Ensemble Interventions: The Duality of Networks and Futures in Public Interest Scenario Work

• In Event: 30468 - Interrogating the Relationship between Politics and Culture

Abstract

We examine the relational and cultural dynamics of transnational ensembles engaged in collective deliberations about the future through a network and textual analysis of public interest scenario projects since the 1990s. As cultural technologies for exploring multiple plausible futures, scenario methods have been used to facilitate discussions on entrenched public problems, including the future of democracy, armed conflict, urbanization, energy use, migration, food security, and climate change. Scenario projects include diverse stakeholders from multiple sectors and regions, fostering varied perspectives on futures, with certain actors participating in multiple projects. We argue that this generates a dual relation between networks and futures: scenario projects construct futures by means of relations, and relations by means of futures. Drawing from an original database of 238 scenario projects worldwide from 1990-2017, we present a bipartite network mapping of shared organizational participation in scenario projects across three time periods. We trace the historical emergence and global expansion of diverse coalitions of initiators, facilitators, funders, and partners (including consultancies, research organizations, governments, corporations, multilateral organizations, social movements, and civil society groups). We then consider how these coalitions coalesce around problem areas and proposed interventions through a computational text analysis of scenario project reports. We use word embeddings to explore how particular narrative operators (e.g., “participation,” “governance,” “sustainability” or “growth”) are associated with discursive stances toward capitalism and democracy. Finally, we combine the network and computational analyses to determine to what extent scenario projects that share organizations also share discursive stances in their imagined futures. We argue that these global relational dynamics have a “field-building” effect, shaping relationships in an emerging foresight field, while also contributing to the ambivalence about capitalism and democracy embedded in transnational foresight work.

Authors

• Ann Mische, University of Notre Dame

• Fabian D. Maldonado, University of Notre Dame

• Zhemin Huang, University of Notre Dame

• Quinlen Schachle, University of Notre Dame