Paper short abstract:

How are different futures mobilised by the state to achieve specific ends, and what processes can be observed from the production, circulation, and reception of futures? I hope to unpack the political project of crafting futures by studying the history and evolution of futurology in Singapore.

Paper long abstract:

Futures-making, scenario planning, or foresight studies are now indispensable to policymakers in Singapore. Yet, the process of futures-making itself remains opaque and ambiguous.How are different futures mobilised to achieve specific ends, and what processes can be observed from the production, circulation, and reception of futures? I hope to unpack the mechanics of future-crafting by focusing on the history and evolution of futurology in Singapore's civil service. What narratives of the future emerge – whether of utopia or dystopia – and how are these futures crafted?

First, I will analyse the methodological and epistemological tools used in futures-making e.g. scenario planning, and examine the assumptions are embedded in the process of crafting them. Second, I unpack the ways in which the “future” is mobilised to achieve (or not achieve) certain political and bureaucratic ends: for example, exploring the affects the future is endowed with, how futurists might frame immediate problems as future ones to achieve buy-in, or how futures generated translate into material and/or discursive results.

I’m especially curious about what it means to study future from a “local” rather than “global” perspective, especially given critiques about how futurology projects problematic “Anglo” assumptions onto what it assumes to be “global” futures. What horizontal linkages do we have with futures units around the world, and how is the history of Singapore’s futures practices situated in the global history of futurology? I’m also interested in unpacking assumptions of “futures-making” as an inherently elitist process, by looking at more participatory forms of future-making.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores futurology and the alterity of time by looking at the attraction of “the end of time”. It does so by juxtaposing interest in Antiquity with interest in the Apocalypse.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores futurology and the alterity of time by looking at the attraction of “the end of time”. It does so by juxtaposing interest in Antiquity with interest in the Apocalypse. Specifically, it explores the re-animation of volcano eruption disaster tropes to fathom end-time experiences. The fascination with the discovery and marketisation of Italy’s Old World Pompeii is juxtaposed with the on-going volcanic eruptions on the British overseas territory Montserrat in the Eastern Caribbean. In both, a disaster tourism trope is developed for consumption, and the fascination with disaster and destruction is used by visitors as a vantage point to gaze into an apocalypse abyss. Susan Sontag has written about such disaster points as refreshing catalysts – the catastrophe as refreshing instigator of creativity. Sontag was writing about 'the imagination of disaster', using dramatic science fiction stories to make her point, showing us how relationships between protagonist/narrator and disaster have changed from the simple engagement (the saviour hero), to the more complex (idiosyncratic character). In Pompeii - and in Plymouth (Montserrat), described by many journalists as a 21st century Pompeii, and by many geo-tourists as just sublime – the attraction lies with the examples of a modernity in decay; with the defamiliarisation (Edensor) of the environment and hybrid nature of ‘finds’; and with an imaginative subjunctive engagement with fatality (Rojek). Both engagements with catastrophe are attempts to replay and rehearse an end of time.

Paper short abstract:

How can anthropologists position themselves, if distancing themselves from the 'will to improve’ risks irrelevance? After reviewing a number of alternative research programmes, we turn attention to aid workers’ and ethnographers’ differing engagements with the will to improve.

Paper long abstract:

Tania Li’s (2007) rejection of the ‘will to improve’ is emblematic of much of contemporary anthropology of development: it affords a position from which to critically reflect as a detached observer, allowing the ethnographer to reveal what is hidden and debunk development discourses and the power relations on which they are founded. Yet if applied anthropology implicates the ethnographer in the exercise of power - which anthropologists are well situated to challenge - then a purely critical ethnography that stands outside these power relations risks irrelevance. How tenable is this approach for anthropologists faced with exploding inequality and impending environmental apocalypse? Surely few would advocate for an anthropology with no consequences!

Starting from this provocation, the presentation tackles the future of ‘aid ethnographies’ and the kinds of influence ethnography might have. Drawing on alternative research programmes – including critical performativity, collaborative anthropology, and pragmatic sociologies of critique – we turn attention to aid workers’ and ethnographers’ differing engagements with the will to improve and the practical and personal compromises entailed by these engagements. As two researchers who have long worked within development institutions of differing kinds we reflect on our own changing positionalities. We draw on the way that ethnographic subjects (and ethnographers) think, model, and plan the consequences of their career, opening up spaces for a willingness to improve.

References

Li, T.M. (2007) The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics. Durham: Duke University Press