Post-industrial Canada: An econometric modelling approach

This study brings together the predominantly qualitative approach of social forecasting—as manifested by Daniel Bell's concept of the post-industrial society—and the quantitative analysis of econometric forecasting. The econometric model used here is the candide model of the Canadian national economy. The author seeks to verify the compatibility of some hypotheses of the post-industrial concept by using candide to develop a post-industrial scenario; in doing so, he obtains quantitative estimates of many critical features of the concept within the framework of a structured and reasonably consistent model.     

Oldspeak—the language of the future?

With this article the series moves on to a two-part examination of the many factors—military, political, technological—that encouraged the new communications industry of the late 19th century to promote the forecasting of future developments. A large part of this publishing was taken up with the popular stories of ‘the next great war’. Their visions of limited and fast-moving wars could not hope to anticipate the shapes of wars-to-come, because they were written in the old language of uniform progress and were grounded in assumptions that advances in the military technologies would speed up the conduct of warfare.     

The new post-industrial state

With the socioeconomic restructuring of the 1970s and 1980s, the idea of a smooth transition to a post-industrial service economy has required significant revision. We outline three such revisions: the ideas of informatization, informalization, and dualism. The first two are reworkings of post-industrial theory so as to emphasize one or other undervalued trend in industrial society, and are in principle quite compatible. The third emphasizes inequalities in power and resources that are plausibly associated with developments seen as benign by the others. Each has distinct implications for democratic development. However, we argue that while elements of all three models are present in current trends, so that the future might be best seen as a compromise between them, in fact all approaches fail to grasp the real significance of socioeconomic and technological restructuring. A more fruitful approach, with distinctive policy implications, is proposed.     

The end of neoliberal history—the future of economics

The future of economics needs discussion both negatively, as the denial of neoliberal perspective, and positively as a science that is able to handle the historic welfare-freedom-culture paradox. The authors state that this alternative is political economy, which they define as a science searching for materialisation of social visions in the economic sphere. This tradition dates back to ancient cultures and does not coincide with the present usage of political economy. The article discusses the political economy of the information age and beyond. The core idea is that the human alternative of ongoing technological changes executes long run visions of mankind: co-existence of freedom and welfare under cultural leadership in a global scale.     

The forfeit of the future

Throughout history, perceptions and experiences in the present have shaped different images of the future. Today, we are living in an increasingly complex world, one which has brought as much consternation as hope. Technology-aided exploitation of the natural environment has made us fearful of irreversible damage to the ecosystem, generating bleak predictions for human survival. As the pace of economic, political, and social change increases, confounding the process of prediction, how do such changes shape our present visions of the future, and how do they contrast with those of previous eras? This article shows how optimistic and pessimistic images of the future evolved from presumptions of unchanging order and apocalyptic destinies to techologically inspired Utopian visions, and how such images now reflect our present anxieties.     

Women as builders of the future

This article suggests that as the industrial society is in a transition crisis, women have a major role to play in building a peaceful, post-industrial society. It outlines how women have been marginalized by industrial society, and how this has allowed them to develop and work with their own sets of values and priorities. These values, which are in conflict with those of the industrial society, make women more adaptable to change and more able to facilitate change.     

Accounting practices as social technologies of colonialistic outreach from London,Washington, et Cetera

Critical studies of accounting are a potential source of invigoration and action to abate lingering injustice and opportune the betterment of present and future life. In this study, we combine a foundation study of accounting usages over two centuries in the Kiribati Islands; and an exposé of these usages from the perspective of the I-Kiribati indigenes. The study is unusual in linking the history of a colony with the history of an emerging economy. We argue that colonisers espied economic, social and political benefits of colonialistic acts, and accounting usages were initiated and maturated alongside these, to avail commerce and life's personal dealings, religion-making, and government and public policymaking. Several persisting inadequacies of these accounting usages are revealed. They derive mostly from how asymmetric power relations in various contexts have played important roles in ways that accounting usages were constituted and sustained, and that this continues to be the case. The indigenes have not been accounted to, nor have had ready access to information concerning them. The indigenes have shared in some benefits but only incidentally and invariably down the pecking order. The indigenes have been precluded, befuddled and amazed by the usages, which concomitantly have enabled successive colonisers to re-define, enclose, exploit, subject and neo-liberalise them.     

