How futuring bush mechanics seek to transform the world

In today's complex and turbulent world it is vital to have futurists who can collaborate on collective projects, focus on action codified in exemplar projects and validate actions towards a better world. Unfortunately, current ‘education’ systems focus almost exclusively on the individual learner and have separated the learner from the praxis of the lived life. Furthermore, classrooms separate the learner from design, production and integration of learning into community life. The author argues that overcoming this separation of thinking and doing is one of the key challenges for modernity in future, in particular.This paper argues that a way in which we may be able to meet this challenge is known by the term ‘bush mechanics’ in Australia—innovative individuals who look forward wisely and solve collective problems today through applying their ingenuity with what is available, thus integrating thinking, doing and being in what in ancient times was called poiesis and in Medieval times ‘artificing’ and today can be seen in action learning and the bush mechanic. The four principles, as well as examples, of the bush mechanic approach are discussed including their exemplar projects. Finally, the importance of the bush mechanic approach to ‘futuring’ and creating living breathing examples today of a future our children can live with is emphasised and collaboration sought.     

Future Search as ‘real-time’ action research

This paper explores essential links between the brief planning meeting that we call ‘future search’ and the action research tradition of pioneer social psychologist Kurt Lewin. The two practices, based on common values, employ different procedures. Unlike action research, future search involves stakeholders in collecting and organizing their own data, and deciding what to do, all in a single meeting. Unlike scenario planning, future search leads people to create the future they most desire without assessing the probability of attaining it, We work on the assumption that people who put their energy into what they want are more likely to have it. We think of future search as an intersection of three levels of social change practice: (1) a meeting design based on four key principles to be described; (2) a theory and philosophy of facilitating that might be characterized as ‘doing less so that participants can do more;’ (3) a whole system change strategy requiring no special training, systems theory or vocabulary. This article highlights the first level, showing how principles grounded in the Lewinian tradition are translated into a meeting design that stimulates ongoing cooperative action.     

The ‘laissez faire’ bias of managed floating

The government of a small open economy trying to manage its exchange rate faces a ‘time consistency’ problem. If markets expect implementation of the optimal linear intervention rule, the government will be tempted to ‘defect’: knowing this, markets will expect less activism; and, in the discretionary equilibrium, this is what they get. How far this credibility problem can shift discretionary policy towards a free float is shown in two popular models of floating rates. One way of offsetting the ‘laissez faire’ bias of discretionary policy is to appoint a relatively ‘conservative’ central banker: but, as the time period of policy action and precommitment shrinks towards zero, the required conservative bias is found to go towards infinity. Other institutional features — such as central bank reputation, contracts and intermediate targets — may be crucial for successful exchange rate management.     

Future of Turkey-EU relations: a civilisational discourse

Should or can Turkey join the European Union (EU)? This paper argues that there are three alternative scenarios of the EU decision to grant membership to Turkey: ‘privileged relationship offer,’ ‘wait and see attitude,’ and ‘start of full membership negotiations.’ It then gauges each alternative path, and argues that the most likely scenario is a decision to start the negotiations, followed by the scenario of ‘wait and see.’ The EU decision will be conditioned by its future vision of global governance and the role foreseen for Turkey inside, outside or at the margin of it. The paper concludes that the EU decision will have significant implications for the future of relations between Europe and Turkey on the one hand, and Europe and the Islamic world on the other.     

