Abstract:
This text explores the evolving significance of futures research in the context of societal complexity and tech-nological advancement. It emphasizes the need for a new, more pluralistic approach to understanding and shaping futures, highlighting the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and scientific rigor in addressing complex futures.
• Plurality of futures: Modern societies face a multiplicity of futures rather than a single predetermined one, driven by rapid changes and uncertainties in socio-economic and technological domains. This pluralism demands enhanced future competences across all societal sectors.
• Seven fundamental approaches: These include better exploration of futures through empirical research, ne-gotiation among diverse future visions, fostering acceptance of futures, designing imaginations, ethical poli -tical engagement with futures, effective attention management via futurecasting and futures staging, and creating circular innovation strategies linking anticipation and realization.
• Interdisciplinarity and institutionalization: Futures competence requires inter- and transdisciplinary ap-proaches, integrating theory, design, and practice. Institutionalizing futures studies with scientific rigor and continuity will be critical for managing complex societal transformations.
• Scientific stance to futures: Critical future studies must transcend speculative discourse by incorporating emotional and social intelligence, leveraging advanced technologies like AI and chatbots for empirical fore-casting, while maintaining critical awareness of their limitations.
• Contextual and regional integration: Effective future research should balance global perspectives with local and regional contexts, exemplified by participatory sustainability and resilience scenarios and “glocalization”. Europe requires a dedicated, humanistically oriented future institution to guide continental and glocal futures planning.
• Three innovative methodological approaches: Emerging avant-garde methods such as World Generation, Forefront Mapping, and Critical Futures Staging offer macro-level frameworks to understand and visualize fu-ture processes, integrating technological and humanistic elements for enhanced decision-making and public engagement.
• Five challenges for Europe: Europe faces discrepancies between theory and practice in futures handling and lacks stable long-term research frameworks for futures investigation. It needs a stronger institutional futures science, must separate foresight from ideological influence and worldview bias, and requires enhanced future competences especially amid innovation, polarization and sustainability crises pressures.
Über den Autor:
- Roland Benedikter,
DDDr., Politikwissenschaftler und Soziologe an der Forschungsein-
richtung für angewandte Sozialwissenschaften Eurac Research, Bozen. Co-Leiter des Centers for Advanced Studies, UNESCO-Lehrstuhlinhaber für Interdiziplinäre
Antizipation & Global-Lokale Transformation