The construction of the risky individual and vigilant organization: A genealogy of the fraud triangle

This article examines how a vision of organizational fraud has been constructed around a particular technology, the fraud triangle, which was initially developed in the aftermath of the creation of the fraud examination discipline. We examine the genealogy of the fraud triangle and follow various chains of translations underlying its construction. One of the main translation trajectories we uncover presents individuals as vectors of moral riskiness needing to be vigilantly monitored and controlled by the organization. The organization is conceived of as a prime site in which fraud is to be addressed – not annihilated but significantly reduced as long as sufficient care is devoted to establishing layers of vigilance. As such, the fraud triangle redefines social, political and economic relations through a web of translations that both celebrate and normalize the use of organizational surveillance systems to control risk ensuing from the individual’s (alleged) frail morality. In the process, other visions of fraud, focused on the broader role of society, political agendas and powerful economic institutions in engendering and preventing fraud, escape from view.     

The sector perspective in social development

Agricultural society, industrial society, and post-industrial society are well-known terms for societies at different stages of development. All three are named after the dominant sector in the economy. These terms reflect a sector perspective in social development. This article discusses four different types of sector models, against the background of the future prospects that the respective models give rise to. The image of the future is influenced by the choice of sector classification.     

Visions of development: the inevitable need for alternatives

This paper begins by looking at radical visions of development, such as those of Gandhi and Mao, which developing countries threw up in the twentieth century. But soon these visions were eclipsed by the technological vision of development, now being championed in India by its president, Abdul Kalam. The elites of the world believe that only the technology of the developed west can lead developing nations to the path of development. But they fail to recognise the linkages of this capitalist, technology-driven path with colonial exploitation and war. They overlook the insight, first stated by Rosa Luxembourg, that capitalist expansion presupposes non-capitalist or pre-capitalist territories that provide the markets required for capitalist growth. Thus the major failure of the capitalist technological vision is that it can only be a vision for selected nations, or for a selected few within nations. It can never be a vision for the whole world. For countries like India, therefore, an alternative vision of development is essential. This will require a political act of courage to delink from the developed nations and the development and refinement of alternative technology, much of which already exists. Educating the intelligentsia that a good society does not require the technological pursuit of unlimited prosperity, however, is a big challenge.     

The economics of decline: A neglected scenario

The author identifies a shortcoming common to the recent forecasts of the UK economy and to the earlier “limits to growth” literature which criticised economic growth as the mainstay of policy. In fact, there is no “law” of economic growth, no inherent momentum carrying the economy progressively upwards; indeed development may become undevelopment, and the post-industrial society may come to resemble pre-industrial society. The author briefly describes the symptoms and causes of degenerative economic decline and gives examples of countries where the process is underway. Thus a new forecasting is required in the UK: one that will include the analysis of decline as well as of growth.     

New development: Faith,community organizing and migration—the case of ‘regularization’

When civil society organizations pool their muscle, it is amazing what they can achieve. The London Citizens ‘Strangers into Citizens’ campaign has put the idea of a conditional amnesty for illegal immigrants on the political table—and won powerful backers, including the Mayor of London and the Catholic Church.     

What comes after the welfare state?: A post-welfare development path for the UK

One vision of post-industrial society projects a sane, humane, ecological future. Achievement of this requires societal transformation of almost unprecedented dimensions. This paper offers a preliminary exploration of how changing directions to this kind of future would affect social welfare and social services in the UK. Current community activities which may help accelerate change in local futures are outlined.     

Utopian and dystopian thought in climate change science and policy

Climate change policies are increasingly seen as integral to sustainable development policies. This article examines how visions of future society have been employed in climate science and multilateral negotiations. Using elements of utopian and dystopian thought, we have categorized UNFCCC documents, IPCC assessments, and special reports and peer-reviewed climate policy articles. Our results indicate that utopian thinking surfaces with reference to sustainable development and emissions scenarios. Such visions of future society fall into three categories: projections, dystopian thought, and utopian thought. Dystopian thought is mainly evident in the rhetoric of various actors, and is used to spur action or inaction, to avoid either economic catastrophe by acting too fast or ecological catastrophe by not acting fast enough. Utopian elements in climate change science and policy refer to decoupling greenhouse gases and economic growth, evenly distributing the benefits of economic globalization, and smoothing technological development. The present piecemeal invocation of sustainable development concepts in climate science and policy emphasizes the difficulties of integrating environmental, social, and economic concerns. The article concludes that utopian thinking regarding sustainable development could result in more integrated and holistic visions of future society in climate science and policy.     

