Article Outline
- 1. Democratising the future
- 2. Learning to participate
- 3. Anticipatory action learning
- 4. Beyond planning
- 5. Freeing the mind
- 6. Reimagining conversation
- 7. Global multilogue
- 8. Questioning the future
- References
![]() |
|||||||
|
|||||||
共查询到20条相似文献,搜索用时 31 毫秒
1.
Futures-thinking in various ways may or may not be expanding. But it is clearly an ever-changing activity, and appears to be ever more fragmented by culture, subject matter, style, and ideology. ‘Futures Studies (FS)’ as a subset of this larger activity is highly problematic as a viable entity, due to seven disabling myths: that FS is a field, that futurists are generalists, that futurists are primarily ‘futurists’, that FS does what no one else does, that FS is generally understood and appreciated, that FS is static, and that FS is a community. In contrast to these idealized but unsupported myths, the world of futures-thinking is presented as it really is, based on the author’s preparation of over 20,000 abstracts of futures-relevant literature over the past 30 years. Underlying complexity and wide diversity are sketched in three synoptic charts on the six purposive categories of futures-thinking (and 115 different terms that have been used), 17 general topical categories, and 12 generic continua on which futures-thinkers can be located. Based on this complex and fuzzy reality, futures studies should embrace its distinctiveness and strive to be a horizontal field connecting all others—a visible, respected, and ever-renewing network of humble hubs for integrative ‘big picture’ thinking about trends and visions of probable, possible, and preferable futures. To attain this status in the decades ahead, FS must communicate a shared and frequently-revised vision, emphasize all six purposive categories (especially integration and questioning), develop a serious global information system (and use it), establish an academic presence at leading institutions, fight back against ignorant futurist-bashers, promote multiple excellences, engage in ‘second profession’ recruitment and training, and secure adequate funding. These actions are necessary for establishing any meaningful ‘futures studies’ community. 相似文献
2.
Is development theory dead? It seems to be, if the thinking of some young people at a futures course in Bangkok is any indication. The course, ‘The futures of development: historical roots, present trends and alternative futures’, was held in Bangkok 23–30 August 1992 by the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF), with sponsorship from UNESCO and the Communication Centre of the Queensland University of Technology, Australia. 相似文献
3.
Richard A. Slaughter 《Futures》1991,23(5)
The 20th century has seen a rise in dystopian images of futures and an apparent decline in imaging capacity. This article considers responses to this ‘imaging dilemma’. They include critique, futures workshops, accessing cultural resources, renegotiating aspects of a worldview and ‘imagining’ a different historical dynamic. It is concluded that there is a substantive basis for informed optimism and empowerment. The keys to each lie in the nature of the human response to what is desired or feared. 相似文献
4.
For some time there has been a need within Futures Studies (FS) to develop methods which go beyond the dominant empirical tradition. For many years there has been a near-exclusive emphasis on understanding the external world ‘out there’. But as time has gone by, so it has become clear that our ability to understand the world ‘out there’ crucially depends on an underlying world of reference that is ‘in here’. Understanding the near-future environment calls for a combination of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ views which, for example, give as much credence to judgment as to calculation. This paper considers a way of considering these very different ‘ways of knowing’. Overall, the aim is to go beyond what might be termed ‘mundane’ analysis, i.e. that which is preoccupied with surfaces, and to open out a broader arena for futures enquiry. 相似文献
5.
In 1991, futurist Bruce E. Tonn proposed a ‘Court of Generations’ Amendment to the US Constitution. His proposed ‘Court of Generations’ lacked punitive powers but, hopefully, would have sufficient legitimacy to counteract extreme present-minded thinking evident in US political processes and institutions. Although Tonn's ‘Court of Generations’ Amendment has been well received in the futures community, who else has heard of it? Otherwise, has it made any difference? How can the cumbersome and nonfuturistic amendment procedure in the US Constitution generate a futures-oriented ‘Court of Generations’? And for those who sincerely look forward to a ‘Court of Generations,’ precisely what kind of tactically savvy visionary leadership will give the ‘Court of Generations’ any chance of being approved? During 1997, Vincent Kelly Pollard engaged Dr. Tonn in an Internet conversation aimed at clarifying these issues. 相似文献
6.
