It is the analysis of those interests (and the mechanisms which they employ to seek and maintain power) which becomes the vehicle for investigating what images of the future are possible and which likely to achieve reality.  In this sense, how to make better policy or more future oriented policy without investigating the political interests of certain policies is equal banal.  Organisations stay focused in the present as bureaucrats and others are served by the present structure.  Attempts to create new futures can undermine present power structures.  Administrators agree to consider the future only to gain new political alliances or to achieve modernity (gain funding or prestige)  but rarely to make structural or consciousness changes.

     Furthermore to assume that better forecasts, or more information, will lead to better decision and policymaking forgets that policies are often made irrespective of the "facts."  Often what is needed is a will to decisionmaking not a ingenious plan or forecast.  When decisions need to be made, a consultant, provides the legitimacy or the information to make that decision because of lack of legitimacy, courage or for local political reasons.  Thus futures studies and policy analysis needs to be located in a discourse that makes problematic information and its distribution and not in one that posits that information is neutral or that its circulation in institutional settings is apolitical.

     To summarise the above positions, it is useful to envision policymaking, planning and futures process as having three dimensions or types.  The first is predictive, the second is cultural/interpretive and the third critical.[ii] 

     In the predictive, language is assumed to be neutral, that is, it does not participate in constituting the real, it merely describes reality serving as an invisible link between theory and data.  Prediction assumes that the universe is deterministic, that is, the future can be known.  By and large this view privileges experts (planner and policy analysts as well as futurists who forecast), economists and astrologers.  The future becomes a site of expertise and a place to colonise.  In general, the strategic discourse is most prevalent in this framework with information valued because it provides lead time and a range of responses to deal with the enemy (a competing nation or corporation).  Linear forecasting is the technique used most.  Scenarios are used more as minor deviations from the norm instead of alternative worldviews.

     In the cultural, the goal is not prediction but insight.  Truth is considered relative with language and culture both intimately involved in creating the real.  Through comparison, through examining different national or gender or ethnic images of the future, we gain insight into the human condition.  This type of futures studies is less technical with mythology as important as mathematics.  Learning from each model--in the context of the search for universal narratives that can ensure basic human values--is the central mission for this epistemological approach.  While visions often occupy centre stage in this interpretive view, the role of structures is also important, whether class, gender, or other categories of social relations. Planning and policy analysis rarely practice an interpretive cultural form of goal setting or impact analysis.

     In the critical, futures studies aims not at prediction or at comparison but seeks to make the units of analysis problematic.  We are concerned not with population forecasts but with how the category of population has become valorised in discourse, for example, why population instead of community or people, we might ask?  The role of the State and other forms of power in creating authoritative discourses is central to understanding how a particular future has become hegemonic.  Critical future studies asserts that the present is fragile, merely the victory of one particular discourse, way of knowing, over the other.  The goal of critical research is to disturb present power relations through making problematic our categories and evoking other places, scenarios of the future.  Through this distance, the present becomes less rigid, indeed, remarkable.  The spaces of reality loosen, the grip of neo-realism, of the bottom line, of the predictive approach widen, and the new is possible.  Language is not symbolic but constitutive of reality.  While structures are useful, they are seen not as universal but particular to history and episteme (the knowledge boundaries that frame our knowing).

     Ideally, one should try and use all three types of futures studies.  If one makes a population forecast, for example, one should then ask how different civilisations approach the issue of population and finally one should deconstruct the idea of population itself, relating it, for example, to First World consumption patterns.  Empirical research then must be contextualised within the civilisation's science of which it emerges and then historically deconstructed to show what the particular approach is missing and silencing.

     In the first type of futures studies (most comfortable to planners and policy analysts), by and large techniques such as linear regression, multiple regression, factor analysis and econometrics are used.    All these assume that the future is based on the linearity of the past.  They all assume that the empirical world can be known and that the universe is fundamentally stable, with reality primarily sensate.     But given that specific events can throw off a forecast, futurists re-invented Delphi, or expert forecasting (done in many rounds so as to gain consensus and done anonymously so as to reduce the influence of a particular opinion maker).[iii]      To link events and trends, futurists developed cross-impact and policy impact analysis, to see how trends might change the probability of particular events. These are run numerous times.  Policy impact examines how the legislation of a new policy, special economic advantages for certain groups, for example, might impact other social or economic trends.  

