In an oft-quoted statement, Friedrich Nietzsche put forward the view that âthe future influences the present just as much as the pastâ. Although this rings true as much now as it did in the nineteenth century we appear to be trapped in something of a paradox in our relationship with the future at present. The global population has an unprecedented ability to impact upon the future, a paradigm example of which is the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident whose effects will be felt by the human population and natural environment of the area for thousands of years to come. Yet due to the complexity of contemporary life, we are perhaps now more than ever before hindered in our efforts to extrapolate from the present in order to anticipate what the future might hold. This dilemma has been met with various responses such as the development of what has been termed the precautionary principle which dictates that if a proposed action is suspected of carrying with it a risk of causing harm to human well-being or the natural environment, then the burden of proof lies not on its opponents to substantiate this claim, but on its proponents to prove that it is not harmful. While approaches of this type, despite having their critics, have application for governments and intragovernmental organisations faced with the task of legislating for an increasingly opaque future, they have less instructional value for individuals. However, while the vast majority of individuals inhabiting the earth at present are not responsible for the types of decisions that necessitate the precautionary principle, it cannot be denied that collectively their actions will have a profound impact upon the future in ways that are currently known to us (for instance, the production of CO2 emissions from personal transport) as well as in ways that we are not yet aware of. Although individuals are evidently at once connected to the long-term future through their actions, and yet disconnected from it due to the inherent uncertainty of what it will hold, it remains unclear howâor indeed ifâthey experience and negotiate this tension within the context of their everyday lives. It is this question of how individuals manage the pervasive uncertainty of the long-term, societal future that motivates this book.
Although the future is necessarily at the forefront of the popular consciousness, the ways in which individuals relate to it remain ambiguous in scholarly work. Studies on this subject have generally focused on governance of the future, using the language of risk , contingency and sustainability (Ayre and Callway 2005; Beck 2009). As a result, in-depth consideration of how the future of society is perceived by individuals is largely absent from the literature. When this topic has been addressed in empirical studies, they have been almost exclusively large scale and based on self-administered surveys (see Ornauer et al. 1976; Livingstone 1983), meaning that although they offer a broad overview of collective trends in future-oriented thinking, they are generally less able to account for why individuals hold specific views. Additionally, the age of these studies means that they have limited application for predicting contemporary perceptions of the future. More recent studies considering how individuals perceive the societal future have focused almost exclusively on the topic of climate change (e.g. Norgaard 2011). While climate change is undoubtedly a prominent issue in both academic and public discourse, it is not the only prospective issue that members of the public report concern about (see Gow and Leahy 2005). As such, this text avoids using climate change as a pre-established focal point, instead considering how individuals relate to the future in a broad sense.
The wealth of recent studies addressing individualsâ reported levels of concern about climate change has emerged alongside research which has reported an increasing focus on individual plans and choices (Furlong and Biggart 1999; Anderson et al. 2005; Brooks and Everett 2008; Steinberg et al. 2009). Such claims suggest a movement away from long-term and collective concerns in favour of the pressures and challenges of everyday life which does not bode well for the profile of long-term thinking. This apparent focus on short-term goals and plans has found support in recent theoretical accounts. Hartmut Rosa (2013), for instance, has theorised that the contemporary experience of time is accelerated in a way that draws focus to the near future, while Helga Nowotny (1994) has proposed an extended experience of the present which eclipses future concerns. In order to explore the reach of such tendencies and consider why something as prominent as the future of society is claimed to have become a peripheral concern for contemporary individuals, this study seeks to gain insight into the relevance that individualsâ perceptions of the long-term future may have for their identities and present-day lives.
This book therefore focuses on the dual concepts of the short- and long-term future. Defining these terms is, however, not a simple task. As discussed in the work of several scholars (Adam and Groves 2007; Norgaard 2011: 97â136) , understandings of what specifically constitutes the near and distant future are socially constructed in relation to prevailing norms of attention, needs and priorities. As such, the use of an a priori definition of the short- and long-term future in a study of this nature poses the risk of categorising individualsâ perceptions in a way that does not represent their own practical understandings. For this reason, precise definitions or timelines of the future dimensions that are at issue are not introduced here. However, for the sake of clarity, several working definitions are employed. The near or short-term future is hereafter intended to refer to the personal or biographical future that one expects to see and experienceâin other words their lifespanâwhile the distant or long-term future is intended to refer to a future that extends beyond oneâs life and immediate, personal concerns to address an experience of time that may be socially shared.
The Study
In order to address how individuals cope with the uncertainty inherent in the long-term future horizon in their everyday lives, this book draws on the findings of an empirical study that was conducted in 2014 in Melbourne, Australia. The study was motivated by the following questions:
- 1.How do individuals imagine the future of the society in which they live?This question, although extremely broad, is posed in response to the fact that contemporary studies considering the future have generally focused on single issues (principle of which is climate change ) as a proxy for the future. As a result, few empirical studies have considered how individuals perceive the societal future, instead leaving this question to theoretical discussions. It is the contention of this book that understanding how individuals conceptualise and relate to the societal future, as well as understanding why they do so in the specific ways in which they are found to, is a necessary step towards fully understanding how they perceive some of the most pressing future-oriented issues of our time. As such, this study aims to provide an empirical treatment of this somewhat abstract topic.
- 2.Do individualsâ imaginings of the long-term future interact with or impact upon the ways in which they relate to the short-term, biographical future?Studies claiming that individuals are increasingly focused on the present can be considered alongside a range of literature that has addressed the relationship between individualsâ outlooks on the personal and societal, or near and far future horizons. Alvin Toffler (1974) first identified this phenomenon in his study of what high school students in the US forecast would come to pass in the societal future. He found that although the students had a range of general suggestions about what may occur, they imagined all of these potentialities to be separate from their own lives, even though their timelines overlapped in many cases. Tofflerâs findings were later mirrored in the work of Johnson (1987), Connell et al. (1999), Anttila et al. (2000) and Ojala (2005). Leahy, Bowden and Threadgold (2010) have termed this tendency âtwo track thinkingâ, referring to the way in which individuals tend to conceptualise the short- and long-term (or personal and societal) future as developing on two parallel and yet separate tracks. Although these studies have found compelling evidence for the fact that individuals conceptualise the personal and societal future in distinct ways, they have focused exclusively on the content of their respondentsâ imaginings, leaving the question of whether the types of logic or perhaps the beliefs underpinning individualsâ approaches to each dimension of the future have any commonality. The present study addresses such questions with the aim of building upon this body of literature.
- 3.Are the ways in which individuals relate to the long-term future compatible with popular theoretical accounts of the contemporary future horizon?The character of the contemporary future horizon has been laid claim to nowhere more than in large-scale theoretical diagnoses of the contemporary era. While many studies have used aspects of this scholarship to understand empirical data and have, in the course of this process, tested the claims of this literature against their empirical findings, the question of whether the character with which these accounts diagnose the future horizon has any homologies with the views held by individuals has not often been addressed. It is important to be mindful of the fact that theorists who propose diagnoses of the contemporary era (as, for instance, second, late, reflexive, post- or liquid modernity) do not seek to disclose how individuals view the future, and therefore cannot be critiqued for failing to meet aims that are not their own. However, the broad influence of such accounts has meant that their claims about general epochal tendencies have often been taken as fact, and conflated with individual experiences and perceptions. By questioning whether these diagnoses overlap with individualsâ outlooks upon the future, this book therefore does not aim to criti...