Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper analyses how futures become operational through images, metrics, and models that govern before outcomes exist, using satellite-based Earth observation as a paradigmatic case of anticipatory governance.

Paper long abstract

Polarised futures are often framed as competing visions of abundance or collapse, innovation or catastrophe. This paper argues that such polarisation cannot be understood solely at the level of discourse or imagination. Instead, futures increasingly govern through technical and institutional arrangements that render anticipated outcomes actionable before they materialise.

Drawing on ethnographic engagement with Earth observation projects, the paper treats satellite-based Earth observation not as a technological field in its own right, but as a site where futures are translated into operational formats. Metrics of climate risk, biodiversity, or resilience do not merely represent possible futures; they substitute for them in decision-making processes, underwriting audits, investments, subsidies, and regulatory interventions. In this sense, images and metrics function as operational images: they act, allocate responsibility, and legitimise decisions in the absence of realised outcomes.

The paper contributes to anthropological debates on governance, political economy, and futures by conceptualising anticipation as a governing device. It shows how anticipatory regimes redistribute responsibility by concentrating authority among those who design models, indicators, and thresholds, while shifting accountability onto actors expected to adapt to futures already formatted for them. This produces a form of responsibility without reciprocity, in which futures demand compliance but offer limited possibilities for contestation.

By analysing how futures are operationalised rather than merely imagined, the paper offers a diagnostic contribution to future-oriented anthropology. It suggests that intervening in polarised futures requires first understanding how futures already act as infrastructures of governance, shaping possibilities and foreclosing alternatives long before they arrive.