Log in to star items.
- Convenors:
-
Philip Onyekachukwu Egbule
(University of Delta, Agbor, Nigeria.)
Sunday Onyekwuma Ebie (University of Delta)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Traditional Open Panel
Short Abstract
This panel explores how Indigenous Knowledge Systems and local innovations in the Global South challenge Eurocentric futures thinking. We seek contributions engaging with decolonial, community-driven approaches that re-imagine resilience as collective and relational in shaping inclusive futures.
Description
Amid global issues like climate change and biodiversity loss, digital inequity, and socio-political instability, the ability to conceive and create resilient futures is an urgent shared task. However, mainstream paradigms of futures thinking often remain rooted in Eurocentric models of technological determinism. This panel seeks to explore how Indigenous knowledge Systems and forms of local innovations in the Global South, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, offer alternative frameworks for re-envisioning resilience. Drawing from decolonial theories and participatory approaches, the panel examines how Indigenous ecological knowledge systems and community-based and driven techniques of technological adaptation can integrate into pluralistic and relational modes of future-making. Hence, the panel sees ethnographically grounded case studies outlining Indigenous ideas of time, environment, and interdependence in stark contrast to Western anticipatory logics that see futures as remaining firmly planted in predictions and control. “Decolonizing futures” as portrayed here, seeks to reframe resilience not as an action or process of reactivity or adaptation, but a collective, ecological and situated practice found in history, culture, and ethics. Through a focus on lived experience and epistemic contributions from Indigenous and local communities the paper engages with the emerging literatures on futures literacy, offering avenues to advance anticipatory governance in a more inclusive and contextually grounded manner. In line with the conference theme, this panel develops the idea of "more-than-now" by positioning resilient futures in ongoing struggles against coloniality and in the living, evolving epistemologies of communities long-oriented towards futures otherwise. We are interested in contributions, either theoretically or empirically, that engages with community-driven innovation, ecological knowledge, or decolonial methodologies that re-imagines resilience as collective, situated, and relational. The panel encourages interdisciplinary discussion on how the decolonization of futures can reshape anticipatory governance and open up new horizons of futures literacy to imagine futures beyond Western futures thinking.
Accepted papers
Session 1Paper short abstract
This article proposes the concept of differentiated biological citizenship to analyze how Taiwan has become the first country to legislate mandatory collective informed consent for Indigenous peoples.
Paper long abstract
Since the 1990s, Taiwan has promoted genomics as a key component of its transition toward a knowledge-based economy. Ethical controversies surrounding genomic research have largely been articulated through locally adapted frameworks of Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI). However, disputes over Indigenous genetics in Taiwan extend far beyond issues of scientific recruitment or research ethics, encompassing broader political, sociocultural, and historical dynamics. These controversies catalyzed sustained mobilization by Indigenous activists and ultimately led to Taiwan becoming the first country to legislate mandatory collective informed consent for Indigenous peoples in 2016.
To account for these developments, this article proposes the concept of differentiated biological citizenship to analyze how Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples have articulated alternative forms of bioethical governance in response to biomedical colonization. Rather than framing consent solely as an individual ethical procedure, differentiated biological citizenship highlights how law, Indigenous self-determination, and bottom-up political action reconfigure participation in biomedical research along ethnic and historical lines. The article first reconstructs the origins and key events of Indigenous genetic controversies, situating them within processes of globalization and Taiwan’s shifting identity politics. It then traces how scientists, Indigenous elites, and state officials negotiated and institutionalized collective informed consent as a regulatory practice. Finally, by examining recruitment practices, relations of trust and distrust, and enduring power asymmetries between Indigenous and Han populations, the article critically assesses the practical challenges of collective informed consent as a governance model within Indigenous communities.
Paper short abstract
While certainly successful in organizational terms, UNESCO’s Futures Literacy programme has been criticized for advancing a badly masked “modernization” agenda. Using bibliometric methods, this paper explores whether and, if yes, to which degree the criticisms of can be empirically grounded.
Paper long abstract
Futures Literacy has been launched by UNESCO as a global project of social empowerment. Pioneered by Riel Miller (2006, 2018) and now widely implemented in education policies both at national and international levels, futures literacy nonetheless has also been subject to criticism. Critics renounced the positioning of UNESCO (and its predominantly Western experts) as benevolent actor bringing new knowledge to “underdeveloped” areas. This resonates with recent STS research on recent discourses surrounding the proliferation of new technology, in particular Ruha Benjamin’s (2019) analyses of the New Jim Code governing the implementation of AI based categorization software.
In search for empirical data supporting or refuting this criticism, this paper inspects the published scientific literature with scientometric methods to assess how much of this literature is written by scholars with non-Western affiliations. It relates its findings to the results of earlier studies that used similar methods (Dayé 2025) to discuss whether and if yes, to which degree the published literature on futures literacy has incorporated the debates on decolonization that have characterized the larger discipline of future studies (e.g., Sardar 1993).
