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25Social Alternatives Vol. 24 No. 4, Fourth Quarter, 2005
Abstract
Futures education has been around for almost four
decades. Beginning in the US in the 1960s, it has
now been developed in many different countries. The
history of its unfolding has been well documented,
for example by Richard Slaughter (2004). In
Australia, considerable work has been done at the
primary and secondary school level (Gidley, Bateman
and Smith 2004). Even though it is a relatively new
academic tradition, there are now over 50 universities
around the world that teach futures studies (Ramos
2005). Some are just one or two classes at the
bachelors level, brought into a university by an
enthusiastic professor. Others incorporate futures
studies into existing programs, for example in the
areas of planning, business, environmental
sustainability, economics, development studies,
science and technology studies. There are also formal
Masters level programs, with degrees entitled such
as: futures studies, strategic foresight, prospective
(in France), prospectiva (in Latin America), and
prognostics (in Eastern Europe).There are also
numerous doctoral dissertations around the world
with a focus in futures studies.
Contributing to this debate, the approach to
futures education in this article will consider Freire’s
(1970, 1973) work on conscientisation in the
contexts of critical futures studies and, further, discuss
some potentials of Freirian-style action research in
futures studied. This framework offers practical and
theoretical possibilities in futures education toward
the development of democratically-oriented
consciousness and the real issues and challenges we
face as communities and as humanity in the 21st
century.
Critical Futures Studies
Critical futures studies was pioneered by many of the
core members of the World Futures Studies Federation
(WFSF), which emerged in the 60s from the older critical
traditions of Europe and the emerging emancipatory /
post-colonial traditions of the newly liberated non-West.
Notable examples of this include Robert Jungk’s early
pioneering of ‘Futures Workshops’ in Europe, and Ashis
Nandy’s early involvement in the WFSF (Ramos 2005).
Critical futures studies evolved further through cultural
studies and post-structuralism. Slaughter (1999)
developed the first articulation of how ideology is
expressed through futures research. He also later
developed a typology for futures work based on its level
of reflexivity: pop futures, problem oriented, and critical
/ epistemological (2004, 89). Inayatullah (2004) later
pioneered post-structural futures analysis through the
development of Causal Layered Analysis (CLA), a
framework for deconstructing futures discourses and
images and reconceptualising them through alternative
frames of reference. Sardar (1999) championed a multi-
cultural approach to futures studies, which critiques forms
of cultural imperialism and affirms the need for cultural
autonomy.
At a basic level critical futures education aims at
helping the learner to understand how discourses and
popular images of ‘the future’ are mediated by culture,
ideology and worldview; or how we project our
institutional and cultural assumptions, ideology, and
worldviews onto / into futures research, images and
discourses. At a deeper level it asks how we can know
the future, problematising the empirical standard, opening
up alternatives frames and epistemological questions. It
asks how media (in many forms) privilege or marginalised
certain futures over others, or reveal deeper structures.
Finally, it aims to pluralise the future, showing how there
are alternatives futures embedded in the present.
Critical futures studies uses corollary and often
overlapping categories such as ideology, worldview, and
teleology to help uncover how futures discourses and
images are framed from different cultural traditions. The
notion of Ideology may refer to powerful intellectual and
social movements, the various ‘–isms’ that pervade the
world. Inayatullah argues worldviews are shared ‘actor
invariant’ cultural configurations that help determine the
way we see the world, positioned in space and time
(2002,117). They vary, for example, from: The UK of
Charles Dickens, to Tang Dynasty China, to the
Afghanistan of the Taliban, or the USA of George Bush
Jr. Teleology refers to the construction of historical
endpoints and determined paths of development. The
following section will show how these categories are
applied.
Critical Futures Education Applied
Watkins’ (1964) study found that most modern ideologies
have three fundamental characteristics: 1) they are
utopian, promising a future that can never be fully
FUTURES EDUCATION AS TEMPORAL CONSCIENTISATION
JOSE RAMOS
Social Alternatives Vol. 24 No.4, Fourth Quarter, 2005
26
realised; 2) they oversimplify reality, especially through
the construction of friend and enemy, hero and villain,
self and Other, and finally 3) they embody extreme
optimism and over-confidence in their capacity to
actualise their cause. From this it can be inferred that
the influence of different ideologies on our views of the
future are great. For this reason they are widely used in
futures education settings. For historian-turned futures
educator Warren Wagar, ideology not only mediates the
construction of the past, but also how we see futures. It
is for this reason that he stresses the use of ideologies in
constructing scenarios with students (2002, 88), to show
how different ideological positions construct qualitatively
different views and orientations towards the future.