“Every today was a tomorrow”: An integral method for indexing the social mediation of preferred futures

The visions we hold of the future, whether they are of utopias or dystopias, are not simply a matter of personal imagination. Our conceptions of the future are mediated to us as much as they are privately created by us. To this point, futures studies have not developed an integrative and broad-based framework for considering the social mediation of futures. Understanding how social mediation impacts on our futures visioning requires an interpretive framework that can cope with the multilayered nature of futures visions, the worldviews that are associated with them and a theory of mediation that can be applied within such a context of ‘depth’. Using theory-building methodology, the current paper attempts this task by describing a theory of social mediation that builds on the integral futures framework. An application of the framework explores the relationship between various scenarios of health care futures, their associated worldviews and the mediational factors that influence our visions of future health care systems.     

浅析马克思主义政治经济学的研究对象在21世纪的拓宽

政治经济学的研究对象是政治经济学理论研究的一个非常基本的问题，而这个问题在我国教材上却至今没有达成共识。在社会主义经济建设的实践中保持马克思政治经济学与时俱进的先进性需要我们对政治经济学的研究对象进行创新。生产力是社会持续发展的动力并且是决定着生产方式的现实基础，生产力、生产方式和生产关系是相互制约的，因此拓宽马克思的政治经济学研究对象还应研究生产力。     

Why the far-future matters to democracy today

As the complexity of social and political interaction becomes increasingly over-whelming it is only natural that the pragmatic, technocratic, and expert-driven character of contemporary policy-making is even further consolidated. Though making use of existing knowledge this approach may lead to a deprivation of the democratic debate as the time horizons are shortened and the number of significantly different policies is restrained by the framework within which decisions are to be made.

This article analyses the tension between a more holistic or even ‘utopian’ attitude to policy-making and the trial-and-error piecemeal approach which today seems to be prevailing in the industrial countries. It is argued that a theoretical distinction made by Leszek Kolakowski may help us overcome that tension. The distinction is then applied to the classical stage-heuristic for policy-making leading to a discussion about how the power of far-future visions can be brought into the nexus of democratic deliberation.

The article also examines how different time-frames may cause diverging practical policy-recommendations. Finally, the paradoxical merit of negative visions, as in the dystopian literary genre, is presented.     

Comparing system visions of farmers and experts

The goal of this paper is to identify farmers’ future in terms of the pesticide management of potato growing farmers in Vereda la Hoya (Boyacá, Colombia).To achieve this goal we applied the Future-Structured Mental Model Approach (Future-SMMA) and interviewed 10 farmers concerning their future perspectives and expectations to derive their future visions. Subsequently, 10 experts were interviewed about the feasibility and the consequences of farmers’ future visions.Applying the Future-SMMA, we analyzed farmers’ future visions and found that farmers take account of social and environmental threats and that their visions are optimistic. In addition we compared farmers’ and experts’ perceptions of external constraints on farmers’ future and discovered that the future visions of farmers and experts were inconsistent. Finally, we determined how farmers’ livelihood assets and self-perception influence the formation of farmers’ future visions and found that the more a person was able to differentiate his livelihood assets the more differentiated were the future visions of that person.In discussing our findings, we deduce that the inconsistency of future visions found is due to diverging attitudes towards future scenarios and differing opinions about who should take responsibility for the knowledge management of farmers.     

The growth of growth

The author argues that there is a natural growth of growth, which a nation follows as it develops : from slow to fast, and then a return to slow growth rates with the arrival of post-industrial society. The existing gap between the rich and the poor nations is both a result of this pattern and a necessity for raising the income of less-developed countries. Policies which will slow growth and redistribute wealth are precisely the opposite of what is needed today. The poor will get richer because the rich get richer. The author outlines the factors acting to accelerate economic growth in the developing countries and to slow it in the developed countries. Once this transition has been successfully managed the world will be much better equipped to manage the real problems facing it.