398 Enabling Policies and Institutions for Sustainable Agricultural and Food Systems
our intentions as we move toward that which we consider desirable. Innate human
creativity allows the imaging of alternatives to the present. Despite repression of
these images through social stress and socialization processes (such as education),
‘all folk experiment with new ways of seeing and doing. The mental imagery pre-
cedes the overt act. If this is normal human activity, then utopia-building, in the
broadest sense of the word, is a normal human activity’ (Boulding, 1983).
Taken together, these conceptions of social visions – empowering, inspira-
tional/manipulative or universalistic – argue for the necessity and power of visions.
Polak, taking a mixed idealist/materialist view of history, claims that such images
play an active historical role. He argues that forming images of the future requires
an awareness of the future, which makes possible a conscious, voluntary and
responsible choice among alternatives. These images are constantly reformulated
in a dialectical process between the image itself and the actuality of an unfolding
future (Polak, 1961, pp1, 41–42).
At minimum, it is clear that some people see a need for overall social visions to
guide action – whether that vision is articulated as an artistic creation, a corporate
plan or an ideal to guide policy deliberations. Such an enterprise has often been
viewed as socially ambiguous. Modern futurism, although ‘more respectable than
it used to be’ (Gordon, 1989, p21), is tainted by the shady aspects of other futur-
istic enterprises. Futurism gets a bad name from ‘mediums and hallucinogens and
yuppie stockbrokers ... turn[ing] over tarot cards and pork bellies’ (Adelson, 1989,
p28).
Serious rejection of the value of envisaging societal futures may be found in
other quarters. There are some who, except for relatively narrow endeavours such
as military or industrial strategic planning and technology assessment (Coates,
1989), see no need for visions, finding in technological optimism and progress a
belief that things are already fine or getting better. Among the scientifically ortho-
dox, any endeavour so explicitly dependent on imagination is automatically sus-
pect. Among others, a distrust of unscientific, non-material and (possibly) elitist
idealism has lingered since Marx’s day. An emphasis on historical specificity and
dynamic process rather than static end point, and a claim that the future is unim-
aginable because it is impossible for those conditioned by present social conditions
to conceive of that which will be produced by human beings not yet born acting
under new conditions, have engendered disinterest or suspicion about whether the
project of envisioning futures merits human struggle.
Despite these views, it is essential to ponder goals and directions. Creating
multiple visions – confronting a diversity of goals, values and structures – allows
for ongoing clarification, communication, contestation and critique of alternate
futures (Nagpal and Foltz, 1995). It also provides a forum for examining possible
ramifications of current decisions, envisioned actions and proposed new path-
ways.