25 Years of Giddens in accounting research: Achievements, limitations and the future

Twenty five years ago, Giddens’ structuration theory (ST) was introduced into accounting research as a reaction to the history-less, apolitical and technical-efficiency focus of traditional functionalist research. A quarter of a century later, this growing stream of research consists of some 65 published papers and has become one of the dominant alternative approaches used to explore accounting as an organizational and social practice. We review this literature based on the following two research questions; (i) what are the major achievements of this literature, and in what respects has it contributed to our understanding of accounting in relation to other alternative streams of accounting research, such as those grounded in critical theory, actor-network theory (ANT), new-institutional sociology (NIS) and practice theory? and; (ii) what are the limitations of the ST strand and, considering these (and its relative strengths), how should it be advanced in the future? Overall, we find that the mobilization of ST as a general ontological framework has generated three major and largely unique contributions, namely; (i) the introduction of a duality perspective; (ii) the conceptualization of accounting as an interwoven totality comprised of structures of signification, domination and legitimation, and; (iii) an ontological basis for theorizing how, when and why socially embedded agents may produce both continuity and change in accounting practices. However, we also conclude that it is difficult to identify a particular and distinctive empirical imprint of the ST literature, and that some of the theory’s ‘competitive advantages’ are far from fully exploited. Based on these identified strengths and weaknesses of the ST perspective, we consider an array of directions for future scholarly effort.     

Futurist networks: cases of epistemic community?

This article analyses the concept of epistemic community focusing the attention on two aspects, which contribute to define this ‘actor’: knowledge and capacity of acting under the conditions of uncertainty. The link between these two issues and the ‘nature of future studies’ is considered and the possibility of considering some organisations and institutions as future epistemic communities is explored. The case of the World Futures Studies Federation is examined in detail.In 1992, Peter Haas defined an ‘epistemic community’ as follows: “an epistemic community is a network of professionals from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds, they have a shared set of normative and principled beliefs, which provide a value-based rationale for the social action of community members; shared causal beliefs, which are derived from their analysis of practices leading or contributing to a central set of problems in their domain and which then serve as the basis for elucidating the multiple linkages between possible policy actions and desired outcomes; shared notions of validity—that is, inter-subjective, internally defined criteria for weighing and validating knowledge in the domain of their expertise; and a common policy enterprise—that is a set of common practices associated with a set of problems to which their professional competence is directed, presumably out of the conviction that human welfare will be enhanced as a consequence” [1].In ancient Greek, the term ‘episteme’ has a meaning which belongs to the philosophical sphere; ‘community’ is a concept which comes from the religious tradition and, more recently, has been the objective of sociological studies. Epistemic community links the two terms to indicate a ‘new’ and in some aspects, atypical political actor. At etymological level we already have a first sort of indication with respect to what is meant: politics as a synthesis of religion (faith), sociology (the decisions taken by policy makers have consequences on the whole society) and philosophy (intended as Weltanschaung). The German term Weltanschaung means the idea, concept or the ‘vision’ of the world and life. It is the way in which an individual or a social group considers the position of the human being in the world and the attitudes and actions they develop on the basis of a particular vision of the cosmos.In addition to this formal definition, Haas identifies other characteristics: “members of an epistemic community share inter-subjective understandings; have a shared way of knowing; have shared patterns of reasoning; have a policy project drawing on shared causal beliefs, and the use of shared discursive practices and have a shared commitment to the application and production of knowledge” [1].This definition could be analysed in several ways with particular attention to one or more of the indicated criteria. We could assume that the expression ‘possible policy actions and desired outcomes’ is to be understood as the ‘long term implications, expected, possible, probable and desired’ of a decision taken or that which will be taken, and this would already represent a linkage between the policy, the futures studies and an epistemic community; moreover, usually ‘the policy choices concern consequences, which can only be partially anticipated’ [2]. This gives rise ‘to the desire for information, which is not so much based on purely technical knowledge but rather information, which is the product of human interpretation’ [1]. Epistemic communities, national or trans-national, are one possible provider of such information.At this stage, and considering only this aspect of the whole definition, we could argue that a network of experts active in the field of future studies would represent the perfect portrait of what we are looking for: a multi-person actor able to ‘anticipate’, using knowledge, various backgrounds and expertise. To anticipate, in this context, might be specified as to understand or comprehend global and local changes. In general, futurists work within the framework of complexity and uncertainty, try to re-define problems in broader context and attempt to comprehend ‘change’ using knowledge.An example could be helpful: the change we are experiencing in Eastern European countries appears as multi-dimensional: in less than 15 years those countries have moved from a

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socialist economy (closed and planned), to a

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‘Western economy’ (the so-called market economy), to a

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technological one as a consequence of globalisation and, lastly,

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to the learning economy.