Values:

     While these models can be useful, they do not include values.  They also assume research is conducted in an isolated setting, that is, research is divorced from the institutional and epistemic framework all of us exist in.  Researcher disinterest becomes critical.  However, what questions one asks, how one asks them, as well as the larger issue of what one considers of value are much more important in understanding the future.  Moreover, as participatory action research informs us, subject and object, theory and data, should be interactive, dynamic. We cannot and should not remove ourselves from the research environment.  

Chaos:

     As general agreement has been reached that the empirical is not stable, chaos theory has become paramount as an attempt to manage disorder as well. The goal is to create a stable world, with the hope to transform social structures by a precise effort, by acting upon a few attractors, a few variables. Even though chaos theory appears to be a break from traditional social sciences, in fact, chaos is a version of ordered empiricism. Chaos has become important not because its metaphors make more intuitive sense or because it validates classic myths, Siva dancing, for example, but because it can be used as a forecasting tool to predict the future.[iv] 

     Thus, most forecasting remains technically rich not meaning rich. It continues the vision of instrumental rationality, the metaphors of modernity, of the West but not only the West as provider of wealth, but also as owner of time itself.

     Using the cultural framework, to expand our vision of how we can think about the future, we need to try some other avenues.  To begin with, if we assume that how we think can influence how we act, then we need to investigate what our basic concepts of space, time, self and value are.  

Guiding Metaphors of the Future:

     One way to open up the future, to investigate preferred and possible futures is to examine the metaphors cultures and individuals use to describe the future.  In this method, one begins with conventional Western (because they are "universal") metaphors of individual choice and rationality. 

     The first image is that of the dice.  It represents randomness but misses the role of the transcendental. The second is the river leading to a fork.  It represents choice but misses the role of the group in making decisions. The third image represents the ocean. It is unbounded but misses the role of history, deep social structures, and direction. The fourth image is that of a rapid emersed with dangerous rocks.  It represents the need for information and rapid decisionmaking.  It does not provide for guidance from others: leadership, family, or God. Less tied to Western images, other useful metaphors (from Fiji, the Philippines, India. among other sites) include the coconut tree (hard work to gain rewards); coconut (useful in many ways and having many purposes); onion (layers of reality with the truth invisible); snakes and ladders game (life's ups and downs are based on chance, the capitalist vision); and being a passenger in a car where the driver is blind (sense of helplessness). 

     What is important in this method is to find relevant metaphors based on the policy community's own cultural and historical experience and use these metaphors to construct an authentic vision of desirable and dystopic futures.

Emerging Issues Analysis:

     While metaphors help create an indigenous futures, they are less useful in predicting what might be ahead and in disturbing conventional views of what is likely.  Most futures researchers use trend analysis to determine what issues are about to become public.  However, prior to becoming a trend, is it possible to identify a nascent issue, an emerging issue?  According to James Dator,[v] emerging issues are those that have a low probability of occurring but if they emerge, will have a dramatic impact on society.  However, since these issues are often undeveloped, Dator argues that one indicator of knowing that an issue is really an emerging issue instead of a trend or problem, is that it should appear ridiculous.  Issues should thus be disturbing, provocative, forcing one to change how one thinks, especially in challenging assumptions about the nature of the future.  Besides searching for emerging issues among those individuals and groups outside of conventional knowledge boundaries (the periphery, for example), to identify emerging issues it is first important to scan the available literature.

Scanning: 

     In scanning one has to digest vast amounts of literature and be able to determine what is within the paradigm, and what is outside, and what can transform the paradigm.  Where are the leakages? What doesn't it make sense?  Issues that straddle these boundaries, that are outside conventional categories often have the potential of becoming emerging issues.  Some examples of emerging issues are:  Rights of Robots; genetic engineering ending sexual reproduction rights; denial of sovereignty to certain nations; a new UN (house of nations, house of NGOs, direct citizen election, house of world corporations and a world militia); the end of capitalism. All these issue are generally seen as unlikely but if they occur they will have a dramatic impact on society.  But merely being unlikely or having a high impact are not sufficient conditions, there also must be seeds, drivers, reasons as to why one thinks the issue is emerging.  Emerging issues analysis is different from fantasy production, it is searching for small ripples that might one day become grand waves, tsunamis.

