Anticipatory action

New publication on proactive (or ‘transformative’) scenario planning

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UPDATE: My principal PhD supervisor and I have just published a new paper which reviews and contributes to the distinction between reactive and proactive/’transformative’ forms of scenario planning, which is part of a special issue of the International Journal of Foresight and Innovation Policy – see: http://www.inderscience.com/info/inarticletoc.php?jcode=ijfip&year=2015&vol=10&issue=2/3/4. The paper focusses on proactive (or ‘transformative’) approaches … [Read more…]

Casting a sociological eye on the mobilisation of techniques of prospection by scientists

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For a long time I’ve been interested in the relationship between science and society, often with focus on the social and political processes that shape the production, evaluation and use of scientific knowledge and technology. These interests include the misuse of science and statistics (emphasised by writers like Ben Goldacre) – bad science is common … [Read more…]

Examining the role of anticipatory knowledge in institutional change

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Initially major motivations for doing my PhD research were to contribute to the evidence base that underpins ‘foresight’ work (given that formal evaluations are rarely conducted and practitioners rarely have the time or the capacity to do this research), and to contribute to a better understanding of the roles such tools and practices can play … [Read more…]

Studying prospective practices at Australia’s national science organisation (PhD update)

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The past two weeks have been eventful ones for my doctoral research. As a result, the eventual thesis  (one day I’ll get there…) will now be a single “nested” case study which examines the use of techniques and practices of prospection by the Energy Flagship within CSIRO, Australia’s national science organisation, with a focus on … [Read more…]

Rethinking the received wisdom on ‘foresight’ practices

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Early in my PhD studies I reviewed the literature on so-called ‘foresight’ practices such as on scenario-building, scenario-based planning, and techno-economic modelling. What came through clearly is that there is a dominant set of ideas about these practices. These ideas can be termed the received wisdom. These ideas include that foresight methods and practices are … [Read more…]

Has Paul Gilding lost the plot?

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Former Greenpeace International Executive Director, Paul Gilding, has written a new blog post entitled “Don’t be Fossil Fooled – It’s Time to Say Goodbye”. He claims that “the fossil fuel energy industry [and not just in Australia, the global fossil fuel industry] is now entering terminal decline and will be all but gone within 15-30 years” … [Read more…]

The management of expectations, ‘temporal work’, and the functions of fictional expectations in structuring action in the present

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Recently I’ve been reading some papers in which sociologists take the uncertainty and indeterminacy of decision situations (such as most decision situations in economic contexts) as a key starting point for their analysis and theory-building. For example, because of the fundamental uncertainty that characterises many decisions in economic contexts Jens Beckert argues that the decision-making … [Read more…]

On the too little considered, but crucial, politics of prospective exercises

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This aim of this post is to develop an initial outline of some of the politics of prospective exercises – both ‘small p’ politics such as the exercising of power to influence such studies, the findings, and use of the outputs; and broader Politics related to how such activities are often conducted and used in … [Read more…]

The Population Bomb revisited – again

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It’s a bit too soon, arguably, to do a full postmortem on the book The Population Bomb and especially on related debates – given the global population continues to rapidly rise and is heading towards 9 or 9.5 billion by mid-century – but lately I spotted some interesting revisiting of the book, its impacts, and … [Read more…]

Reflexivity, experimentation and anticipatory action – considering Emma Marris’s Rambunctious Garden

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For a while I’ve been meaning to re-read Marris’s book Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-wild World. The book’s central thesis is that we must abandon the idea that the central goal of conservation is to preserve nature in a pristine, prehuman state, and consequently must rethink conservation goals and practices. I recall at … [Read more…]