Futures Studies

Other Entries

SAGE Research Methods Foundations

By: Ellen Anthoni, Maya Van Leemput, Jessica Schoffelen & Karin Hannes
Published:2020
Length: 5,000 Words
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/9781529751024
Methods: Futures Studies
Online ISBN: 9781529751024
Disciplines: Anthropology, Communication and Media Studies, History, Social Policy and Public Policy,
Sociology
Access Date: February 7, 2021
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd
City: London
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Futures studies can be described as the systematic study of alternative futures to understand what could
be and how we as humans might orient our actions in the present towards our preferred futures. Since the
1950s, the study of the future has moved from predictive approaches to approaches for mapping alternative
futures and shaping desired futures (Bell, 1996). According to sociologist Wendell Bell, the most general
purpose of futures studies is to maintain or improve human well-being and the life-sustaining capacities of
the Earth through prospective thinking (Bell, 1996). He sees the wisdom of human decision making and the
effectiveness of human action improve by means of more self-conscious and adequate futures thinking (Bell,
1996).

Although many of the founding mothers and fathers were social scientists, studies of alternative futures
were mainly developed outside ‘social science’ (Urry, 2016). From an urge to grasp what is coming next,
academics, practitioners, and people from a variety of disciplines and sectors develop theories and practices
to try and understand the future.

Thus, futures studies are a transdisciplinary field of inquiry. It draws on many different disciplines in reaching
and justifying its findings and assertions. While it does involve many disciplines, including natural sciences,
it is usually categorised as a social science because decision making and action are social processes
(Bell, 1996). It is also considered an action science because it aims to inform human action upon the
future. The transdisciplinary nature of the field and the multiple labels for its different branches do not make
the knowledge base and contours of concepts, methodologies, practices, and processes easily discernible
(Sardar, 2010; Gidley, 2017).

This entry begins by discussing the plethora of terms used for the field of study. Next, it resumes the main
assumptions from important authors in the field. The third part sketches the development of the academic field
of futures studies. Lastly, this entry offers an overview of the methods of futures research and their purposes.

What’s in a Name?
Foresight, scenarios approach, futurology, futurible, prospective analysis, futures studies, futures research,
futures study, futuring, …. A panoply of terms exists to describe the field of the study of futures. Initially,
the term ‘futurology’ (coined by the Ukrainian political scientist Ossip K. Flechteim in 1943) was used by the
popular press and a narrow circle of scholars in the United States. ‘Futuring’ is a term from the early 2000s,
introduced by Edward Cornish, one of the founders of the World Futures Society and editor of its periodical
The Futurist, and Jerome Glenn, the Executive Director of the Millennium Project (Cornish 2004). It is one
of the various descriptors used for the process of actively envisioning futures. In francophone parts of the
world, the study of the future is referred to as ‘la prospective’ as introduced by Gaston Berger in 1957. To
emphasise the plurality of possible futures, the label ‘futures studies’ came in use in the early 1960s through
the global network organisation of academic futurists World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF). When ideas
and concepts from futures studies are applied in business and corporate settings, specific sets of methods

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are employed such as scenario planning, strategic management, and strategic foresight. Here the term (for
both theory and practice) most commonly used is ‘foresight’. This is also the term of choice of the institutions
of the European Union, Australian theoreticians, and most practitioners. In all cases, the term ‘foresight’ is
used for applied futures-oriented work, either for organisational or policy development purposes. The shorter
umbrella term ‘futures’ is widely used to refer to the whole of the field of inquiry, its theory, methods, and
applications.

Assumptions
In his book Foundations of Futures Studies, Wendell Bell (1996) suggests nine key assumptions that are
foundational to the theory of futures studies. According to Bell, futures studies are related to the nature of
time (seen as continuous, linear, unidirectional and irreversible), which emphasise that the future is unique
and that futures thinking is essential for human action. The next assumption of Bell is that the most useful
knowledge is knowledge of the future. Other authors (Sardar, 2013; Slaughter, 2004) see knowledge of the
future as contingent and insist more on Bell’s following assumption: The future is nonevidential and cannot be
observed; therefore, there are no facts about the future. Australian futurist Richard Slaughter (2004) nuances
this in his five basic philosophical assumptions behind all futures research and states that one cannot know
the future, but a range of possible futures can be known. James Dator (1998) formulated the basic principles
of futures studies into ‘Three Laws’ and says that the future cannot be ‘predicted’ but alternative futures can
be ‘forecasted’ and preferred futures ‘envisioned’ and ‘invented’.