Thierry Kirat 《Futures》1992,24(6)
This article reports on the symposium on the ‘Social Mastery of Technology’ (MASTECH) organized by the CNRS Industrial Economics Research Group and the Maison Rhône-Alpes des Sciences de l'Homme in Lyon, France, 9–12 September 1991, under the patronage of UNESCO, which was a major innovation among scientific communities in the area of human sciences. 相似文献
7.
Large-scale participatory co-shaping of technological developments: First experiments with PARDIZIPP
A future-oriented participatory procedure on the basis of the Delphi method was developed and empirically tested a first time with the goal to improve the shaping of technological developments. The technology under study here was micro-electronics or rather their relationship with labor and the test took place in NorthRhine-Westphalia.Today problems exist in all walks of life. There is a lot of talk about today's problems as if they were new, though one has heard similar arguments throughout history. How do we assess if we are really in danger of bringing the world to an end? Although this danger appears real, it would not be the first time in history that people have thought and felt like this--However, one thing that is new are the consequences of modern sciences and technology, which are not suited to given social and environmental requirements. They have given rise to questions concerning the quality of the decision-makers. The questioning of many of these decisions has increased for some time and is now getting more and more specific, with a demand for quality and information rather than managerial skills and competitiveness from the decision-makers. The term ‘decision-maker’ describes those who determine the application of technology, science and technical equipment which has either existed for a long time already or has recently been developed.--It is not easy to change the structures and processes of decision-making so that new structures and processes will be more suited to social and environmental requirements. We have tested our ideas as to how this could be done, in an empirical project. Although we called it ‘Project NRW-2000’, it would probably be better described as an experiment.--We persuaded 90 ordinary people to participate in this project as ‘experts on daily life and work’. This group was asked to work in six regional sub-groups and discuss, with reference to three given normative societal scenarios for the year 2020, the relationship between microelectronics and labour markets of the year 2020, on the basis of a participatory Delphi procedure. Before we elaborate on the concept of our project in Section 3, we would like to outline it in terms of the mainstream of the sociology of technology as well as with research on ‘acceptance’ in Section 1. In Section 2 we will briefly illustrate the framework of the research programme ‘Socially Oriented Shaping of Technology’ of the state of Northrhine-Westphalia, which funded our research project. Section 4 particularly deals with the participatory elements of our project, while Section 5 is devoted to the development of the scenarios. Section 6 sums up the results of the ‘scenario-construction’. Regarding specific elements, we restrict ourselves to topics concerning technology, labour, and the relationship between women workers/employees and technology. As a final outlook we deal with the political implications of our approach. All that is left is to remind our readers that we regard this project as a first application or experiment within our overall approach. 相似文献
8.
Insights created within futures studies (FS) and written up in the futures literature may be too abstract and diverse to fulfil the goal of FS to provide clear ‘maps’ to non-specialists of the near-term future. However, graphics and images may help to make futures concepts and emerging insights easier to grasp. The paper surveys a little used and under-studied approach: that of near-future landscapes (NFLs). Several examples are considered. Useful as they may be, they are viewed as transitional forms that will be improved upon by greater interest in futures imaging processes and further developments in the technologies of graphic representation. 相似文献
9.
With the ‘complexification’ of today's society, due in large measure to rapid technological convergence in the fields of communications and informatics, developing Pacific island countries are faced with what at the surface appears to be a devil's choice: jump on the high-tech bandwagon and risk being subsumed by the Western-dominated ‘cyberculture’, or withdraw from the technology-induced developments evidenced in richer countries and thereby run the risk of falling even further behind. This dichotomy is, of course, false and paints a rather nihilistic picture of Pacific islands futures. The contention here is that such a polemic is selling the Pacific islands a ‘used future’. Therefore, it is vitally important, at this juncture, for Pacific island leaders, entrepreneurs and citizens to recognize that creative, long-term future strategies for planning and optimizing the application and use of high-tech communications in economically advantageous and culturally appropriate ways are desperately needed. 相似文献
10.