The first step (socialist economy), recalls other sectors in which the ‘ideas’ were closed and planned. The society was divided into classes and the dominant concept was ‘war’. In this context, every single action was intended as a possibility to demonstrate the points of strength of a system: sports, culture and economy were part of the battle and the vision of the future was mostly influenced by the possibility to destroy or to be destroyed. Examples of these considerations could be seen in the choice made by the USA government in its participation at Olympic Games in Moscow (1980), the USSR’s answer in 1984 (Los Angeles Olympic Games) and the proliferation of nuclear holocaust movies such as The Day After. These ideas were strongly present amongst the people of the Eastern countries, but after 1989, things changed and ‘gradually’ the new paradigms based on ‘Western values’ and, for a few, Western lifestyles, emerged. Probably these changes caused shocks in the local societies, shocks that have had consequences also in the way these societies now see their futures. The third step, the shift to a technological economy, has been faster and wider, thanks largely to the new communication technologies and the Internet. In understanding and developing alternative futures for Eastern Europe, futurists have to take account of the fact that all the three economies exist side by side—Eastern Europe does not represent one or the other economies, it is a complex mix of all the three economies. This complexity is further augmented by the fact that Eastern European societies have not had enough time to understand their present in order to be able to desire possible, alternative futures. Further, economic competitiveness is now based more and more on the capacity to develop and apply knowledge [3]. Thus, futures of Eastern Europe are a function of its capacity to develop relevant new forms of knowledge. Futurists cannot afford to ignore this connection between the knowledge and alternative futures.Thus, the concept of epistemic community and the theory of ‘knowledge economy’ have a great deal in common. If we consider that the so-called ‘decision-makers’ are (in democratic countries) elected by the people, we can argue that that section of the people able to disseminate consciousness of problems, possible solutions and long term implications, posses a form of power. Without engaging with this power, we cannot shape viable and meaningful futures.Are there any trans-national networks of expert where it is possible to identify these characteristics of an ‘embryonic’ epistemic community? In some respect this could be the case of the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF), or of the Washington-based World Future Society (WFS) or, at regional level, of the Namur-based euroProspective or the Finland Futures Research Centre, where we have structured networks of the experts coming with different experiences, from different backgrounds, a common interest (to analyse the society from different perspective, but all future oriented), a shared task (to disseminate the use of futures studies not only as a tool but also as a way of thinking) and diversity in knowledge, which is what keeps them together. Moreover, for most of the members, the idea of knowledge economy is already their reality and the capacity to understand trends, possible (or even better) probable futures is the aim of their professional activities.If we briefly consider those organisations, we could assume that they already posses some aspects related to the concept of epistemic community: the WFS for example “strives to serve as a neutral clearinghouse for ideas about the future, membership is open and the Society includes 30,000 people in more than 80 countries from Argentina to Zimbabwe. Members come from all walks of life, they include sociologists, scientists, and educators” [4]. If the WFS’s main strength is in trans-national partnership and different backgrounds of its members, the regional experience that euroProspective is carrying out is mostly based on the construction of a European network of experts. The inter-exchange of ideas and a common ‘mission’ are the two elements, which could let us consider this organisation as futures epistemic communities. Another example, at national/regional level, is the one provided by the Finland Futures Research Centre; the link with epistemic community is offered by the activity and the nature of some projects of this institution such as ‘sustainable energy development in developing countries’, ‘Russian energy and global climate’, ‘collisions of nature and culture in transport policy’, ‘professional delphiscan, an expert system’ [5]—all of these projects or tools (delphiscan is a software) are aimed at producing a relationship between political power and future and knowledge power.There are several reasons why we cannot consider the WFSF by itself as an epistemic community. Perhaps the most important is that it does not have a direct link with the political power; neither does the Federation seek any kind of influence on public authorities or on the decision-making process. But in as much as the Federation is concerned with managing change, it could be considered as an actor able to help people and the institutions understand the on-going processes of change. In the coming years, it will probably be forced to become an epistemic community as it will be necessary to ‘represent and clarify the relation between knowledge management, ICT usage and experts in futures studies as mediators between the complexity of political decision and the tendency of institutions to became advanced learning organisation’ [6] and [7].We also need to study the role the futures studies can play in clarifying those ‘shadow zones’ between the political power and the complexity of the decision-making processes. In this respect, it has to be underlined that the demand for the expert advice is a common phenomenon in policy-making processes, at local, national and international level. All this processes have a concrete objective, which would offer the possibility to exploit the added value of a ‘federation intended as a sort of epistemic community’: the credibility of the futures studies and, consequentially, the credibility of the experts active in this field, depends on this. The debate and the progress of these considerations should be developed in a multi-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary way with respect to several subjects and research areas, but this is only a logical consequence of the ‘nature and the different backgrounds’ already represented in the Federation.A theme (which emerged during the conference held in Brasov), which allows us to identify a relationship between an epistemic community and the social needs is globalisation. While globalisation is difficult to pin down, it is quite evident that we are living through a phase of transition. But as futurists and a potential epistemic community, our goal ought to be to develop an understanding of, and perspectives on, post-globalisation societies. This suggests that we need to identify the relationships between an epistemic community, the futures studies and the organisations active in this field such as WFSF and euroProspective.The analytical tools offered by the concept of epistemic community seem appropriate under the current prevailing conditions of uncertainty and ignorance. Understanding uncertainty and bringing multi-faceted expertise and knowledge to analyse difficult problems and propose future solutions are the two fundamental characteristics of futurists. The constitution of a network of experts coming from different backgrounds is already a reality inside the Federation but, at the moment, there is no linkage with the traditional and democratic forms of power. To become an active epistemic community, the WFSF has to realise its potential and develop these much needed linkages.     

