Social Visions of Future Sustainable Societies 413and self-interest – imply a belief in the basic goodness of people. Little attention is
given to the nature and goals of society or to the structure of the relationship
between the individual and political society. Disparate details related to political
organization and calls for international cooperation appear in the various reports,
but issues of power, authority, conflict and security are generally not addressed at
all, or are addressed only very briefly. The same is true for institutions – only Kahn
et al (1976) really treat them at all, and their analysis is sketchy. The models make
more mention of lifestyle, with many general calls for less materialism and more
creative leisure activities, but this is for the most part left to individual decision
making and not linked to social and economic structure or to broad social policies.
Finally, spatial linkages, if treated at all, are discussed in general terms, such as
degree of centralization and homogeneity, or in terms of North–South economic
relations, despite the growing evidence of the importance of regional linkages to
the global economy and social movements.
Model visions
From these observations (and the details in Table 20.2), it is clear that – even using
relatively conservative and conventional categories and giving the modellers the
benefit of the doubt by extracting minor details and extrapolating from the tone of
the text – the models fail badly to confront social or philosophical issues, much less
to probe them in any depth. The modelling approach is based on quantitative
analysis using largely linear extrapolations from the present. Its materialistic (as
opposed to relational or experiential) bias results in an avowedly utilitarian
approach and a largely managerial orientation. The resulting emphasis is on just a
few variables – population, resources, pollution levels, technology and economy –
with some speculations about their social meaning, in terms of wars, crises, inter-
national ‘tensions’, ‘overshoot’ or ‘collapse.’
Even within the mode of extrapolation from the present, little or no attention
is given to current social trends, with the exception of growing global divisions
between rich and poor. The major non-demographic social factors for which data
exist – such as health, education and settlement pattern – receive minimal atten-
tion. Structural considerations related to politics, social norms, the organization of
political economy and institutions are only peripherally and sporadically treated;
issues such as human rights, cultural diversity, psychological fulfilment, personal
relations and freedom are not addressed at all, and neither are environmental or
psychological issues, such as the impacts of an increasingly artificial and homoge-
neous environment (Mumford, 1970, 37 ff ) and the social choice of reliability
over resilience (Blaikie et al, 1994; Timmerman, 1981).
The first-generation models performed the invaluable services of initiating dis-
cussion about possible economic and environmental futures; of taking a global
instead of a national perspective; of treating the planet as a single, integrated whole;
and of taking a long-term view. As our review demonstrates, however, the approach
of these models was inherently limited by the specific rationality and methodology