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Sense making and futures making: Adults imagining their futures CONSTRUCTING SOCIAL FUTURES – Sustainability, Responsibility and Power 12–13 June 2019, Turku, Finland Session: Advances in methods in futures studies, Thursday 13th June, 9:00 – 10:30, Room: Logi-Sali 1, Chair: Professor, Dr Petri Tapio Katariina Heikkilä, MA Anna Kirveennummi, MA Finland Futures Research Centre
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Sense making and futures making: Adultsimagining their futuresCONSTRUCTING SOCIAL FUTURES – Sustainability, Responsibility and Power 12–13June 2019, Turku, Finland
Session: Advances in methods in futures studies, Thursday 13th June, 9:00 – 10:30,Room: Logi-Sali 1, Chair: Professor, Dr Petri Tapio
Katariina Heikkilä, MA
Anna Kirveennummi, MA
Finland Futures Research Centre
Futures thinking as sense making
The future cannot be predicted, but the ‘alternativefutures’ can be systematically and critically discussedand shared, anticipated, envisioned, revised,implemented etc.
How do adults deal with fragmentary items of futuresimages before they proceed to (possible) anticipatoryactions?
Positioning our research interest
How do adults deal withfragmentary items of futuresimages before they possiblylead to some anticipatoryactions?
Surrounding society andenvironment
Emotions, making sense ofthe images of the future
IndividualProcessing
information of the future
Futures images“The future may be considered as emerging from the interaction of fourcomponents: events, trends, images, and actions.” (Jim Dator 1996)
Futures images can be described as ideas, fears, hopes, thoughts, beliefsand concerns about the future (e.g. Anita Rubin 2013)
1. Futures images may refer to any item or signal we connect with futures2. Futures images may refer to an image that affects our anticipatory
actions3. Futures images may also be delibaterely constructed for different
interaction purposes (by individuals and researchers)
Experimentative demonstration – shortdialogue about the first impressions
What kinds of emotions or attitudes regarding your personal futuresthe themes in these news headlines evoke?How might they have an effect on your own futures thinking?
Sense making of futures images andemotions in the personal levelEmotions- effect the way we observe the
images available- give us (dis)information to be
interpreted- form a theme/issue/field of
research to follow
- Tonn & Conrad 2007, Tonn &MacGregor 2009
17% of Finns avoid news at times47 % of them said that happens becausethey think the news affect negativelytheir mood (source: Turun Sanomat13.6.2019)
”Whom are you going toeat today? Choose Vege!”
Sense making of futures images andemotions in the participatory contexts
- In the events like futures workshops, not to rush into creatingpreferred futures but to leave participants space to digest differentemotions they have concerning the different futures images
- Deal the individual level with transparency and in dialogues- Saunders and Jenkins 2012; Rubin 2013
Possible themes and methodologies toapproach the question:
• Ethnographic Futures Research (Candy & Kornet 2019)• Anticipatory anthropology (e.g. Razak 2000; Chakkalakal 2018)• Futures Literacy (e.g. Miller 2007)• Sensemaking (e.g. Tapinos & Pyper 2018) and recognizing and
identifying the key issues• Cultural and political discourses of emotions (power, capacity
building, aspirations etc.) (e.g. Rogers 1996, Inayatullah 2008, Pihkala2018)
ReferencesCandy, S., Kornet, K. 2019. Turning Foresight Inside Out: An Introduction to Ethnographic Experiential Futures. Journal of FuturesStudies 23(3), 3-22.Chakkalakal, S. 2018. „The World That Could Be“. Gender, Bildung, Zukunft und das Projekt einer Anticipatory Anthropology.Zeitschrift für Volkskunde,Dator, J. 1996. Futures studies, Academia, and Decision Making. Richard Slaughter, ed., New Thinking for a New Millennium. London:RoutledgeInayatullah, S. 2008. Six pillars: futures thinking for transforming. Foresight 10(1), 4-21.Miller, R. 2007. Futures literacy: A hybrid strategic scenario method. Future 39, 341–362.Pihkala, P. 2018. ECO-ANXIETY, TRAGEDY, AND HOPE: PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SPIRITUAL DIMENSIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE. Zygon53(2), 545-569.Razak, V. M. 2000. Essays in anticipatory anthropology. Futures 32, 717–727.Rogers, M. 1996. Facing the future is not for wimps. Futures 28(5), 491–496.Rubin, A. 2013. Hidden, inconsistent, and influential: Images of the future in changing times. Futures 45, S38–S44.Saunders, A., Jenkins, S. 2012. ’Absent fear’: Re-envisioning a future geography. Futures 44, 494-503.Tapinos, E., Pyper, N. 2018. Forward looking analysis: Investigating how individuals ’do’ foresight and make sense of the future.Technological Forecasting & Social Change 126, 292-302.Tonn, B., Conrad, F. 2007. Thinking about the future: a psychological analysis. Social Behavior and personality 35(7), 889-902.Tonn, B., MacGregor, D. 2009. Individual approaches to futures thinking and decision making. Futures 41, 117–125.
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Katariina Heikkilä & Anna Kirveennummi (@utu.fi)