Movements toward holism in futures inquiry

This article takes up the question of the various movements toward holism in futures inquiry. The Ken Wilber inspired integral futures, developed by Richard Slaughter and others, and put forth as the most comprehensive approach to-date, is critiqued and assessed. While Wilber's integral and the variant it has inspired in futures represent significant innovations, it also contains the tendency to un-necessarily close down, lock out or to sub-ordinate alternative conceptions of holism, what I term ‘Wilber-ism’. Wilber's ‘theory of everything’ and integral futures are analysed, re-assessed and re-situated in the context of the alternative approaches to holism that exist. What emerges is a rich view of potential genealogies and ontogenies as movements toward holism. One variant from the action research tradition, which I call ‘integrative foresight’, is put forward as an example of an alternative. The article concludes by proposing a process of dynamic dialogue between diverse conceptions of holism, which can at once honour the great diversity of approaches, while likewise continuing the journey of creating shared meaning and common understandings of the complex contexts in which futures inquiry works.     

Fear and risk in the audit process

Relying on an ethnographic study conducted in the French branch of a big audit firm and using a psychodynamic perspective to interpret the collected data, we show that auditors’ sense of comfort (Pentland, 1993) arises only at the end of the audit process, and that the rest of the time, public accountants are inhabited primarily by fear. Fear plays a crucial but ambivalent role in auditing. On one hand, auditors and audit firms cultivate this feeling through informal and formal techniques to stimulate vigilance, encourage self-surpassment, mitigate the anesthetizing effect of habit and maintain reputation. On the other hand, audit teams’ members strive to alleviate their fear in order to form and convey their conclusions with a certain degree of comfort. In the field, driven by fear, they manage to finally become comfortable either by mobilizing their ‘practical intelligence’ (an intelligence of the body which helps them handle that which, in their mission, cannot be obtained through the strict execution of standardized procedures) or by adopting defensive strategies (such as distancing themselves from work-related problems, mechanically applying audit methodologies or relaxing their conception of a job well done). Fear and risk are closely related phenomena. Michael Power (2007a, p. 180) notes that ‘the significant driver of the managerialization of risk management is an institutional fear and anxiety’. Yet the experience of fear and the role that fear plays in risk management processes is most often overlooked in the literature. In this respect, our study contributes to ‘emotionalize’ and challenge the cognitive and technical orientation adopted by most academics and regulators in their understanding of audit risks and auditors’ scepticism. We also discuss a number of avenues for future research with a view to encouraging further examination of the role that emotions play in the audit process.     

