Shaping Tomorrow’s World tells the crucial story of how futures studies developed in West Germany, Europe, the US and within global futures networks from the 1940s to the 1980s. It charts the emergence of different approaches and thought styles within the field ranging from Cold War defense intellectuals such as Herman Kahn to critical peace activists like Robert Jungk. Engaging with the challenges of the looming nuclear war, the changing phases of the Cold War, ‘1968’, and the growing importance of both the Global South and environmentalism, this book argues that futures scholars actively contributed to these processes of change. This multiple award-winning study combines national and transnational perspectives to present a unique history of envisioning, forecasting, and shaping the future.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1. Roots in Early Twentieth Century
- From Prophecy to Prognostics
- The Future as a Literary Genre
- The Rise of “High Modernist” Political Planning
- The Catalytic Role of World War II
- Concluding Remarks
Chapter 2. Cold War Science
- Big Science and Technological Cultures
- RAND, Cybernetics, and Game Theory: Providing the Theories
- Simulation Modelling, Scenario Writing, and Delphi: Developing Forecasting Techniques
- Transatlantic Platforms and Cold War Spearheads: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Ford Foundation
- French Connection: Ford, Planification and the Founding of Futuribles
- Emerging Future Studies in State Socialism: Cold War Based Socialist Forecasting and Socialist Futurology
- Concluding Remarks
Chapter 3. Conceptualizing Futures Studies: Key Figures and Thought Styles
- Normative Style of Thought
- Securing Freedom and Authority: Bertrand de Jouvenel Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and the Search for Securing Peace
- Concluding Remarks on the Normative Style of Thought
- Empirical and Positivistic Style of Thought
- Social Forecasting and Social Technology: Daniel Bell and Olaf Helmer
- Positivism and Technological Optimism: Herman Kahn and Karl Steinbuch
- Critical and Emancipatory Style of Thought
- Characteristics of the Critical-Emancipatory Style of Thought
- Socialist Humanism: Ossip K. Flechtheim’s Path to Futurology From “Blind” to “Seeing”
- Progress: Robert Jungk
- Imagining, Planning, Shaping Futures: Flechtheim’s and Jungk’s Changing Conceptions of Futures Studies
- Concluding Remarks on the Critical and Emancipatory Thought Style
Chapter 4. Constructing Futurology? The Emerging Futures Field and the Public Sphere
- Science and the Public Sphere
- Futures Studies and the Changing Science–Media–Public Nexus
- Concluding Remarks
Chapter 5. Conflicting Futures: West German Futures Studies Organizations in the 1960s
- Peace Studies and Futures Studies: The Founding of the Max-Planck-Institute in Starnberg
- Systems Analysis between Planning and Participation: The Studiengruppe für Systemforschung
- Systems, Models, Learning: The Center Berlin for Futures Research (ZBZ)
- Ideologized Futures in Conflict: The Gesellschaft für Zukunftsfragen (Gf Z)
- Concluding Remarks
Chapter 6. Bridging East and West: Mankind 2000 and the Founding of the World Future Studies Federation
- Peace Movements and Futures Studies
- On the Path to Oslo
- Technological Optimism and a Spirit of Feasibility: The Oslo Congress in 1967 A Look Out Agency for Europe?
- From High-Tech Visions to World Futures: The International Future Research Conference in Kyoto 1970
- Cold War Détente Encounters in Bucharest and the Founding of the WFSF
- Concluding Remarks
Chapter 7. Controlling the World’s Future: The Early History of the Club of Rome
- The OECD Nucleus of the Club
- Aurelio Peccei, IIASA and the Founding of the Club of Rome
- The Bellagio Conference
- An Elitist Circle: The Club of Rome and its First “Project 1970”
- Concluding Remarks
Chapter 8. The Environmental Turn in Futures Studies: The Debate about the Limits to Growth, 1972–73
- An Environmental Revolution around 1970
- The Limits to Growth Study, 1972
- The Debate on the Limits to Growth study
- Effects of the Debate for the Futures Field and Beyond
- Concluding Remarks
Chapter 9. Glocalization and a Subjective Turn: Futures Studies in the 1970s
- Human-Centered Futures: The 1973 Rome Conference of the WFSF
- Shaping the Future from the Bottom-Up and Globally: Dubrovnik, Berlin and the Concept of Future Workshops
- Modeling the World’s Future: The Club of Rome and IIASA in mid 1970s
- Global and Local Futures: Rethinking and Practicing Futures Studies in 1970s West Germany
- Concluding Remarks
Chapter 10. Global Solidarity versus Economic Competitiveness: The Futures Field since the late 1970s
- Closing Doors: West German Futures Studies in the late 1970s and 1980s
- The WFSF between World Order and Utopia
- An Economic Turn in Futures Studies?
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Über den Autor
Elke Seefried holds the Chair for Modern and Contemporary History and Cultures of Knowledge (19th-21st Century) at RWTH Aachen University. For the German edition of the present book, entitled ‚Zukünfte, ‚ she has received three major research awards: the biennially awarded Carl Erdmann Prize of the German Association of Historians for the best habilitation thesis, the Max Weber Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, as well as the translation prize of Humanities International – Translation Funding for Work in the Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany.
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