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- Convenors:
-
Amit Sheniak
(Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Limor Samimian-Darash (Hebrew University)
Daniel Knight (University of St Andrews)
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- Chairs:
-
Amit Sheniak
(Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Limor Samimian-Darash (Hebrew University)
- Discussants:
-
Daniel Knight
(University of St Andrews)
Gisa Weszkalnys (London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE))
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Peter Froggatt Centre (PFC), 02/017
- Sessions:
- Thursday 28 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel seeks to highlight different social and cultural contexts of how the future is being imagined and governed by different technologies (Scenario planning, future talk, innovation workshops etc…) pointing to the connection between (un)common future imaginations and the contemporary world.
Long Abstract:
Technologies of imagination are means for contemporary societies to prepare for the future and govern its uncertainties (i.e. Scenario planning, future talk, innovation workshops etc…). While future imagination in the form of technical innovation dominates neo-liberal social-political discourses and its complementary business and economic narratives (all linked) nowadays.
Against this background, this panel aim to unpack these imaginaries by highlighting the social and cultural contexts in which future imagination takes place to understand how cultural transformation is produced, experienced, and negotiated in particular contexts. By presenting different fieldwork studies on how the future is being imagined and planned, following the conference theme, we intend to cast light on the connection between (un)common future imaginations in the contemporary world, as another type of relationship between "hope and political projects of (un)commoning."
These connections raise various questions about the nature of future imagination technologies: why some technologies transcend across different temporal and cultural spaces, and other transform and change; how perceptions of the future are socially and culturally constructed and shared nationally, internationally, and globally; what techniques and practices of future imagination circulate among and between various institutional settings; and what kinds of effects get set into motion as a result.
In a period overwhelmed by uncertainties, we believe that a comparative presentation of the future imagination and its achievement is needed to portray a comprehensive picture of cultural transformation and hope.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 28 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
Drawing on ethnographic research in innovation centers located at the rural periphery of Israel, we detect a strong influence of future imagination technologies such as communal practices and local interim knowledge, highlighting a strong connection between future imagination, space, and place.
Paper long abstract:
Innovation is generally associated both with the creation of something new and with the neoliberal discourse of profit-making, and is often understood in relation to modernity and its prime social site, “the city.” Accordingly, the coupling of innovation and the rural periphery may seem incongruent. Drawing on ethnographic research on Israel’s high-tech scene, we analyze innovation centers located primarily in kibbutzim in the northern and southern periphery of the country. This allows us to juxtapose the ultra-modernist and individualist ethos of the creative actor against a more communal understanding of social life. In these sites, we observe not just the imitation of “urban” innovation, but also the strong influence of unexpected imagination technologies such as the honing of a community sense and the use of local interim knowledge in the design of technologically innovative products and services.
These technologies serve as intermediaries between future imagination and local socio-cultural spaces. Examining what is taking place outside urban centers thus enables a more complete and nuanced understanding of the interplay between innovation, future imagination, and society at large, pointing to the connection between (un)common future imaginations in the contemporary world.
Paper short abstract:
This paper reveals the imaginative techniques of the future in a Parisian trend forecasting agency that anticipates trends. Its trend forecasters must create certainty for brands, but the uncertain economic context blurs their job's long-term projection as well as their company's.
Paper long abstract:
If there is one versatile and complex phenomenon that marks our contemporary world, it is fashion. Indeed, it has become increasingly difficult to anticipate its future due to the exponential evolution of trends propelled by the fast fashion system that creates an incessant demand for novelty. To counter its uncertainty, brands must anticipate upstream the newest trends. To do so, they turn to the foresight services offered by trend forecasting offices which promise to guarantee them a prosperous future.
My research followed one of these agencies in Paris to understand how they anticipate social trends. Its employees, who are as much foresight analysts as strategic planners and stylists, transmit their socio-cultural analyses, two years in advance, to their client companies in the form of a "trend book" or by providing consulting services. These tools shape "socio-aesthetic" scenarios that represent trends likely to meet the needs and desires of consumers.
In this paper, I analyse the future paradox that this field stands on. On one hand, these actors, set up as fashion oracles, have a full legitimacy in deciding the future of trends to give certainty for brands. The ethnography highlights the imaginative techniques of new trend scenarios which is based on an experimental methodology that follows a dynamic routine. But, on the other hand, the harsh and uncertain socio-economic context in which the current capitalist logic imposes "tight flow" conditions, reveal the difficulties to project themselves into their own company in the long run, with no scenarios of their future.
Paper short abstract:
Through it's missionary activities that support the social infrastructure of rural Kafa, people actively engage in imagining futures with and through the Catholic Church. This paper thus points out, how these imaginations revolve around issues of development, accessibility and belonging.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I will describe the Catholic Church in the rural Kafa Region of Ethiopia through its missionary work, which is providing services in the fields of schooling, healthcare, agriculture and other domains of social infrastructure. As will be presented, catholic, as well as people from other confessional groups, exercise notions of the future with and through the Catholic Church because of their much-appreciated development activities. Referring to the everyday life in rural Kafa, these notions of the future also stand in line with the accessibility of social infrastructural services such as kindergartens, schools and healthcare facilities. Because of historical ties between the Catholic Church and the Kafa Region of Ethiopia and the conception of the Catholic Church as the first Christian Church of Kafa (Kaffi-Kitenno), I conclude that belonging is an important part in the overall notions of the future that are negotiated with and through the Catholic Church. For example, this can be observed in the conversion of entire villages to the Catholic faith. In line with the field of the Anthropology of Christianity, this paper will then provide a hitherto neglected focus on how social transformation can be described in Catholic traditions (Bialecki, Haynes, Robbins 2008: 1152). The basis of the paper represents three months of field research in the Kafa Region of Ethiopia in 2021, with an explicit focus on role of the Catholic Church on the everyday lives of people and how people actively engage and use the Catholic Church.
Paper short abstract:
Taichung's new smart city is partly occupied by a big public park, which was conceived to offer a comfortable outdoor space while respecting ecological concerns and anticipating future natural disasters. What kind of future does this urban renewal project outline?
Paper long abstract:
In Taichung (Taïwan), the new smart neighborhood currently under construction is occupied by a big urban park designed by two European architects. Their main goal is to propose a comfortable outdoor space by regulating the local climate while respecting some ecological concerns and anticipating potential future natural disasters. Thereby, it follows the ecological guidelines of the masterplan of this new district designed by a renowned American architect. The future envisioned in these projects appears to be seen as universally and globally threatened by environmental disasters, and some measures are taken in order to attenuate its main causes.
Doing so, some decisions related to urban planning shook up local habits, as well as the way of conceiving urban space. On the contrary, some other decisions are absolutely not questioned, such as the will to make this new district a smart city (for example, by integrating connected devices in the different infrastructures in order to save energy).
On the basis of an ethnography realised between 2017 and 2020, I propose to highlight some frictions between the way the international designers envision the future on one hand, and the way the locals (architects, users, workers, …) reacted on these adjustments on another one. What do these tensions illustrate? This will also allow me to examine how the ideas and logics conveyed in the making of metropolis on an international scale are imposed locally. Finally, what kind of common future do these projects outline, and how do they try to respond to it?