Bell states that the future is open, not predetermined and to a greater or lesser degree, future outcomes can
be influenced by individual and collective action. Slaughter is more specific and states that the likelihood of
a future event or condition can be changed by policy, and policy consequences can be forecasted, and that
gradations of foreknowledge and probabilities can be made. Bell also insists that the interdependence in the
world invites a holistic perspective and a transdisciplinary approach. The final assumption of Bell opens the
path to normative work stating that some futures are better than others, encouraging futurists to propose and
critically assess preferable futures. Slaughter adds that no single method should be trusted by itself; hence,
cross-referencing methods improve foresight. According to Dator, futurists shape their tools and thereafter
their tools shape them. Dator adds that any useful idea about the futures should appear to be ridiculous at
first and according to Slaughter humans will have more influence on the future than they did in the past.

Development of the Field of Futures Studies

Bell (1996) states that thinking about the future, is ‘a universal phenomenon that can be traced back to the
dawn of human prehistory’ (p. 2). Divination, philosophical debate, the fashioning of utopias and dystopias,
and extrapolation are some of the historic approaches to studying the future (Gidley, 2017). The triggers for
modern futures studies though, date from the beginning of the 20th century (Clarke, 1996). In a lecture at
the Royal Institution in London on his book Anticipations (1902), the English writer H. G. Wells pleaded for
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a systematic, academic study of the future and professors of foresight. He believed that the discipline of
history by itself could not sufficiently address the challenges of increasing degrees of novelty in the world
(Gidley, 2017). However, it was not until the late 1950s that the early stages of future studies as an academic
discipline, based on systematic research using quantitative and qualitative methods, emerged in the United
States and Europe (Sardar, 2013).

Around the second World War (1939–1945), the operations management of the military played an important
role in the beginnings of futures studies, which then gradually found its way into private business applications.
The Research and Development Corporation (RAND), an independent think tank for the U.S. Armed Forces,
was involved in developing the practice of scenario thinking with Herman Khan’s seminal work On
Thermonuclear War (Gidley, 2017). Also at RAND, Olaf Helmer and Theodore Gordon a few years later
suggested a general theory of prediction to deal with socioeconomic and political problems with as much
confidence as they did with problems in physics and chemistry and proposed the Delphi technique
(Andersson, 2012). This ‘new science of the future’, appealed to commissions, institutes, and government
departments in Europe, Japan, and the Soviet Union (Sardar, 2013).

In Europe, Fred L. Polak, a Dutch sociologist who was the director of the Dutch National Planning Bureau,
presented a cultural-historic study of the relation between imagined futures and the dynamics of culture. The
English translation by the American futurist Elise Boulding, titled The Image of the Future (1962), became one
of the main starting points for the further development of futures studies. In 1957, French philosopher and
educator Gaston Berger contributed to this development by setting up the Centre International de Prospective
in Paris and launching the journal Prospective. For him, ‘prospective’ was the mirror image of ‘retrospective’
and the future is both determined and free, passively suffered but also actively willed. The action-oriented
nature of forward-looking activities was paramount in this view (Gidley, 2017). Also in France, philosopher
Bertrand de Jouvenel, who sought to construct a systemic rationale for envisaging the future, founded the
Association Internationale de Futuribles that published the journal, Futuribles (Sardar, 2013). De Jouvenel
emphasised choice and talked about possible futures to be built by our imagination in favour of a humane
world.

By the late 1960s, a dissatisfaction with American predictive approaches took hold (Sardar, 2013). An
international committee of scholars, social scientists, and futures thinkers from Western and Eastern Europe,
the Soviet Union and Japan, set up Mankind 2000 to organise a number of future research inaugural
conferences, where the epistemological and political issues of the study of the future were debated, and
courses were provided for students and young scholars. Leading thinkers such as political scientist James
Dator and sociologist Eleonora Masini sought to democratise and pluralise the future. In this context, the
WFSF was founded in 1973, with the support of UNESCO (Gidleyc, 2017; Sardar, 2013). Other academic
institutions further boosted the field. The Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies (Hawaii Futures),
founded in 1969 by Dator, was the first university that offered a PhD program in futures. Tamkang University
in Taiwan, founded in 1964, initiated a Graduate Institute for Futures Studies and from 1996 onwards the
Journal of Futures Studies (Inayatullah, 2003). The democratisation of futures research was also expressed

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in the rise of participatory practices. Robert Jungk ran his first futures workshop in 1962, driven by the belief
that citizens should be involved in the shaping of the future in prevention of an elitist colonisation of the future
(Bell, 1996). The participatory futures approach integrates the activist nature of the French prospective with
participatory vision-building and action research methods (Gidley, 2017).