David Lindsay Wright 《Futures》2002,34(6):523-534
In this paper I argue that a hybrid research methodology that integrates Foucauldian post-structuralist approaches and concepts enhances future-oriented layered analyses. This hybrid application of post-structuralism in conjunction with Causal Layered Analysis to a real-world problematic facilitated greater depth of understanding of and insight into the specified futures problematic, augmenting the repertoire of identifiable preferred futures. Using this approach I present a retrospective account of an actual case study within the context of a post-bubble Japanese community revitalisation program and the community’s struggle to articulate and communicate preferred images of the future. I conclude with a post-investigation critique scrutinising this research methodology and offer suggestions for the futures of layered analyses. 相似文献
11.
Richard A. Slaughter 《Futures》1999,31(8):857
The question of professional standards in the futures arena is a major, but unresolved issue. The paper begins with aspects of a rationale. It then seeks to briefly define Futures Studies (FS) and to answer two questions: what is a futurist, and how can one become a futurist? It summarises various proposals for establishing standards including Bell's for a code of ethics. A number of questions about professional capabilities and behaviour are posed and some provisional answers are given. Several implications are derived for the World Futures Studies Federation as a ‘peak body’. The paper concludes that for FS to fulfil its potential it must pursue quality in every area. 相似文献
12.
David Hicks 《Futures》1996,28(8):741-749
This article begins by recalling the crucial role that popular images of the future play in societal development. It notes the apparent dearth of positive images as we approach the millennium and highlights the value of futures workshops as a procedure for enabling participants to envision the future more clearly. In particular attention is drawn to the work of Elise Boulding and her findings in this field. A pilot-study is then described which used the process developed by Boulding to help students identify the key features of their preferable futures. Some support is found for her contention that a ‘baseline’ future often emerges from such work. 相似文献
13.
Bernd Hamm 《Futures》1992,24(5)
This article reports on a UNESCO project to create a network of associated universities offering an international education based on global and future-oriented subjects—the studium integrale. 相似文献
14.
John Ritchie 《Management Accounting Research》2000,11(4):63
Smaller businesses now rank higher upon the corporate governance agenda. This agenda places their accountability and ‘enterprise’ particularly at issue. It is only put at issue because of just one possible problematization however. That problematization firstly assumes judicious accountability to be the crux of good governance with accounting at its hub. It secondly assumes that smaller businesses are the very seedbed of any ‘enterprise economy’, virtually irrespective of what form they take, or ‘enterprise’ they display. By then combining these assumptions together, this finally reproblematizes any relationship between accountability and ‘enterprise’, so that ‘de-regulation’ and decoupled accountability liberates smaller business ‘enterprise’ further. Others might question and challenge the very basis, as well as particular formulation, of this problematization however. A better grasp of the greater fluidity and complexity of smaller businesses would make the boundaries of their accountability and ‘enterprise’ more clear and leave their respective margins more suitably exposed. As a key potential instrument for that purpose managerial accounting research might then better inform the debate by specifically rendering these boundaries more visible while also identifying the precise scope for manoeuvre at/across their margins as well. To that end this paper uses certain enabling frameworks to construct and interpret the particular case of managerially accounting for a grown smaller business working across exactly those margins from the perspective of a ‘reflective practitioner’ acting as a field researcher for these purposes. As well as offering fresh insights into how far the boundaries of accountability and enterprise might legitimately stretch, this case calls for more critical thinking about how they might change. 相似文献
15.
SP Udayakumar 《Futures》1996,28(10):971-985
Discussing how a political futurist may envision present-tainted ‘realist’ futures, ideology-oriented ‘ambitious’ futures, ethics-inspired ‘ideal’ futures, or other types of futures, this essay describes who an idealist-futurist is. Proving that Mahatma Gandhi is such an idealist-futurist who builds his futurism on the rock of humanistic values by relishing the good and rejecting the bad, emphasizes the futures for the weak, and insists on working for future through futureful means such as truth and non-violence, it is pointed out how Gandhi's futurism has come to be pilfered and betrayed by the brahmanical Hindu right-wing future-thieves in present-day India. 相似文献
16.
Creating sustainable, diverse futures involves challenging assumptions that Western civilisation and linear, profit based models of unlimited development are universal. This is deeply threatening to many, but objections to such colonised futures are growing. Challenging these world-views means engaging with the complex and intersecting issues of culture, environment, globalisation, gender and sustainability. This paper tests Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) as a method to excavate the levels that have created the worldview behind one image of a colonised future. Analysis reveals a ‘Future.con’ which excludes most of humanity and pre-dicts a technological future in which humans may only exist to serve the machines they created. It is also the kind of image that, in a higher education context, fits and maintains pervasive but limited world-views. It could be different. Images and some of the tools of CLA can also be used in education to help envision sustainable, culturally diverse futures. 相似文献
17.