Cognitive representations of the future: Survey results

This paper reports the results of a web-based survey concerning how people think about the future. Five hundred and seventy-two people from 24 countries completed the survey. The results indicate that when the respondents hear the word ‘future’, they think about a point in time 15 years into the future, on average, with a median response of 10 years. Respondents think less about the future than the present. On the other hand, they tend to worry more about the future than the present. Respondents’ ability to imagine the future goes ‘dark’ around 15-20 years into the future. Most of the respondents are optimistic about the near term, but become more pessimistic about the longer term. Respondents believe that humankind is not acting very responsibly with respect to a whole host of environmental and social issues but is acting responsibly with respect to technology. Almost half of the respondents would not wish to have been born in the future. Most of the other respondents would have preferred to have been born 50-500 years into the future. Approximately 45% of the sample believes that humankind will become extinct. The data suggest that Christians are more optimistic and less worried about the future and do not believe that we will become extinct. Males worry less but also think more about the future. There is a strong correlation between thinking about the future, clearly imagining the future, and being optimistic about the future. It is concluded that individuals have diverse and rich conceptions about the future but that they think less about the future than futurists might hope. Individuals’ considerations of the future are highly influenced by their identities and worldviews. Future research should focus on better unraveling these relationships and on understanding their implications for futures-oriented policy making.     

Problematizing international business futures through a ‘critical scenario method’

This paper proposes the need for change in how managers in international business (IB) determine organisational objectives and what criteria they use in addressing complex problems. We propose a move from a largely firm-centric focus; on profit maximization and shareholder value; to a broader societal and environmental view. We see the educational context as the locus for initiating such a shift. However, we see obstacles within the canon of mainstream IB textbooks, with their focus on exposition of normative models of managerial action, illustrated by case studies of successful multinational enterprises (MNEs). Whilst we acknowledge their incorporation of critical issues, we view the lack of substantive critical reflection on the wider implications of IB activity as underpinned by an implicit assumption of the ‘good’ of IB. We posit that the normative structure of mainstream texts militates against students understanding the full range of possible futures for IB practice, and against developing the capability to cope with situations of uncertainty and ambiguity. Seeking to promote a critical pedagogy that accommodates consideration of both mainstream approaches and critical responses to these, we propose one approach to teaching and learning about IB futures that is based upon development of what we term ‘critical scenario method’. This offers a basis for active investigation of complex problems in the ‘real’ world from a range of perspectives, beyond that of profit maximization. We provide a worked, case example of our new method and demonstrate how it will enhance perceptions/understandings of involved and affected actors’ interests and their likely (re)actions as a particular scenario unfolds. The theoretical grounding for this approach is based upon contemporary social science interpretation of the Aristotelian concept of phronēsis, or ‘practical wisdom’.     