By the 1980s, the conversation on what it means to study and explore the future had become global and
methods of studying the future had multiplied manifold. Diverging approaches from different parts of the
world led to a wide range of traditions within futures studies (Bell, 1996). In the next decade, the publication
of several authoritative overviews and popularisation of the knowledge base saw to the establishment of
a recognisable field of inquiry. In 1994, New Scientist magazine devoted a special issue to the subject of
futures, arguing that the increasingly complex nature of the world made it even more important to know
the future so as to understand the present better (Urry, 2016). When Bell produced two volumes of the
Foundations of Futures Studies, Human Science for a New Era in 1996, he included a concern for ethics,
morality and human values. The same year, Slaughter edited a resource called ‘The knowledge base of
Futures Studies as an evolving process’.

Since the mid-2000s, both design-led futures-oriented activities and experiential futures come into
prominence. They contribute to make futures visible, tangible, and explorable for a layman public by
combining conventional futures techniques with the creative processes used in arts and design. In his book
Shaping Things (2005), Bruce Sterling coined the term ‘design fiction,’ which refers to a type of speculative
design that focuses on world building. In his dissertation in 2010 about the approach of bringing futures
into everyday life, and everyday life into futures, Stuart Candy developed and spread futures tools. It was a
significant call to go beyond the circle of futures thinkers and empower others to the invention and pursuit of
preferred futures and help them have meaningful conversations and make better decisions.

As the pace of change increases, the future draws more and more attention in popular media, in business
literature, and in educational and academic spheres. Government departments, corporations, private
agencies, and trendspotters seek to be future-focused (Gidley, 2017), even if they do not often reference
the field of futures studies (Sardar, 2010). Social scientists from outside futures studies are attracted by the
field (Urry, 2016; Verschraegen et al., 2017) and the diversity of researcher profiles at the international and
interdisciplinary Anticipation conferences since 2016 indicate a widening of academic interest.

Methods of Futures Research and Their

Purposes
Futures methods, tools, and techniques are a mixed bag with relatively few methods unique or exclusive
to futures. Scholars, entrepreneurs, civil servants and corporate teams, consultants, nonprofit professionals,
and activists, each in their own contexts, employ different approaches with different objectives. There is also
a host of ideological perspectives and geographic inclinations, making for a complex family tree of schools,
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branches, and variations that translate into methodological preferences.

Sohail Inayatullah, UNESCO Chair of Futures Studies at Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, discerns four types
of futures studies: The first is predictive, based on empirical social sciences. The second is interpretive, based
not on forecasting the future but on understanding images of the future. The third is critical, derived from
poststructural thought. It is focused on asking both who benefits by the realisation of certain futures and which
methodologies privilege certain types of futures studies. The fourth is participatory action learning/research.
In The Future: A Very Short Introduction, former WFSF president Jennifer Gidley (2017) adds a fifth type of
‘integral futures’ and points out particular sets of methods used within each of these broad approaches.

A practice-oriented take on the conceptual organisation of methods was proposed by Joseph Voros at
Swinburn University of Technology in 2003. His scalable generic foresight framework is a staged model of
the applied foresight process in public and private contexts, ‘useful both for understanding and evaluating the
manner by which different methodologies may be combined, and as a basis for designing new and innovative
methodological processes, practices and interventions tailored to specific organisational circumstances’
(Voros, 2003, p. 11). It distinguishes six phases and associates them with particular methods. The initial
inputs phase includes information gathering and scanning approaches, surveying, and horizon scanning
and is understood as preceding the actual foresight work. Delphi techniques and workshop formats like
brainstorming are used here too. Analysis, asking ‘what seems to be happening’, interpretation of ‘what’s
really happening’ and prospection about ‘what might happen’ form the core foresight activities. The outputs
then address ‘what might we need to do’. Strategy only follows after the foresight work is concluded.

Inayatullah’s generic framework of Six Pillars offers a different widely used stage-by-stage categorisation of
futures methods. He suggests that futures inquiry pays attention to the past and the present in the pillar of
‘mapping’ through methods and tools such as the futures triangle and the futures landscape. Starting from
the present then, the second pillar is ‘anticipation’ with methods such as emerging issues analysis and the
futures wheel. The third pillar pays attention to grand patterns of change, macrohistory, and macrofutures,
to models of social change and interpretations of time. The fourth pillar is interpretative and deepens the
ideas formed in the previous stages through methods such as causal layered analysis. Alternatives then
are created with methods such as scenario modelling and incasting (a foresight technique developed at
the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies to think up the specific details of a possible future based
on a more general scenario description), which serve to detail a range of preset scenarios. The final pillar,
transforming, is for finding preferences, plotting paths, and formulating actions; it uses amongst others include
visioning, backcasting, anticipatory action learning and the transcend conflict resolution method.