References
Benjamin, Ruha. 2019. Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Polity Press.
Dayé, Christian. 2025, Futures Thinking: Epistemic Tribes and Territories. Palgrave Macmillan.
Miller, Riel. 2006. From Trends to Futures Literacy: Reclaiming the Future. Victoria: Center for Strategic Education.
Miller, Riel, ed. 2018. Transforming the Future: Anticipation in the 21st Century. Routledge.
Sardar, Ziauddin. 1993. „Colonizing the Future: The ‘Other’ Dimension of Futures Studies“. Futures 25(2):179–87. doi:10.1016/0016-3287(93)90163-N.
Paper short abstract
This study utilizes water purification as a technological probe in Palawan, co-investigating socio-technical shifts with indigenous communities through Action Design Research, examining Community Agency resilience under intervention, and reflecting on technology's role as a Just Transition mediator.
Paper long abstract
Mainstream "Just Transition" narratives frequently reproduce asymmetries of agency amid climate extremes and socio-political shocks. Drawing on Berkes (2017), this study examines how modern solutions displace traditional technologies, marginalizing ecological knowledge and eroding Endogenous Explanatory Power within global sustainable development discourses. Using Action Design Research (Sein et al., 2011) and an intersubjective fieldwork perspective, water purification technology serves as a probe to trace Community Agency dynamics under intervention.
The research unfolds in three stages: (1) Relationship Building—go-along interviews reconstruct water histories and build trust; (2) Situational Diagnosis—the socio-technical system reveals how external interventions disrupt traditional knowledge-based circular economies; (3) Reflection and Enlightenment—drawing on Latour (1994), the technology is reframed as an Intermediary Technological Object that exposes its double-edged character, enabling communities to determine their own pathways with full situational awareness.
Technological intervention is not neutral provision but a socio-technical process unsettling local relational structures and triggering agency reconstruction. Efficacy depends on how communities and technology introducers co-learn to "reconstruct resilience"—reclaiming traditional ecological knowledge as explanatory authority over resources. Grounded in Austronesian traditional wisdom, the "Water Knows–Palawan Model" asserts that Just Transition is constituted by a community autonomously choosing and acting after achieving awareness of their own predicament.
Keywords: Just Transition, Socio-technical Systems (STS), Community Agency, Action Design Research (ADR)
Paper short abstract
Reanimating Caah Laut from Bayah, we approach tsunami as a regenerative force within living cosmologies. Tracing its translation from oral memory into scientific discourse, we expose layered mediations and propose cosmopolitical negotiations beyond technocratic, often subtle colonizing risk regimes.
Paper long abstract
In Bayah, South Lebak, Caah Laut circulates as an oral narrative recounting tsunami signs, assembly points, and moral injunctions for survival. Yet its dialogic, non-melodic form renders it vulnerable to erosion; many residents recall its phrasing but not its meaning. All the while the district lies on the very junctures of subducting earth plates, where earthquakes and tsunamis in the near future are anticipated. Drawing on ethnographic research (Bayah, December 2025) and collaborative literary reconstruction, this paper examines how Caah Laut might be reactivated as a “cultural siren”—akin to Smong in Simeulue, whose performative endurance contributed to life-saving responses during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Engaging debates on pluralistic and integrated disaster governance, we argue that such reconstruction is not heritage work alone but epistemic innovation and intervention. Local articulations in Bayah paradoxically frame total destruction as generative—tsunamis as conditions for civilizational renewal. Rather than dismissing this as fatalism, we treat it as cosmopolitical provocation: how might disaster risk reduction become ethically responsive to ontologies in which catastrophe is both threat and necessity?
We propose an STS framework that understands warning not merely as technological signal but as socio-material practice sustained through performance, affect, and intergenerational transmission. Recasting Caah Laut into pupuh, pantun (poets) and songs—opens a transdisciplinary method where science, art, and local cosmology co-produce preparedness. This approach reimagines disaster governance as collaborative world-making rather than risk management alone, which often reproduces power asymmetries and epistemic hierarchies.
Keywords: tsunami, regenerative, cosmpolitics, Caah Laut Bayah
Paper short abstract
Drawing on ethnography at Ghana's research institute, this paper shows how scientific practice persists through relational infrastructures of authority and devotion. It illustrates resilience that emerges through distributed responsibility and more-than-human relations rather than technical control.
