Social Visions of Future Sustainable Societies 417The ideology of futurism
Although global models have largely set the stage and defined the terms for current
debates on global futures, the formal ‘science’ of futurism represents the primary
institutionalized means for peering into the future. Most futurists have concen-
trated on the specific interests of their clientele rather than on broad social alterna-
tives or long-term global futures. This professionalized and institutionalized version
of the futurological endeavour has attracted substantial criticism of the narrowness
of vision.
One critic equates futurism with the institutionalization of prophecy (i.e. fore-
casting) in an ‘attempt by self-appointed experts to rationalize the future’ and to
impose their own narrow, mechanistic worldview. The prophetic endeavour – and
its tendency to reflect the needs of corporate, military and state institutions –
trivializes and depersonalizes the future, ignores diversity as too difficult to capture
and control, and produces restricted visions that attempt to monopolize the future
in the hope that it will resemble the present status quo (Dublin, 1991, p248). Crit-
ics early on noted a restriction of the range of alternative futures discussed; an
ethnocentric preoccupation with a single society (an idealized, post-industrial
North America); as well as tendencies towards technological determinism, mysti-
fication and over-quantification; a readiness to apply technical fixes to social prob-
lems; and an uncritical acceptance of the status quo (Miles, 1978). The net effect
is to empower further the already powerful, to perpetuate an interpretation of the
world that serves particular interests and to frame problems so that only certain
options are considered (Miles, 1978).
The critics demand a close scrutiny of futurist ideologies – an explicit identifi-
cation and evaluation of ‘what is being sought, by whom, and for what purposes’
(Hoos, 1983, p61). Although some futurists have called for extension of the ‘futur-
istic mission farther into the social domain and toward a much larger constituency
of stakeholders’ (Adelson, 1989, p31), such a ‘populist futurism’ may also be prob-
lematic. Although more participation might result in people having increased con-
trol over their own destiny and might produce futures more responsive to wider
interests, the means to accomplish this ‘may be actually employed as manipulative
tools for legitimating the status quo through pseudoparticipation’, exchanging
fatalism for people’s participation in the management of their own exploitation
(Miles, 1978, p81).
Forecasting tends to minimize the intrinsic uncertainty of the future by
attempting to reduce it to probability. It typically founders on the shoals of institu-
tions and value systems. Although some futurists (e.g. Adelson, 1989; Simmonds,
1989) argue that current organizations no longer seem to work, most futurists
work for existing institutions. Adelson (1989, p35) argues that futurists, instead of
designing policies for existing organizations, should concentrate on a transition to
new institutions, and that efforts to look to the future should be less bureaucratic and
institutional and more ‘artistic, entrepreneurial, expressive, pragmatic, case-by-case,
constructive ... visionary’. Adelson (1989, p33) further advocates thinking from the