Michael Marien (2002) of the World Futures Society lists futures methods and other forward-looking activities
according to the conceptual categories popularised through the clarity of the graphic representation ‘the
cone of possibilities’ that was developed by Voros (2003) to depict the taxonomy of alternative futures as
overlapping cones.

The present holds the P for potential. In the future, people can see possibilities, futures that ‘might’ happen,

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even if they would have to be based on knowledge we do not yet have. The sheer impossible is to be
disregarded as leading nowhere in early versions of the cone. However, in the 2017 iteration of the cone,
futures that we judge would ‘never happen’ are included in the category of preposterous futures to ensure
space for ideas about the future proposed with Dator’s second law in mind (any useful statement about the
future should seem ridiculous at first). Within all the possibilities some are seen as more plausible than others.
Plausible futures are those we think ‘could happen’ based on what we know about the world today. Probable
futures are those we think are ‘likely to happen’. While some futures are evidently more probable than others,
probability thinking risks leaving baseline futures outlooks unquestioned and predictability overestimated. The
baseline future itself is a separate category that can be understood as the future considered to be the single
most probable. It is usually an extrapolation of the past through the present to the future. Preferable futures,
those we think should or ‘ought to happen’, are the set that normative and organisational management
approaches address and that inspire action in the present.

Gidley (2017) highlights how selected methods apply to the cone’s categories. Probable futures are
addressed with quantitative methods, forecasting, surveys, trend analysis, and technology assessment
techniques that fit into the positivist predictive approach aiming for extrapolation, prediction, and control.
Possible futures then are the purview of cultural and interpretative approaches with qualitative methods,
creativity techniques, dialogue and ethnographic research for considering alternative possibilities. Normative
and emancipatory approaches use text analysis, media critique, and cultural and educational artefacts to
focus on preferred futures. Action research relates to potential and uses collaborative visioning and activist
methods for change in the present. Finally, integral approaches attend to the whole gamut of possible,
plausible, and preferable futures with mixed methods in transdisciplinary settings.

ForLearn (2020), an Online Foresight Guide from the European Foresight Platform, points out that among
this multitude of methods, scenarios are perhaps the most emblematic. A pioneering example of the
implementation of scenario planning is that of the Shell scenarios developed by Pierre Whack in the 1970s.
The perceived success of this well-known set of scenarios provided a springboard for a private scenario
planning industry. Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon (2009) explain that

A scenario is not a single prediction or forecast, but a way of organizing many statements about
the future. It should be sufficiently vivid so that one can clearly see and comprehend the problems,
challenges, and opportunities that such an environment would present. A scenario is not a
prediction or specific forecast per se; rather, it is a plausible description of what might occur and how
that could emerge from the present. Scenarios describe events and trends as they could evolve. (p.
5)

Dator proposes a scenario modelling approach that is based on four generic alternative images of the future.
The first, ‘continued growth’, is the dominant image of the future, the most widely used by governments
and businesses. ‘Collapse’ is the second image of the future. Here there may be new beginnings, new
winners, and losers. It is not considered a ‘worst case’ future. As a matter of fact, all four futures contain
both desirable and undesirable elements, just like the present. The third generic image is that of a ‘disciplined
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society’, in which, from the bottom up or top-down, disciplined behaviours are adopted in response to
different challenges. Green disciplined scenarios and nationalist authoritarian futures are probably among
the most recognisable in this category. ‘Transformation’, whereby radical technological or spiritual changes
bring entirely new possibilities, create new dynamics and potentially also new imbalances (Dator, 2009). The
emphasis here is on putting alternatives next to each other and on visioning (picturing the preferable) with
stakeholders who are asked to project themselves in at least two possible futures before considering and
identifying their preferences.

In experiential work, like that of Stuart Candy and Jake Dunagan, settings and scenarios are developed into
situations and artefacts that embody future possibilities to be experienced and felt by participants. The idea
here is that the future needs to be made real so that it can be given due consideration, to create situations
as catalysts for conversation, a goal that proponents of this approach claim white papers and dry scenario
outlines do not achieve. Glenn and Gordon (2009) see that ‘numerous methods have been developed
to create scenarios, ranging from simplistic to complex, qualitative to quantitative …. Most approaches
recognise the need to understand the system under study and identify the trends, issues, driving forces, and
potential events that are critical to this system’ (p. 6). According to Bell (1996), ‘the end product of all the
methods of futures research is basically the same: a scenario, a story about the future, usually including a
story about the past and present’ (p. 317).