Paper long abstract
In Ghanaian science, authority operates within relations of seniority, religious devotion and ecological attentiveness. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork at the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana, this paper argues that scientific work is stabilised through relational infrastructures of authority, respect, and moral personhood. While global science policy often frames resilience in terms of technological adaptation or predictive capacity, Ghanaian cocoa science reveals an alternative modus operandi. Practices that may at first glance seem inefficient from Euro-American scientific perspectives here serve as epistemic techniques that absorb uncertainty and coordinate the various temporalities of plants, institutions, and livelihoods. These practices are used to redistribute vulnerability, allowing persons and scientific work to face unpredictable ecological rhythms and unstable infrastructures. Contributing to STS debates on distributed agency and decolonial science, this paper develops the notion of authority as epistemic infrastructure. The Ghanaian example demonstrates a distinct epistemic configuration in which knowledge emerges through dividual personhood and moral and relational coordination. By emphasising how relational endurance can replace prediction or control, the paper contributes to discussions on decolonising futures in the Global South. On several examples, it illustrates how alternative scientific epistemologies enact resilience as a collective, ethical, and more-than-human practice capable of sustaining uncertain futures.
Paper short abstract
Indigenous Astronomy in the Space Age was a conference that brought together social scientists, Indigenous knowledge holders, astrophysicists and educations to engage with decolonizing, Indigenizing, representation and belonging in astronomy, with the goal of co-creating a new future.
Paper long abstract
The Indigenous Astronomy in the Space Age conference, as with previous Indigenous Astronomy conferences, sought to include Indigenous knowledge holders allowing them to share their knowledge and foster a sense of belonging within the academic conference setting. The number of Indigenous participants included was impressive, however most were themselves academics holding advanced degrees and affiliated with universities. The remainder were community activists and artists, or combinations of scientist, artists, activist, teacher, researcher. Their contributions to the conference were important in terms of keeping discussions rooted in their lived experiences, strategically correcting misconceptions, bringing their issues into the space and generously agreeing to future collaborations. This presentation is on one level, a report about the conference, and on another level a presentation of the experiences of the conference from the perspective of the Indigenous participants. In the end, we present out thoughts on if the goal of co-creating a new future that includes Indigenous people and Indigenous astronomy was achieved.
Paper short abstract
This paper rethinks participation in renewable energy governance by examining Indigenous energy projects in Taiwan. Drawing on cases in Indigenous territories, it explores tensions between global energy governance and Indigenous ecological knowledge and community decision-making practices.
Paper long abstract
In global energy transitions, community participation and shared ownership are widely promoted as mechanisms to democratize energy systems and enhance resilience. However, these governance models often emerge from Eurocentric assumptions about development, technology, and participation.
This paper rethinks participation by examining how global renewable energy governance encounters Indigenous ecological knowledge and community decision-making practices in Taiwan. Drawing on literature and policy analysis as well as semi-structured interviews, the study analyzes several renewable energy projects located in Indigenous territories in eastern Taiwan, including solar energy development and geothermal initiatives.
The analysis focuses on three key dimensions: the meaning of development, governance mechanisms such as co-ownership and consultation rights, and the interaction between renewable energy technologies and Indigenous ecological knowledge. The findings suggest that Indigenous communities do not necessarily oppose development, but hold different understandings of how development should be defined and governed. Renewable energy initiatives often emphasize technological learning and economic participation, while local ecological knowledge and cultural practices are marginalized.
Furthermore, governance mechanisms such as co-ownership schemes and state-led consultation procedures do not easily align with Indigenous understandings of land, collective decision-making, and traditional territorial relations shaped by colonial histories. For example, formal consultation processes differ significantly from traditional community assemblies where decisions are made through collective consensus.
By revisiting participation as a seemingly universal governance principle, this paper highlights how renewable energy governance continues to reproduce colonial legacies. It argues for more pluralistic approaches to energy futures that recognize Indigenous knowledge systems and locally grounded forms of participation.
Paper short abstract
Three ethnographies with plants in Chile challenge Western notions of cohabitation and futures. Interspecies relationships rethink categories, methods, and the understanding of life-with. From a decolonial perspective, plants and humans spark creativity and other onto-epistemic links.
Paper long abstract
The phrase is inspired by the ideas of Timothy Morton, particularly his “dark ecology,” which, far from rushing headlong into the Anthropocene, seeks to problematize overly simplistic or naive imaginaries of the future. This paper seeks to continue that critique from the Global South, particularly Latin America, proposing some human-plant relationships in which the tension for coexistence remains and “Western” links fade or are understood in other ways: hybrid, porous, chaotic. We depend on the plant world, in its variety of forms, to live. At the same time, we use them to keep warm, to build our homes, to feed them, or simply to transform the space where plants have settled. We dispute space with plants in a tension that cannot be resolved simply, either with conservation proposals or with the creation of spaces reserved for them. Should we think of a future where “the word for world is forest,” as Ursula K. Le Guin suggested in her work? Can we push further the imaginaries of cohabitation where the plant world is not domesticated, colonized, or designed solely by humans and for humans? These questions are raised by the work based on ethnographic experiences in ancestral forests in southern Chile, work with people who are dedicated to health/rituals with medicinal herbs, and work in nurseries in central Chile. Three diverse experiences, all of them with and among plants, with a view to delving into the critical knots of cohabitation and learning to live on a damaged planet.