What-if Questions:

     Equally useful in breaking out of conventional categories are "What-if" Questions.  These questions ask one to develop implications of an issue that most would currently think is unlikely or absurd.  It is useful that there is some element of possibility for the issue especially if one is concerned in its predictive value.  Even so, the most useful issues are those that create new categories of thought.  For example, what-if Genetic engineering developments led to the banning of sexual reproduction?   What-if South Africa became a world economic and cultural centre? What-if Pakistan became a world intellectual centre? But more important then the actual possibility of becoming a centre is that it begins to call into question the universality of the West as the educational base for the rest of the world. In addition, the implications of this possible event force one to examine issues of culture, travel, and self-understanding.  They also force one to think of alternatives to traditional models of education.  Should Pakistan be a centre in all fields or only in Islamic education, for example?

Age-Cohort and Age Grade Analysis:

     Equally useful in forecasting the near term future is age-cohort analysis.  This method begins to touch upon the idea that the future is cyclical, not linear, that is, more like a pendulum, than a race track or a highway with offshoots.  One asks what are the main age grades that constitute a business, organisation or nation?  How might institutions change as a particular age group matures and gains status and power?  How will the volume and type of crime change as a group matures. Like class, age grades serve as an organising concept.  For example, we know that Japanese and Western populations are mostly aging while third world populations are much younger.  By 2050 some estimate that less than 10% will be "white" in the world.  Clearly that will have an influence on world culture, politics. Will current Western institutions continue their domination?  Has the rest of the world internalised their categories?   

Layered Causal Analysis:

     However, the methods above do not adequately explore the levels or layers of an issue.  Layered causal analysis asserts that how you frame problem changes the policy solution and the actors responsible for creating transformation.  Borrowing from the work of Rick Slaughter[vi], we argue that futures studies should be seen wholistically and not just at the level of trends.

     The first level is the Litany (trends, problems, often exaggerated, often used for political purposes) usually presented by the news media. In the case of global politics it might be news on the Failure of UN  (the UN's financial problems and its failures in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda).  Events, issues and trends are not connected and appear discontinuous. The result is often either a feeling of helplessness (what can I do?) or apathy (nothing can be done!) or projected action (why don't they do something about it?).

     The second level is concerned with social causes, including economic, cultural, political factors (and short term historical).  It is usually articulated by policy institutes and published as op-ed pieces or in not-quite academic journals.  Causes in the UN example include lack of supranational authority; no united military, and the perspective that UN is only as good as its member nations.  The solutions that results from this level of analysis are often those that call for more funding or more power.  In this case, the UN needs more money and power. Often, deeper historical reasons such as the creation of the UN by the victors of WW II are often articulated. If one is fortunate then the precipitating action is sometimes analysed.  At this stage, taking a critical view one could explore how different discourses (the economic, the social, the cultural) do more than cause the issue but constitute it, that the discourse we use to understand is complicit in our framing of the issue.  This adds a horizontal dimension to our layered analysis.

     The third level is deeper concerned with structure and the discourse/cosmology that supports and legitimates it.  The task is to find deeper social, linguistic, cultural structures that are actor-invariant, such as centre-periphery relations and the anarchic inter-state system.  The analysis of current UN problems shifts to not the unequal structure of power between UN member states but to the fact that eligibility for membership in the UN is based on acquiring national status. An NGO, an individual, a culture cannot join the National Assembly or the Security Council.   The solution that emerges from this level of analysis is to rethink the values and the structure of the UN, to revision it. One could at this level, develop a horizontal discursive dimension investigating how different paradigms or worldview would frame the problem or issue. How would a pre-modern world approach the issue of global governance (consensus, for example)? How might a post-modern?

     The fourth layer of analysis is at the level of metaphor or myth.  These are the deep stories, the collective archetypes, the unconscious dimensions of the problem or the paradoxes.  In the case of the UN, it is the issue of control vs. freedom, of the role of individual and collective, of family and self, of the overall governance of evolution, of humanity's place on the Earth. Are we meant to be separate races and nations (as ordained by the myths of the Western religions) or is a united humanity (as Hopis and others have prophesied).

     Layered causal analysis asks us to go beyond conventional framings of issues.  However, it does not privilege a particular level.  Moving up and down layers, and horizontally across discourses and worldviews, increasing the richness of the analysis.  In addition, what often results are differences that can be easily captures in alternative scenarios.