Futurescaping Infinite Bandwidth, Zero Latency

In the 1990s Castells analysed ‘the rise of the network society’ but this remains an ever-changing phenomenon. It throws up new concepts and issues. For example, no one foresaw what Mark Zuckerberg would create in terms of on-line social networks with the FaceBook project. Predicting the functionality and utility of the Internet is a mug's game and yet it can be extremely profitable for those who ‘guess right’ and are able to influence the future applications and organisational forms of the network society.Next Generation Access (NGA) broadband is promoted strongly by policy makers as underpinning future economic growth. NGA can be thought of as a potential future placeholder, the content and structure of which, while remaining tantalizing, is occupying many contemporary minds. In this paper we describe a process (Imagine/Triple Task Method) and an event structure IBZL (or Infinite Bandwidth Zero Latency), which explores potentially novel applications of NGA and provide some ideas as to the key components of the future inter-networked landscape.In this paper we present the context of the IBZL initiative, review the ‘Imagine’ process as an effective method for ‘futurescaping’ and present some initial outcomes of the project.     

Practising the scenario-axes technique

Studying the future seems a mission impossible, since both the appearance of the future and its underlying dynamics are unknown and unknowable. Nevertheless, the future is being studied by professional futurists. So, professional futurists seem to have found ways to structure ‘the unknown’. The question is, then, how do they do this? Over the years, professional futurists have developed several types of techniques and methods to structure thinking and discussing the future. The scenario-axes technique, which aims to align divergent perspectives on how the future may unfold, is one such structuring device.In the past 2 years, we did ethnographic research at the Netherlands Institute for Spatial Research (RPB) and followed professional futurists constructing and applying scenario axes in their scenario projects. Our observations illustrate how the scenario axes are practised by professional futurists and show that the scenario axes do not function as a unifying structure fostering alignment of different perspectives in the way that scenario theorists and practitioners often suggest. Instead, not one, but three different applications and interpretations of functional meaning of the scenario axes co-existed: the scenario axes as a ‘backbone’, as a ‘building scaffold’ and as ‘foundation’.     

Social predictions, institutional design and prestige loops: Richard Henshel’s contribution to futures studies

The article is both a contribution to the intellectual history of the field and a reminder that future studies have always been concerned not only with the epistemics and the cognitive procedures regarding the future but also with the impact of ideas on the very unfolding of the future. Cases when social predictions, by the mere fact of being made public, change the situations they have predicted, are an important challenge for social theory and institutional design. Richard Henshel dedicated an important part of his work to their study. The paper starts by mapping the conceptual contours of the problem. Then it outlines the ways in which various authors have dealt with its challenge, thereby putting the distinctiveness of Henshel’s unique contribution in a clearer perspective. The paper continues by presenting Henshel’s main arguments as they were developed around the key concept of ‘prestige loop’ as well as some of the implications of the fact that social predictions and ‘prestige loops’ not only challenge the way we understand the relationship between social theory and its practical applications, but also the ways we understand the very nature of applied social science and its relationship with futures studies.     

Future generations: Economic, legal and institutional aspects

In economics, the issue of ‘future generations’ is mainly related to the environmental problems of resource consumption and pollution and their distribution over long time horizons. This paper critically discusses fundamental concepts in economics, such as efficiency and optimality, in relation to the incorporation of future generations in present day decision-making. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and discounting are used as a starting point and criticized for its inherent flaws such as incommensurability of values and its tendency to hide rather than reveal underlying values which are assumed to be fixed. We then investigate alternative approaches, in which, unlike in CBA, the preferences are not assumed to be a priori but must be constructed. Thus, interest groups or individuals must sit down together and figure out what things seem to be worth. The aim is to involve all interested parties in planning for the future.Similarly, on a national and regional level, increasingly stakeholder processes, deliberative and interest group procedures are used to develop strategies and visions for resource management and conservation. A similar case can be made for institutions at the international level. The legal examples provided in this paper show that rather than only installing an institution such as the guardian for the future on the global level, more ‘democratized’ bottom up approaches might be more appropriate.     

Knowledge, limits and boundaries

In this paper the underlying concern is the problem of knowledge. How do we understand the world, what is ‘scientific’ knowledge, and to what extent is this knowledge limited by the fact that the world in which we live is complex? The problems associated with the status of our knowledge of the world have been central to philosophy all along. Here I will focus on the way in which the acknowledgement of complexity transforms some of the traditional conceptions of (especially scientific) knowledge. I will also examine the notions of boundaries and limits, arguing that these notions are not problems we have to get out of the way, but that they are inevitable as soon as we start talking of ‘knowledge’.     

