FUTUREPOL. A political history of the future. Knowledge production and future governance Jenny Andersson

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1 FUTUREPOL A political history of the future. Knowledge production and future governance Jenny Andersson

2 Jenny Andersson (b. 1974, Swe) Senior research fellow, CNRS, associate professor at the Center for International Studies, Sciences Po, Paris PhD in economic history from Uppsala University, Sweden, 2003 Main publication: The Library and the Workshop. Social Democracy and Capitalism in an Age of Knowledge, Stanford University Press, 2010 I am a STARTER the motivation for the ERC is the opportunity to build a research team around a new strand of research

3 The questions that led me to the ERC How do societies create futures, and why do certain future paths emerge as legitimate and others not? What is the role of future conflict and how do societies deal with it? Can we understand the social and political process of the opening and closing of certain futures? Can we understand this as a problem of change over time and outline a new field of inquiry?

4 FUTUREPOL seeks to outline a new field of research in the intersection of political science, history, and science and technology studies: a political history of the future asks two central research questions: How does the future become an object of governance? How is this process different today, from earlier in the post war period?

5 1. Study the emergence of a scientific field around futurology in the immediate post war period First Delphi, RAND 1964

6 2. Explore the institutionalization of forms of future governance in national administrations Future as science US (RAND) East bloc (Academies of Science) Future as planning and policy France (Commissariat General au Plan) Future as technocracy and expert rule Netherlands (Scientific Council for Government) Future as public participation Sweden (Secretariat for Futures Studies)

7 3. Explore how national futures stood in relation to emerging global ones From the 1970s onwards the future becomes a category of global governance to do with problems facing Mankind The future as dissident space, conflict and super power collaboration in the Cold War era Futurists are active in transnational networks and world organisations

8 4. Trace the evolution of means of future governance until the present day Predictive technologies as instruments of change and control before and after 1989, East and West From planning to risk The rise of foresight as national, European and global policy tool in the 1990s and 2000s Futurists as expertise in policy processes on global level

9 An operationalisation in three steps Tracing the circulation of ideas around futurology Analysing the institutionalisation of future governance Following the changing usages of predictive technologies

10 Sub studies A study of the transnational networks of futurists and the global circulation of future ideas. B comparative case study of the institutionalization of foresight in a number of countries in Western Europe (France, the Netherlands, Sweden, UK). C study of the role of future governance in the construction of the East West divide, and in its transformation post D study of the development of foresight as a policy tool on the national and European level in the 1990s and 2000s.

11 All project members will be recruited through an international call and based in CERI, Sciences Po, Paris CERI the Center for international studies and research is a pluridisciplinary environment for international studies and international relations

12 The project s international environment Direct collaboration with Matt Connelly s project Global Future Governance, Columbia (International relations) Zukunftswissen (Cologne, Basel, Augsburg, Demography) Future expertise, Center for Historical Research and Center for Climate Research, University of East Anglia No future, Durham Institute for Advanced Studies (Literary criticism) Future matters, prof. Barbara Adam, Cardiff University and ESRC UK (sociology of time) IFS and KTH Stockholm, WRR Netherlands (Futures studies) Savoir et technologies de l anticipation, EHESS (ANR, modern history) IFRIS, Marne La Vallee, Centre Koyre, Paris region (Science and technology studies, sociology of knowledge, history of science) Sheila Jasanoff, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard (political science)

13 Expected outcomes The opening up of a pluridisciplinary research field devoted to problems of longterm governance Establishing Futurepol as the node in an international network of future research 2 doctoral dissertations, 4 peer review articles by junior researcher, articles and final monograph by PI plus collective conference volume Seminars and workshops Historical groundwork: archives and interviews on an almost blank field