In this article, we challenge the hegemony of western science fiction, arguing that western science fiction is particular even as it claims universality. Its view remains based on ideas of the future as forward time. In contrast, in non-western science fiction the future is seen outside linear terms: as cyclical or spiral, or in terms of ancestors. In addition, western science fiction has focused on the good society as created by technological progress, while non-western science fiction and futures thinking has focused on the fantastic, on the spiritual, on the realization of eupsychia—the perfect self.However, most theorists assert that the non-west has no science fiction, ignoring Asian and Chinese science fiction history, and western science fiction continues to ‘other’ the non-west as well as those on the margins of the west (African–American woman, for example).Nonetheless, while most western science fiction remains trapped in binary opposites—alien/non-alien; masculine/feminine; insider/outsider—writers from the west’s margins are creating texts that contradict tradition and modernity, seeking new ways to transcend difference. Given that the imagination of the future creates the reality of tomorrow, creating new science fictions is not just an issue of textual critique but of opening up possibilities for all our futures.
Science fiction has always been nearly all white, just as until recently, it’s been nearly all male(Butler as quoted in [1]). Science fiction has long treated people who might or might not exist—extra-terrestrials. Unfortunately, however, many of the same science fiction writers who started us thinking about the possibility of extra-terrestrial life did nothing to make us think about here-at home variation—women, blacks, Indians, Asians, Hispanics, etc [1].Is all science fiction western? Is there non-western science fiction? If so, what is its nature? Does it follow the form and content of western science fiction, or is it rendered different by its own local civilizational historical processes and considerations? Has western science fiction moulded the development of the science fiction of the ‘other’, including feminist science fiction, in such a way that anything coming from outside the west is a mere imitation of the real thing? Perhaps non-western science fiction is a contradiction in terms. Or is there authentic non-western fiction which offers alternative visions of the future, of the ‘other’? 相似文献 18.
This paper proposes experimenting with anticipatory action learning for helping to create the future. It is an interactive process that relies strongly on a central thread of conversation among a variety of participants, from multiple perspectives, concerned with the social unit or project. Basically, anticipatory action learning is action research modified for foresight. It integrates research/search with decision and action, and downgrades the prerogative of a research elite, empowering all participants. Conversation allows meaning from a range of different worldviews to be shared and negotiated for studying, theorising and otherwise engaging the future—and more importantly, for helping to create it. Criteria are proposed for anticipatory action learning and procedural and administrative limitations are addressed.The visions we have about our own futures vary according to the mindset each of us stands in. It would be fascinating to compare the personally envisioned futures of everyone at an international meeting of futurists. Our futures should converge in some way where we share common interests as futurists, and diverge on the point of intercultural variety. But, would they differ from each other as widely as those of Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese generals?It would be even more telling to compare the range of alternative futures envisioned by world leaders with the visions of their constituents and especially, say, with the visions of a woman in Africa’s Central Lakes region and of the homeless in Osaka.In a similar way, the means of engaging the future in order to study it, and its uncertainties, and the way people think about it, are variously dependent on the mindsets of the scholars and researchers, and the realities they find themselves in. Methodologies of futures studies range across the predictable: from empirical quantitative projection (linear and non-linear); to qualitative interpretation and critical analysis; and to participatory action research or its associate, action learning.Then, futures studies differs according to the disciplinary framework of the researcher, whether in physics, ecology, complexity science, social science and the humanities, critical cultural theory or philosophy. Further, there is the division of the pragmatic and academic perspectives.Actually, the very fact of having a formal methodology is itself derived from a dominant civilisational and ethical perspective, mainly Western.There is another important distinction in futures studies. On the one hand, there is the perspective from which futurists research, analyse and critique the future, or more precisely what other people think and say about the future. On the other, there is the perspective from which people in the focal social unit may think and act to create their own futures.Then, acting to create a future poses at least two further distinctions depending on whether one believes the future is structurally preordained, or whether human interaction and intervention play a significant part.It is from the perspective of participative human agency acting to create one future or another, at least partially, that this paper proceeds.Before going further, let us address the question of whether future-creating can rightly be claimed to constitute the study of the future, or future studies. If it is not part of futures studies, then at least future-creating activity does rely on input from the field, the results of studying and reflecting on alternative options for the future—futures, plural. Whatever way we look at creating the future, as opposed to merely researching data about it, the activity does represent a fairly direct, personal engagement of the future, as much as anyone can do about a time–space that has yet to arrive. This is an important distinction, since many empirical futures studies do not so directly engage the future, well not personally. Rather, they examine stated opinions of others about future options, and other people’s preferences, emerging issues and the like, themselves all valuable activities. If, as Michel Godet has said, ‘...the future is not written anywhere and has still to be built...’ [[1]], creating the future is a central activity which at least deserves full consideration by the field of futures studies, especially if it relies on the analysis and critique of data generated or accessed around the activity itself. Article Outline
1. Democratising the futureCreating the future can be controlled by the wealthy, powerful and famous, and their minders and lackeys. But in the spirit of democracy, future-creating would seek to ensure that people who have a stake in the future, either through their likely habitat there, or their successor generations, should be able to participate in that creation. This does not happen with the more traditional methodologies of futures studies, where experts stand aside from the vast majority of other citizens.A methodology, a procedure even, that permits such participation can generically be termed as participatory action research. It allows relative freedom from structure and process to encourage invention and more diverse exploration of the perspectives and issues than are often allowed with any other single methodology. In fact, participatory methods usually employ a range of other methodologies, to input data for analysis and critical reflection.But participation is not without its limits, which could be why so much futures work is done by experts. We have limited opportunities, in even the most so-called democratic societies, for participation in action research by more than a chosen handful of people. It is therefore not surprising that most action research happens within small, discrete communities, be they villages, classrooms, or even prisons.In fact, participative activity is valued less highly than adversarial competition, and this could be a good argument against its use. It can be threatening to the controlling elite. But have we given it a fair trial?2. Learning to participateWhatever, we should not be blind to the problems of action research, flagged elsewhere: [[2]], including:
3. Anticipatory action learningAnticipatory action learning seeks to link inquiry, anticipation and learning with decisions, actions and evaluation, during an openly democratic process. The communication style needs to be what Lee Thayer [[3]] once called diachronous, as opposed to synchronous. By diachronous Thayer means that the goals and the means for achieving them are decided during the participation process itself. With synchronous or top-down communication, the goals and the means are imposed before the participation begins.Anticipatory action learning, as proposed here, borrows from the seminal concepts of Morgan and Ramirez [[4]]. They see action learning as holographic, as a means of developing capacities for people to investigate and understand their own situations, and to go further, to decide and act within an ongoing social context.This stands in contrast to the approach of more conventional methodologies where research seeks primarily knowledge and understanding. Important as these needs are, they can be taken out of their social context into that of the expert researcher.As with Morgan and Ramirez, anticipatory action learning needs to meet certain criteria. It should be democratic, multilateral and pluralistic. It needs to empower and be proactive, linking individual with social transformation. Thus, it would integrate different levels of understanding in an evolving and open-ended way. In this sense, creating intelligent and humane action is more important than contributing to formal knowledge.I would change this slightly, first by saying that it should be anticipatory and interactive, or preactive, rather than proactive. What is envisaged is a collaborative, anticipatory activity. The term “proactive” most often suggests a determinism that I doubt is intended by Morgan from his successive writing. Proaction is a notion that has been appropriated by can-do marketing, among others, to impose preordained change.Second, I would prefer to use the term coevolutionary, again to stress pluralistic mutual adjustment, since one criticism of evolution suggests it is still based in a progressive determinism.Simply put, anticipatory action learning is a matter of taking one of the many well-developed action learning processes, such as that of Peter Checkland [[5]], and adding the anticipatory component. In such a case, it is important that the spirit and integrity of exploring alternative futures be observed.4. Beyond planningAnticipatory action learning differs from much of the scenario planning that happens today, even if conducted in a participatory way. There needs to be more deliberate attention to exploring a full range of alternative futures, from the probable to the possible, the preferred to the undesirable, not forgetting the futures that are not easily seen from a conventional mindset. Scenario planning still tends to extrapolate from the past more than work back from the future. Anticipatory action learning does use trend analysis for suggesting certain alternative futures, but seeks to backcast from future visions to infer the actions along the way, including the first steps to be taken in the present.Characteristics of the process, include:
5. Freeing the mindHuman groupings show a tendency to stay in the conventional wisdom, or slip back into it for comfort, whether in small groups or the wider society. Scott Burchill [[6]] suggests that defining the ‘spectrum of permitted expression is a highly effective form of ideological control’, even in so-called free societies.He evokes George Orwell’s warning in Animal Farm [[7] that, in a democracy, an orthodoxy is a body of ideas which it is assumed all ‘...right-thinking people will accept without question...’. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself (sic) silenced with surprising effectiveness.More work needs to be done on how to encourage divergent thought in conversation to ensure that a range of alternative future options emerges, including some off-the-wall thinking. One suggestion that can be helpful is to ensure a range of different perspectives is present.As with participatory processes, conversation has its limitations and problems.The act (or is it art?) of conversation is often discounted, even ridiculed, in contemporary scholarly inquiry perhaps because it appears to lack the formality of structure and process that characterise most traditional methodologies. Is this because we take conversation for granted, and have not adequately studied it, or because we intend respectfully to value the systematic methodological processes we spend so much hard time mastering in the academy? Or are both factors at work? The answers beg further research elsewhere.6. Reimagining conversationIn a series of broadcast talks, historian Theodore Zeldin [[8]] argues for the value of conversation, in certain forms, though neither specifically for research—nor, perhaps more accurately, for futuring; for search. The kind of conversation he is interested in begins with a ‘willingness to emerge a slightly different person’. The really big scientific revolutions have been the invention not of some new machine, but of new ways of thinking, as with the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.But can an individual expect to have an impact on other than oneself, if the world is controlled by powerful economic and political forces, as we see in the new globalisation? Does that justify not trying?Zeldin points out that revolutions such as the Renaissance and the Enlightenment are not the inventions of some machine but of the ways we talk about things. To him, the world is made of ‘individuals searching for a partner, for a lover, for a guru, for God’. But he calls for a new conversation that develops equality, opening up to each other in an entirely natural way. And further, ‘we need a new kind of novel and film to create visions of how people can live together as equals, with humour’.It seems that conversation can aid the search for a compelling image of the future, which, if we follow Johan Galtung, can be a potent force for change.Compelling images can be constructed autocratically or democratically. If the process is democratic, it allows the unbridled negotiation of meaning in order to construct images or visions in a collaborative way. It allows people to generate understandings that help them act in their own situation.Thus anticipatory action learning, incorporating conversation as it does, partly systematic and open, should ideally enable a rich exploration of a range of visions of the future from multiple perspectives, including the undesirable. There is nothing likely to be so compelling as the obverse of the undesirable future.7. Global multilogueAn example of the use of conversation for exploring alternative futures can be found in UNESCO’s 21st Century Dialogues in Paris, in September 1998. Compared with anticipatory action learning, the UNESCO event represented a relatively more ceremonially moderated use of conversation in global futures studies. The dialogues did not intentionally use action learning or action research, although that does not say the event was not thoughtfully designed.The UNESCO experience did show how the process of human dialogue—or better, multilogue—as an alternative to more formal methodologies, becomes problematic because of our epistemological distances from one another. Such distances are the result of often dramatic variations in culture, language, gender, history, attitudes towards subjectivity, objectivity and intersubjectivity, and our understandings and misunderstandings of the future.Conversation, especially when multicultural and interdisciplinary, also poses a dilemma. While cultural, linguistic and epistemological diversity ideally allow a rich array of perspectives on issues about the future, and thus a plurality of meanings, the very difference in perspectives contributes to difficulties in understanding each other. We only have to look at other cultures’ metaphors to realise this. And conversation which starts with the clean slate of a relatively distant future, say 50 or more years ahead, is not immune to conflict, even psychological and other forms of violence—interinstitutional and interpersonal.Events such as the 21st Century Dialogues will most likely be replicated in a variety of forms as we settle into a new “millennium”, unless futures interest has faded with millennial madness. In such dialogues, futurists would have an ideal opportunity to experiment with inclusive multicultural conversations as the means of navigating and negotiating through the differences that result from our divergent thoughts and proposals. But discrimination needs to be minimised against participants who do not speak or understand the main international languages.Other things that need to be