Conclusion
Since the future itself is not available for examination, futures studies focus on present-day images of the
future. The field is concerned with questions about how these images are constructed, used, and abused and
queries their content and characteristics. Futures studies also endeavours to create and make accessible a
wide range of images of the future (stories or scenarios, images, experiential situations or speculative designs
for instance) that pertain to particular settings, topics and themes (often referred to as ‘the futures of X’) and
the interdisciplinary nature of futures studies in part arises from the diversity of thematic choices available.
Moreover, holistic or systems approaches are needed to address the interconnection between the futures of
X and the futures of Y or between the drivers of change, the trends and emerging issues in domains external
to that under examination and those internal to it. Futures studies brings images of the futures into the world,
not just for their own sake, but for how they activate the present, provide orientation and affect mindsets,
actions, and behaviours. In doing so, it builds individual and collective capacities for critical and generative
thinking about the options available to humans today and tomorrow.

Further Reading
Adam, B. E. (2010). History of the future: Paradoxes and challenges. Rethinking History, 14(3), 361–378.

Bell, W. (1996). Foundations of futures studies: History, purposes, and knowledge (Vol. 1, Human Sciences

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for a New Era Series). Transaction Publishers.

Dator, J. (2009). Alternative futures at the Manoa School. Journal of Futures Studies, 14(2), 1–18.

Gidley, J. M. (2017). The future: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.

Jackson, M. (2013). Practical foresight guide. Shaping tomorrow. www.shapingtomorrow.com/media-centre/

pf-complete.pdf

Masini, E. (1993). Why futures studies?Grey Seal Books.

Miller, R. (2018). Transforming the future: Anticipation in the 21st century. Routledge.

Slaughter, R. A. (1996). The knowledge base of futures studies as an evolving process. Futures, 28(9),
799–812.

Sohail, I. (2008). Six pillars: Futures thinking for transforming. Foresight, 10(1), 4–21.

Voros, J. (2003). A generic foresight process framework. Foresight, 5(3), 10–21. https://doi.org/10.1108/
14636680310698379

References
Andersson, J. (2012). The great future debate and the struggle for the world. The American Historical
Review, 117(5), 1411–1430.

Bell, W. (1996). Foundations of futures studies: History, purposes, and knowledge (Vol. 1, Human Sciences
for a New Era Series). Transaction Publishers.

Boulding, K. E. (1962). The image of the future. Fred L. Polak, Elise Boulding. Journal of Political Economy,
70(2), 192–193.

Clarke, I. F. (1996). Twentieth century futures thinking: From amateurs to experts. The Knowledge Base of
Futures Studies, 1, 3–13.

Cornish, E. (2004). Futuring: The exploration of the future. World Future Society.

Dator, J. (1998). Introduction: The future lies behind! Thirty years of teaching futures studies. The American
Behavioral Scientist, 42(3), 298–319.

Dator, J. (2009). Alternative futures at the Manoa School. Journal of Futures Studies, 14(2), 1–18.

Flechtheim, O. K. (1966). History and futurology. Hain.

ForLearn. (2020). European foresight network. Retrieved January 15, 2020, from http://www.foresight-

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platform.eu/community/forlearn/

Gidley, J. M. (2017). The future: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.

Glenn, J. C., & Gordon, T. J. (2009, April30). Futures research methodology—Version 3.0. The Millennium
Project; 3.0 edition.

Inayatullah, S. (2003). Futures at Tamkang University. Futures, 35(10), 1075–1077.

Marien, M. (2002). Futures studies in the 21st century: A reality-based view. Futures, 34, 261–281.

Sardar, Z. (2010). The namesake: Futures; futures studies; futurology; futuristic; foresight-what’s in a
name?Futures, 42(3), 177–184.

Sardar, Z. (2013). Future: All that matters. Hodder & Stoughton.

Slaughter, R. A. (1990). The foresight principle. Futures, 22(8), 801–819.

Slaughter, R. (2004). Futures beyond dystopia: Creating social foresight. Psychology Press.

Urry, J. (2016). What is the future?John Wiley & Sons.

Verschraegen, G., Vandermoere, F., Braeckmans, L., & Segaert, B. (2017). Imagined futures in science,
technology and society. Taylor & Francis.

Voros, J. (2003). A generic foresight process framework. Foresight, 5(3), 10–21. https://doi.org/10.1108/
14636680310698379

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