These positions may include: market fundamentalist,
Marxist, eco-feminist, technological optimists and
religious fundamentalists. Such an approach helps
students get past false dualisms that obscure a deeper
understanding of futures issues. Cole (2002) on the other
hand, uses ideological grouping to teach a course on
global planning, demonstrating how different ideologies
organise variables / data differently in projecting futures.
In another instance, Jacques Boulet, at a seminar
I attended in 2003 at Borderlands Co-operative in
Melbourne, pointed out certain ideological asymmetries
in relation to consumerism.1 For instance, the emergence
of consumerism coincides with the rapid depletion of the
Earth’s natural resources. This has been described by
Sklair as the ‘culture-ideology of consumerism’ and by
Hamilton (2003) as part of a ‘growth fetish’. Sklair argues
that this ‘culture-ideology’ is exported from the West to
the non-West through Trans-national Advertising
Agencies (TNAA), and employs ‘projective advertising’,
‘the technique of producing new needs/wants as
components of a new lifestyle’ (Sklair 2002, 182). So
while expectations for one’s individual life rise and rise,
the Earth’s capacity to fulfil such expectations falls and
falls.2
Sardar argues the future has already been
colonised by the corporate ideology of globalisation. It
is, in his words, ‘occupied territory’. Because futures
research and / or consulting, coupled with marketing, is
very big business, ‘forecasting simply ends up by
projecting the (selected) past and the (often-privileged)
present on to a linear future’ (Sardar 1999, 9). As Sardar
shows, teleology is an essential aspect of ideology.
Teleologies tell us what ‘the end of history’ is, or offer a
grand design. The western development model, which
still encourages all countries to follow in the example of
the West, with categories such as ‘First World /
Developed’, ‘Second World / Developing’ and ‘Third
World / Under-developed’ is an example of teleology.
Variation is possible, but the path is fundamentally set.
Hard teleology might correspond to a strict historicism.
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27Social Alternatives Vol. 24 No. 4, Fourth Quarter, 2005
Such teleological determinism offers a static version of
reality which presents the present as unchanging and
‘the end of time’ or the future as unitary and determined,
outside of human intervention.
This western development narrative, promising
progress and material success for all, exists in a larger
context of the western Weltanschauung. According to
Sardar, most attempts in the West to rethink development
still fall into a worldview that only accepts macro-
economics and the logic of the market as the basis for
dealing with development, and take western values, such
as profit maximisation and competitive individualism for
granted. He argues that, if the whole model is flawed,
we will not be able to create a just economic order by
just tinkering with ‘development’ (2003, 316). As well,
Finish environmental policy and futures educator Markku
Sotarauta acknowledged the western enlightenment
derived worldview that informs current notions of
development, and the need to shift toward a more flexible
model of policy making and planning informed by multiple
worldviews and diverging views of the future (Sotarauta
2002, 217-221).
Mediating Consciousness
Like much of global and environmental education, critical
futures studies is also an example of socially critical
education aimed at addressing ecological unsustainability
and societal inequality (Hicks 2002, 322). Critical futures
education challenges business-as-usual conceptions of
change, surfacing both the ideological distortions about
the future and the critical challenges we face, explicity
incorporating ethics. Such critical futures education,
however, needs to extend into a new media literacy, which
can empower students within the endless symbolic webs
characteristic of our hyper mediated world, as it is often
through the media that the future is ‘colonised’.
While calls for a new media literacy have been
around for a while (Ewan 1976), futures studies media
literacy has only been explicitly developed by some (see
Henderson 1996; Slaughter 1999, 95; Inayatullah 2004).
Today’s media is often complicit in perpetuating false
assumptions about the future, which insulate people from
facts, evidence, and knowledge needed for people to
make wise decisions. Two examples illustrate this: global
warming and weapons of mass destruction. First, climate
change research has upset our assumption that the
Earth’s climate is relatively stable, and we now
understand that climate change is both part of the Earth’s
regular oscillations and also created by carbon emissions.
TV programs on the impact of climate change or ‘peak
oil’ issues, however, number very few, as do ads telling
us to sell our cars and ride bikes. Yet we get literally
thousands of ads telling us to buy more cars. A second
example is the marketing of the so-called ‘war on terror’,
a term which conveniently obfuscates the US’s role in
the production and implementation of terror. From this
perspective the state-media propagation of the concept
of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ (WMD) leading up
to the US invasion of Iraq can be seen as a case of
‘rotten foresight’. While the existence of WMD is
certainly an important one to deal with, the framing of
the issue is distorted. This construction of false
assumptions about the future can also be seen in the
context of George Lakoff’s research into ‘framing’, how
public relations style media saturation is fundamental to
notions of everyday common sense (Lakoff 2004).
