by A point that has come up several time in Alternative Perspectives class this semester that foresight perspectives and methods seem to overlap. In a more blunt form, there doesn’t appear to be anything really new – all the perspectives/methods seem to blend together. A similar point came up in a discussion I had with some Organizational Development students and faculty.
A short answer on overlap is “yes, indeed.” An APF Professional Development Seminar laid the foundation for the “framework” that Peter Bishop and I highlighted in our Thinking about the Future book. We and our colleagues identified six fundamental activities in doing foresight work: framing, scanning, forecasting, visioning, planning, and acting. The methods in the field either fit under one, or some combination of several of these activities. The different methods would have different ways that that carried out these activities. And most methods in turn have different techniques they use. For example, our review of the scenario method identified 26 different techniques for carrying it out. So, we have several dozen methods often with another dozen or so techniques, targeting six activities. Yup, that is going to lead to overlap! For me the point is not to complain about the overlap, but to look for the nuance in the method/technique.
A challenge that has come up in our various discussions on professionalization, is that we are inherently multi-disciplinary, which makes it a bit fuzzy on what exactly “belongs” to futurists/foresight. A quick answer is “who cares,” and I am sympathetic to that, but in the world of discipline- and profession-building those questions need to be addressed. I talked to some students and faculty in an organization development program and they asked questions around how foresight methods were different than what OD is doing. There was some suggestion that perhaps OD had the territory covered. Reminded me of the Lifeboat scenario – the field is not differentiated from other disciplines, but futurists are cooperating with one another — from the 2002 APF Futures of Futures Meeting.
We were fortunate to have Jose Ramos, editor of the Journal of Futures Studies, talk to our class recently. He mentioned practitioners often find out about action research after having done it. That was exactly my own experience, as I sought to make sense of my organizational futurist experiences, I realized that I had been taking an approach that could be described as “action research.” I suppose one way to approach action research after learning about it would be to say “I got this;” the approach I took (and recommend) was to dig in and learn more about it. I’d like to see my students and futurists take this type of approach – rather than seeing similarity as a reason to stop exploring, perhaps it’s a reason to start; to see what’s unique about a particular approach; to use the “similarities” as a scaffolding to build from rather than see it as a house of cards that collapses upon itself. Andy Hines
Greetings!
The farther I get into my studies in sociology, the more convinced I am that foresight is an applied form of sociology. Action research fits neatly under the sociology tent. There’s a growing body of theory about the social construction of time and sociology of the future. There’s a tremendous overlap between sociology and futures studies — I have yet to find something that falls outside the realm of sociology. And that gives us something to think about in the professional project.
Abbott suggests that in the effort to be recognized as a profession, we have to claim as large a jurisdiction as we can manage. Both sociology and futures studies legitimately claim knowledge affecting all of humankind — it’s hard to get a larger jurisdiction than that! Likewise, we also claim practice that applies to all people and all organizations. So to the extent that foresight practitioners and sociologists can mutually corroborate each others claims about specialized knowledge and efficacy, we can substantiate claims to the largest possible jurisdiction. What’s not lo love about that?
That said, I think it’s to be expected that there will be overlap in techniques. Sociology adopted ethnography from anthropology, but applied it in different ways that better suited understanding human society. As I’m learning right now, social psychology works in both directions — you can approach it from the psychology side or the sociology side, and the two perspectives yield different results. The key, I think, is to know why a particular method is better suited to a particular problem. If we manage that, we can choose intelligently from the many different methods we have available.
All in all, I think that it’s time we took a closer look at the sociological roots of futures studies. After all, the earliest sociologists recognized an obligation to help policy makers understand the future. Many prominent futurists started out as sociologists. Maybe it’s time we reviewed this past to better understand our own futures. And in doing so, we may discover the methodology that unites our methods and guides our practice. That may resolve the question of overlap.
Respectfully,
J. P. DeMeritt
Good points! I looked at sociology’s emergence as a profession to as an example. As you noted, it’s initial, perhaps grandiose, claims ended up being scaled back. Foresight is so inter-disciplinary to start with, that claiming what is uniquely “ours” is challenging.