Anticipating the future: ‘Biotechnology for the poor’ as unrealized promise?

This article analyses visions of the future articulated by proponents of ‘biotechnology for the poor’, those who claim that an embrace of transgenic technology in agriculture is critical to alleviating poverty in developing countries. Specifically, we analyse how such ‘biotechnology for the poor’ proponents represent a future with or without transgenic crops. Such representations include visions of a beckoning (promising) future, where much is to be gained from an embrace of transgenic technology in agriculture, and an onrushing (threatening) future, where much will be lost if the technology is not embraced. The article shows that claims about a beckoning or onrushing future by ‘biotechnology for the poor’ proponents are based upon unexamined or problematic assumptions about the poor and poverty. As such, poverty becomes merely a moral backdrop against which visions of a future are articulated. Furthermore, ‘biotechnology for the poor’ writings do not engage in dialogue with alternative voices in articulating their perspectives on the future, losing a key opportunity to democratize debate about this crucial issue. We conclude by considering the policy consequences (in regulatory and institutional terms) of ‘biotechnology for the poor’ depictions of the future, particularly for the global South where such consequences will be felt.     

Oppression and resistance: the powerless and the future

Relations between rich and poor (across and within countries) appeared in some questions in Images; there were clear differences between what the powerful and the powerless hoped and expected from the future. This is compared with what actually happened and a deeper analysis is made of ‘power’ as an organizing concept. It turned out that the pessimism associated with powerlessness tended to make better predictions.     

Feral futures: Zen and aesthetics

Studies of ‘futures’ have hitherto focused on those that are predictable and ‘tame’, and on those that are unpredictable and ‘wild’. Here we consider a new class, the ‘feral’; which are expectations that things might be made worse by risk-based actions. The type case is the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, where operatives assumed that what was unfolding was of a sort described in their manual, and discovered too late that responses based on that assumption were making the situation worse. In this paper we review the idea of ‘feral’ and how it applies to futures, and discuss the different modes of engagement (or non-engagement) with feral futures. To make feral futures manageable, we suggest two ideas from other spheres of activity. Zen is a practice and philosophy which enables us to drop our preconceptions and thereby to respond to emerging, unprecedented situations. Aesthetics articulates a particular way to sense and appreciate realities intuitively, again enabling a direct response. The combination of Zen and aesthetics with scenario practice in the tradition of Pierre Wack provides a promising mode of response to emerging feral futures.     

The office: The weakness of numbers and the production of non-authority

It often seems to be taken for granted that numbers produce effects and that practices of accounting enhance authority. This also goes for accounting and the environment. This paper shares this belief and argues that practices of accounting have been a crucial technology for taking nature or ‘the environment’ into account in the post-war era. Nevertheless, the ‘constitutive turn’ in the studies of accounting should not tempt us to leave unexplored the limitation of accounting practices and the inabilities to govern by numbers. With a point of departure in a pollution control agency, the paper explores the making of a non-authoritative office. It points to the emergence of what is labelled ‘accounting intimacy’ rather than the exertion of government at a distance. The paper also points to the ways in which the agency, rather than building a separate and distinct authority, came to reproduce the actor subjected to being governed, i.e., the polluting factory, within its own office. The author argues that this can be related to the investment in a shared ‘technical interest’ and the belief that the right (emission) number in itself would be sufficient to move the factory. The paper then explores the conditions for which numbers nevertheless came to have effects. The argument is that this should be seen as inextricably linked to the emergence of an ‘interesting object’, i.e., ‘the environment’ and an environmental interest, within the office. Thus, we need to pay attention to the formation of interests, and as accounting scholars turn to ‘the environment’, the latter should not be taken for granted.