Through the media, the future is also often
portrayed in extremes (Slaughter 2004, 15-16). It is often
either dystopian, apocalyptic films and Philip K. Dick
scenarios (for example BladeRunner / Minority Report)
where corporations and technology have run wild, or a
techno-utopian world where the march of progress has
lead us to material bliss. Haunted by the possibility of
catastrophe, or compelled by the wish fantasy of
technological transcendence, the public imagination has
been moulded into either false despair or false promises.
In one respect, both techno determinism and catastrophe
consciousness essentially do the same thing – they tell
us that power is outside us, that either way, we only
participate passively in the unfolding of time. As Paulo
Freire argued, ‘In alienated societies, men oscillate
between ingenuous optimism and hopelessness’ (Freire
1973, 12-13).
The increasingly oligopolistic mass media are one
of the key forces through which the future is colonised.
Processes which pacify people, turning them into
powerless recipients of a pre-packaged future, indicate
this colonisation. Entertainment is a key method, a much
more effective pacifier than indoctrination - people are
more likely to resist indoctrination, sensing a threat
associated with coercion. Individuals being entertained
will enjoy the experience, and are less likely to resist it.
Another good barometer of whether the future has been
colonised is to ask whether people have hope.
The future has been colonised where people feel
they have no power to change the conditions of their
lives. Extensions of this are arguments for inevitability:
of poverty, of war, of human evil, etc. An internalisation
of inevitability is a reifying of social conditions, which
leaves people in a condition of alienation from themselves
and the world. To justify dehumanisation, the domination
of others, putting individuals in competition in a zero sum
game, civilisations clashing or humans pitted against
nature, are all examples of colonised futures. The end
result is oppression manifested through a sense of futility.
It is a sad belief that we cannot change things, or a sense
of paralysis in the face of challenges, a state of
hopelessness and despair. We thus need a renewed
sensitivity to the media contexts in which we find
ourselves, especially in respect to our futures. We need
Social Alternatives Vol. 24 No.4, Fourth Quarter, 2005
28
to ask whether our media contexts empower or
disempower, aid or hinder us in our quest for better,
hopeful futures.
Temporal Conscientisation
Temporal conscientisation refers to a liberating
awakening in relation to temporality, with various
dimensions. Intellectually it is the awakening of what
Freire referred to as ‘critical consciousness’, and in
relation to the future, critical futures thinking. It is also
an understanding of alternative futures, that the future is
not predetermined, but open to human influence.
Psychologically it is an existential shift, finding
empowerment and hope. Practically it means learning
to embody the future in the present, through new
practices, innovations and actions.
If colonisation means we have internalised a
hopeless and despairing future without alternatives, given
to us by impersonal others, liberation means quite the
opposite. Liberation in this context means first identifying
forms of false consciousness, ideology and worldviews,
as they relate to the future, including delusional forms of
hope, and visions of the future which are alienating.
Examples are varieties of fundamentalism, for example,
which put faith completely outside us, such as techno-
fundamentalism (technology will save us), econo-
fundamentalism (progress equals economic growth), and
religious fundamentalism (only God can save us). It means
personally co-generating empowering alternative futures
in relation with others through the liberation of the
imagination.
In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the
struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the
reality of oppression not as a closed world, from which
there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they
can transform (Freire 1970,34).
As Freire (1970, 33) argued, we needed ‘to make
oppression and its causes objects of reflection’ by those
being oppressed. By making false futures, techno-
fantasies and dystopias of despair alike, objects of
reflection, we can understand their causes, and act to
create new empowering directions. De-colonising the
future starts with a reflection on the moulding of our
imaginations, and follows through by shifting the locus
of control away from corporate / state institutions, and
toward citizens and community, with the corresponding
local capacity to develop innovations that empower. This
is certainly challenging, but there are numerous practical
examples of people responding to the great issues of our
time through imaginative social innovations, proposals and
visions (see Henderson 1996; Ramos 2004).