Grand Theories of Social Change:

     This dimension begins to touch upon the grander issues of social change.  Among the most useful approaches to futures studies are grand theories of social change. Of interest is how macrohistorians from different civilisations have attempted to answer the question: what changes? what is constant? As well as questions that ask if the drivers of change are internal or external to the system? And, what are the stages of change? What is the shape of history? Is it cyclical or linear or a combination of both?[vii] Of particular use are the following writers.[viii]

     Pitirim Sorokin, for example, believes we are in-between historical stages and about to enter an integrated phase of human history where both the spiritual and material co-exist. 

     From Ibn Khaldun we are reminded that over four generations power declines. Those in power lose the sense of unity they gained from the struggle to enter into leadership positions. Over time, leadership degenerates and new groups, often in the periphery make a claim to power.

     From P.R. Sarkar we are reminded that there are four types of power: worker's, military, intellectual and economic. Each power represents different types of social classes and stages in each history. From a worker's era, follows a martial, and then an intellectual, concluding with a capitalist. Each era has a rise and fall. Each class exploits the others which leads to its downfall. During the capitalist era, exploitation is at its worse. This eventually leads to a worker's revolution or evolution followed once again by a centralisation of power in military elites.  But more than power, these phases represent our "collective psychology" the dominant mental wave (to use non-empiricist language).

     For Toynbee, the most important variable is how the creative minority responds to civilisational challenges. Are they met? Moreover, are we about to re-enter a world State or a world church or is there some other global configuration of power ahead.

     From Comte we are lead to believe that modernity is the final stage in history. That science will solve all the problems, ideology is a premodern idea that hinders the creation of a good society.

     Spencer as well confirms this and believes that it is world corporations that will bring on the next ladder of human evolution.

     And finally from Marx, what is important is how new technologies change social and power relationships.  Clearly these grand thinkers change the locus of discussion, away from trend analysis or five year plans to grand civilisational patterns. The project is not to determine if there work is  empirically true but to ask how they can lead us in the right direction for social research.

The Politics of Time:

     As we can see forecasting has political and value oriented dimensions, particularly in terms of the politics of time.  What images are valorised? Who owns it?  How it circulates in society?  Central to cultural colonisation is adopting the time of another culture?  Different visions of time lead to alternative types of society.  Classical Hindu thought, for example, is focused on billion year cycles. Within this model, society degenerates from a golden era to an iron age. At this juncture, there is spiritual leader who revitalises society.  Classical Chinese time is focused on the degeneration of the Tao and its regeneration through the sage-king.

     Much of current debates is how about the ownership of visual space and temporal space.  One important futures method is to ask how different individuals and cultures "time" the world.  For example, women's time is often seasonal and lunar. Bureaucratic time is based on the ability to make others wait. Educational time is divided into a nine month and three month pattern. There is also the stages of life time: from birth to death, with in-between stages devoted to the accumulation of knowledge, wealth, enlightenment, or pleasure depending on one's cultural location. For example, the Indian vision of student, householder, social service, and  sanyassi is considerably richer than the vision of study, work and die or retire in Florida that represents mainstream American culture.

     In Corporate time, the higher the one is in an organisation, the grander the vision of time. For example, the CEO is responsible for 25-50 years; the VP for 25 years, the branch president for the next year; the branch manager for monthly quotas, the plant or office manager for weekly projects, the clerk for daily activities and the secretary for hour to hour projects.  The level of activity is also more precise the lower one goes down in the pay scale.  Many misunderstandings occur among individuals and groups when they have different temporal expectations of each other.  At the global political level, power is about convincing the other to adopt one's notions of time, whether this is AD or BC or GMT. Time then is not universal but largely particular.  Futures research attempts to investigate different visions of time, asking how they are constructed and politicised and what is the organisation's or group's preferred view of time.

Futures and Deconstruction:

     Continuing to make the future less universal are techniques drawn from poststructuralism. As alluded to earlier, the task in critical futures studies is to make the universal particular, show that it has come about for fragile political reasons, merely the victory of one discourse over another, not a Platonic universal.  To do that one needs discursive genealogies which attempt to show the discontinuities in a history of an idea, social formation or value. Through genealogy and deconstruction, the future that once seemed impenetrable is now shown to be one among many. As such it is replaceable by other discourses.  Deconstruction then becomes a method of unpacking a text (broadly defined) and showing  the discourses that inhabit it. Genealogy historically traces how a particular discourse has become dominant at the expense of other discourses. The shape and type of future (instrumental vs. emancipatory for example) is often different in each type of discourse.