taken into account when facilitating conversation are the structure, including the setting, and the process of conversation. Relative lack of structure, with minimum control of process, now sits quite comfortably with many people from American and Australian cultures, for example, while Russians and East Asians demand mandated structure and process. Timetabling, seating, ambience and allowing for the inarticulate to participate are also considerations.These requirements vary according to one’s cultural experiences and we need to experiment with ways to make people comfortable and to encourage their participation in open conversation when they come from a variety of backgrounds, including those that have experienced severe oppression. A big, echoing assembly hall with theatre-style seating is no longer necessarily the ideal venue for certain contemporary global citizens. But then again, it is for others, and we are still building plenty of such halls.8. Questioning the futureConversation, also, needs to encourage the asking of questions, as well as the advocacy of ideas and ideals. It seems important, too, that we find new questions to ask, not simply the same, tired questions founded in the much-discussed issues derived from well-identified problems and categories often determined by academic disciplines and other vested interests.21st Century Dialogues did ask some important new questions, such as: what is the new social contract for the third industrial revolution and accompanying globalisation? We need more such questions, especially about emerging issues—those that are not yet in common currency—across a variety of categories, civilisational perspectives, worldviews and images of the future, especially long-term.One question for futurists is: how do we ensure adequate, inclusive or democratic participation in global conversations about the future when the planet is so vast and culturally diverse?Perhaps futurists need to become activists more than they already are, to step outside the academy more often and to go beyond merely esoteric writing. Futurists may need to become active advocates for the use of anticipatory action learning, or other participatory futures-creating processes, in real-life situations. As well, futurists may need to speak out more as public intellectuals in order to initiate and enrich public conversations about emerging issues and alternative futures.Certainly, further research is recommended on how to apply anticipatory action learning to ensure that meaning is shared with sensitivity and accuracy in multicultural situations. And, also, on how better to bring divergent perspectives to conversational situations that tend to reward convergent thinking.In these pursuits, futurists should not forget the potential of the Internet for global conversations about the future. However there is a long way to go before the Net can be relied on for non-discriminatory, intercultural and intercivilisational multilogue. More than 93 percent of today’s Internet users live among the world’s richest 20 percent, and most of these users are in the social elite that can converse in English; many are experts.The world’s poorest 20 percent, discriminated against because so very many lack an international language, still account for less than one percent of current Internet users [[9]]. 相似文献19.
This paper provides an insight into the nature and the extent of social accounting research being undertaken within Australasia. It demonstrates that Australasian researchers account for a significant amount of internationally published social accounting research, but emphasises that the research effort seems to be confined to a limited number of researchers perhaps reflecting a lack of ‘take-up’ in this area in terms of the scale of participation. Information is also presented about the relative propensity of journals within the sample to publish social accounting research, and identifies that ‘top tier’ accounting journals historically have not published social accounting research. The paper also considers various factors which seem to be impeding the ‘recruitment’ of new social accounting researchers. 相似文献
20.
This paper argues that for futures studies (FS) to have a future that is relevant to current shifts in meaning and consciousness, then it must incorporate into its methods and practices a sense of mystery founded on a critically spiritual sensibility. Critical spirituality redefines rationality and empiricism by including within their framework both the somatic and the meditative as valid and necessary components of any research activity. In the short term this means a shift away from the current Western obsession with change and a stepping back to allow for critical distance in order to understand that it is in the appreciation of progress — a fundamental shift in consciousness to include the spiritual dimensions of human experience — that discourse will emerge to take FS to the heart of civilisational renewal. In allowing for mystery, silence and the meditative empiricism required to access these categories, critical spirituality lessens the gap between thought and action and thus enables truly transformative academic practice to emerge.The idea of progress has been central to the unfolding of the modernist project over the previous century. Yet as the century drew to a close it became increasingly hard to keep faith with the idea in the face of growing disillusionment and the obvious failure of modernism to deliver what people most wanted: happiness born of personal fulfillment. A growing range of voices in the critical futures field have been questioning the assumption that change in material terms equates with progress.These voices fall into four main areas.
|
设为首页 | 免责声明 | 关于勤云 | 加入收藏 |
Copyright©北京勤云科技发展有限公司 京ICP备09084417号 |