Temporal conscientisation means becoming
sensitive to ‘epochs’ the unfolding of history and
contemporary social change processes. Freire argued
that in order for people to meaningfully participate in
changing their realities for the better, people need to be
able to distinguish themselves from the forces of history
(Freire 1973,5). A better future can be fulfilled to the
extent that historical trends, issues and themes are
grasped by people. For Freire critical consciousness
meant awakening to the key themes of the time, and
thus being able to intervene ‘actively in reality, to humanise
and transform it’ (1973, 7). This corresponds to many
methods used in futures education, such as trend and
emerging issues analysis, as well as the study of historical
stages, emphasised in part by Galtung and Inayatullah
(1997). Moreover, the person as ‘object’ is characterised
by passive adaptation to oncoming social changes,
passively acquiescing and in the process becoming de-
humanised through their passive acceptance of historical
forces. The person who is a ‘subject’, is characterised
by integration, both adapting to and transforming the
epoch, in the process humanising themselves and others
(Friere 1973).
Key for Freire was to distinguish the epoch in
exhaustion as opposed to the epoch which gives
sustenance (1973, 9). Slaughter and Beare (1993)
reiterate this understanding when they write: ‘to educate
young people as though the present patterns of thinking
and living, or past ones for that matter, provide a sound
basis for confronting the future is quite plainly dangerous’
(1993, 7). In resonance with Freire, they contrast the
paradigm in decline and exhaustion as industrial
materialism. The new emerging paradigm they describe
as a one-world view of global consciousness,
characterised by an appreciation for the intimate inter-
connection of systems that interpenetrate on Earth,
ecological, human, and inanimate.
Alienation and Healing
Educator David Hicks helps to draw the link between
knowledge about global futures, empowerment and action
as part of a process of temporal conscientisation.
Drawing upon previous research as well as his own
experience as an educator, he identifies the psychological
process experienced by students of global futures
education (Hicks 2002). He shows how learning about
global futures triggers a distinct psychological process in
a student. The five stages in this process proceed from
cognitive, affective, existential, and empowered, to
action (Hicks 2002, 100).
In this first ‘cognitive’ stage students
intellectualised the dimensions of global futures, global
issues and challenges. As the student progresses,
frustration often ensues with the complexity of the issues,
in addition to sadness, worry, and anxiety over the state
of the world. This constitutes the ‘affective’ stage. This
often leads to a re-assessment of the student’s own place
in the world. The assumptions students have about their
own lives are challenged. This ‘existential’ stage is the
potential turning point, where students begin to integrate
29Social Alternatives Vol. 24 No. 4, Fourth Quarter, 2005
their concerns about global futures into their own lives.
The ‘empowerment’ stage is where students find sources
of inspiration, innovation and renewal that give them a
sense of hope, motivation and new directions. Finding
inspiring examples and stories of change is key. In the
last stage, ‘action’, students find new relationships,
networks, practices, behaviours and projects which
address their concerns about global futures.3
The process of healing the alienation that people
experience with the current state of the world should be
emphasised. Hicks argues that much of the angst of the
late 20th century stems from our being ‘cut off’ from the
natural world. Repression and denial of the state of the
world are characteristic of the vast majority of people.
As Hicks writes:
Some problems are too much to bear so that we deny
their very existence. Our defence mechanisms can
thus lead to a ‘psychic numbing’ which denies the
pain of the world and our part in producing it. By
denying its existence we perpetuate it (Hicks 2002,
99).
Jennifer Gidley (2004) has conducted extensive research
on the link between futures education and youth
empowerment. She shows how futures in education has
been used to help counter fears that youth have about
the future, ‘helping students develop greater sense of
hope and possibility,’ and to explore avenues for action
(Gidley 2004, 21). She also cites evidence suggesting
that facilitating positive images of the future for youth is
effective in dealing with depression and even lowering
the incidence of suicide among youth (2001). The
research links hopelessness with helplessness, ‘the
inability to control outcomes, whether good or bad,’
(Gidley 2001, 52), in other words, a lack of power /
agency. Agency then may be considered a primary
outcome of empowerment. She emphasises how futures
education, and visioning processes for youth, need to be
linked with opportunities for action.
Brainstorming actions that could be done as a class,
now and in the future…empower the students –
without it futures research with young people may
have a depressing effect, because they can’t see how
their dreams can become a reality (Gidley 2004, 22).
Conventional education fails to bring these
dimensions into the learning process so that students can
both face our complex (often frightening) futures and
find empowerment and action. At one extreme education
focuses on human empowerment without acknowledging
hard core social issues. At the other extreme education
often gives people a heavy dose of hard core social issues
without enabling them to find hope, inspiration, and
empowerment that leads to new actions, practices and
innovations. As Freire argued, there needs to be a
continuous dialectic between the subjective experience
of the individual, and the objective conditions people find
themselves in (1970, 35):
Nascent hope coincides with an increasingly
critical perception of the concrete conditions
of reality’ (Freire 1973, 13).