Scenarios:

     To help in this process, scenarios are the favourite tool in futures studies.  For some they help predict the future. For others, the clarify alternatives. For us, scenarios are useful in that they give us distance from the present, allowing the present to become remarkable, problematic.  They thus open up the present and allow the creation of alternative futures.  Genealogy and deconstruction not only open up the future and present, they also open up the past, showing history to be interpretation. The task then is to create alternative histories, to show histories that did not come about, that could have come about if a certain factor had changed.

     Scenarios also have an important visionary task, allowing us to gain insight into what people want the future to be like--the desired future. These are important in that instead of merely forecasting the future, individuals create the future.

     Often scenarios have four dimensions. The first is the Status-Quo. This assumes that the present will continue into the future. More of the same, then.  The second is the Collapse scenario.  The results when the system cannot sustain continued growth, when the contradictions of the first model lead to internal collapse.  The third scenario is a Return or Steady State.  This is a return to some previous time, either imagined or real.  It is often framed as a less industrial, quieter, slower, and less populated society--the good old days, if you will.  The fourth scenario is Transformation, or fundamental change.  This can be spiritual, technological, or political and economic. 

     For Third World nations, in contrast to the First World, Continued growth usually means a dual society, where one part grows and the other stagnates. Collapse refers to either natural disasters, or wars with neighbouring nations, or from too quick modernisation.  Ultimately, the collapse scenario is the failure of nation-building.  The Return scenario means  going back to a simpler village, communitarian, religious, life-style, often before technocracy and imperialism destroyed the local. Transformation means true sovereignty or nationhood, joining the world's wealthy on one's own terms.

     But we can also devise scenarios with different assumptions. For example, we can create scenarios of world politics based on alternative structures of power. The first would be a unipolar world, a continuation of the present.  The second would be a collapse of the inter-state system, leading to anarchy within States and between states. The third would be the creation of a multi-polar system, with numerous hegemons, such as the US, Europe, Japan, China, India, Turkey or Indonesia.  A corollary would be a return to a bio-polar world but with different actors.  A fourth would be a world government structure.  Policies would be created at the global level while implementation would be local. 

     We can choose other drivers as well. In the following scenarios for South Asia we look at levels of integration, at the tension between the local, regional and global.

(1) South Asia becomes an integrated regional economy.  Privatization leads to a flourishing of corporate and small scale capitalism.  This bourgois revolution weakens the power of the feudal class.  The Other ceases to be less frightful as friendship between NGOs and businesses develop.  NGOs continue to work on softening the contradictions of export-led growth. (2)    South Asia continues wasting wealth on military expenditures. Politics continues to become criminalized.  Not only Kashmir but Sindh and Kalistan vie for independence.  The nation-state project totally breaks down. Poverty and extremism remain.

(3)  Power and economy move to the village throughout South Asia.  Traditional models of problem-solving, of health, of argiculture begin to flourish.  The feudal class becomes more enlightened in its policies towards the landless, but still remains in power.

     There are thus a range of ways in which one can construct scenarios. Besides having clarity in consistency of actors, one should ensure that contradictions within scenarios are not left out. Scenarios are not meant to be perfect places but possible places.

     Scenarios should not only focus on nations but on individuals, communities and peoples associations. Using the ideas of layers of reality, what is missing are the role of ideas, of the Earth itself, of women, of alternative ways of seeing the world, of non-statist nominations of reality.  Scenarios then should not only find alternative routes out of the present, they need to configure the present differently, using radically foreign and unfamiliar notions of the future.  This is what makes future research different from routine social science or policy research.  The task is not only, for example, to imagine alternative futures for the United Nations but rethink governance, power and structure, to call into question current notions of how we organise our social and political life. 

     From this perspective we can imagine an alternative model that is (1) Sensitive to the role of the transcendental (in terms of inspiration and in providing a direction); (2) Includes a range of economic organisations (coops, small businesses, and large state/private run efforts); (3) is committed to a layered theory of representation, a third world vision of democracy, that has vertical (authority) and horizontal (participatory) elements; (4) has a different balance between the individual and group; (5) creates a culture that locates the environment as nested within human consciousness; and (6) attempts to balance spiritual and material factors believing both are basic factors in creating a good society including as social change drivers.

     To conclude, futures research should then only ask what is missing from a particular analysis and it should--through metaphors, emerging issues analysis, layered causal analysis, deconstruction and genealogy--create the possibility of alternative worlds.