400 Enabling Policies and Institutions for Sustainable Agricultural and Food Systems
Confronting modellers with issues derived from inquiry outside their bounds
of analysis, propelling social choices and social possibilities onto the public agenda,
and stimulating explicit thinking about alternative futures can all generate a more
powerful knowledge as well as greater awareness of the consequences of present
decisions and policies (or of passive acquiescence to them). Public dialogue, con-
ducted through alternate social visions, may also help to clarify the fact that no
particular technical, economic or environmental scenario is inevitable; that a par-
ticular set of variables or trajectories does not necessarily translate into a specific
social scenario; and that futures (and risks) must be negotiated. Choice, not deter-
minism, prevails. Viewed in this way, thinking about the future can have an
empowering rather than a discouraging effect, and can form an important part of
emancipatory global risk analysis.
We have asserted that social concerns have been inadequately addressed in past
research attempts at envisioning the future. The outstanding efforts of this type
were the global models generated in the 1970s. To test this assertion, we turn our
attention to an examination of the social content of this first generation of global
models.
Global Models, Futurism and Social Visions
Looking at global models
A number of comprehensive efforts to predict the planetary future were mounted
in the 1970s. Several factors spurred this work. Mounting concern over popula-
tion, pollution and food supplies was expressed in an awakening environmental
movement and in such books as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (Carson, 1962), Paul
Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (Ehrlich, 1968), Barry Commoner’s The Closing
Circle (Commoner, 1971) and E. F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful (Schumacher,
1973). The use of the image ‘spaceship Earth’ by Kenneth Boulding (Boulding,
1973) and Buckminster Fuller (Fuller, 1969) acquired new power, owing to pho-
tographs of Earth taken from space and the moon. Developing computer tech-
nologies made possible the manipulation of large quantities of data about the
present in the service of constructing plausible futures.
Multiple global models appeared. Their distinguishing features included a glo-
bal scale; a methodology based on extrapolation from the present; and a focus on
the interactions among population, environment and economy. These models
and their constituent features have largely defined the terms of the mainstream
global environmental debate up to the current time. The emphasis has been on
demography, resources, pollution and capital. Social commentary proliferated in
the 1950s and 1960s (e.g. Bell, 1973; Fromm, 1955; Galbraith, 1958; Heilbroner,
1972; Marcuse, 1964; Riesman, 1950; Whyte, 1956), including reports on global
futures from the likes of the Commission on the Year 2000 (AAAS, 1965–1967;