Anticipatory Action Learning
Linking foresight with action, through empowerment, is
the essence of anticipatory action learning (AAL). AAL,
an empowerment oriented and capacity building approach
to futures exploration and education, is a combination of
action research / learning and critical futures studies.
The term was first seen in an article by Julie Macken
for the Australian Financial Review, and originally
developed into a practice by Tony Stevenson and Sohail
Inayatullah (Ramos 2004, 500). AAL is primarily
participatory, involving groups of people working together.
As such the aim is to bring together many stakeholders
with common concerns, but with distinct perspectives
and different ‘ways of knowing’.
Instead of an ‘expert’ telling a group what the
future is, a facilitator helps a group design processes
that allow them to skill themselves in futures exploration.
By using various techniques, such as trend and emerging
issues analysis, Causal Layered Analysis, visioning, back-
casting and social innovation design, they embark on a
process of temporal conscientisation. Through this, a
dialectic exists between understanding the empirical /
material factors that impinge on the future, and an
understanding of the core assumptions, myths, ideology
and group values and aspirations in relation to their future.
Reflection on how the future has already been
framed or colonised, or what worldview gives the default
future, allows stakeholder-participants to re-
conceptualise their futures in empowering ways, through
new and inspiring narratives. Finally, the process leads
to group formulated plans and actions for realising the
desired future. Inayatullah (2005) has developed the most
comprehensive account of this practice. In addition, AAL
and related approaches incorporating action research into
futures studies has proved its suitability for use in many
settings, documented through various case studies.4
The theoretical backdrop of AAL is action learning
/ research and experiential learning, or learning through
action. While each practitioner draws upon futures and
action research traditions differently, Kolb (1984)
provides a classic model of what experiential learning
looks like: proceeding from [1] concrete experience, to
[2] observation and reflection, to [3] abstract
conceptualisation, and finally to [4] experimentation.
While this is a general outline of the process, learning
can begin at any stage, and moving through one cycle
does not complete the learning process, it is but one of
many iterations in a larger learning spiral. This approach
implies shifting from a success / failure mindset, typical
of absolutistic thinking, to a more nuanced mindset of
experimentation. This allows us to become self-conscious
Social Alternatives Vol. 24 No.4, Fourth Quarter, 2005
30
actors / interveners in life in modest yet ever more
meaningful, empowered and effective ways.
Conclusion
Creating education for empowering, hopeful and livable
futures is today a fundamental challenge. To do this we
first need to reflect upon how ‘the future’ has been
framed, ideologically, through the worldviews we hold,
and how the future is shaped by the media. At the level
of human subjectivity, this corresponds with emancipation
from fixed and deluded futures consciousness, an
enhanced understanding of historical shifts and, through
finding new sources of hope, some healing of our sense
of alienation from the world. Finally we need to integrate
futures education / learning with actions, innovations and
enterprises that can practically lead to better futures.
By bringing together critical futures studies and action
research, we can better understand and employ processes
of temporal conscientisation, how we integrate ourselves
in time, helping to lead us toward more peaceful, ethical
and sustainable futures.
Endnotes
1 From a seminar on social futures in 2003 at Borderlands
Co-operative in Melbourne.
3 These stage are of course not linear, but can also double
back recursively, depending on the type o
f futures education and the students involved.
4 Two special issues on the confluence of action learning
/ research and futures studies, edited by Sohail Inayatullah
and myself, in the Journal of Futures Studies (August
2005), and also for Futures (forth coming 2006), have
brought together 15 authors and dozens of case studies
in its application.
5 From a seminar on social futures in 2003 at Borderlands
Co-operative in Melbourne.
7 These stage are of course not linear, but can also double
back recursively, depending on the type of futures
education and the students involved.
8 Two special issues on the confluence of action learning
/ research and futures studies, edited by Sohail Inayatullah
and myself, in the Journal of Futures Studies (August
2005), and also for Futures (forthcoming 2006), have
brought together 15 authors and dozens of case studies
in its application.
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Migrants
Do you miss us-the generation
who took our suitcases and left,
those of us who were then thirty?
We were many, too young
but also too old and complicated-
too late to stay, too late to migrate.
Is there a void where now
the forty year olds are missing,
or, as soon as we left, the space was filled
by waves of generations, by the tides of many-
the ocean of genetics regenerating gaps
wave after wave after wave?
IOANA PETRESCU
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Social Foresight. London: RoutledgeFalmer, 15-16.
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Bio
Jose Ramos works at Swinburne University and is a Ph.D
student in the school of Humanities and Human Services
at Queensland University of Technology. His research
is focused on alternative futures as expressed through
the World Social Forum.