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FUTURESFutures 39 (2007) 113–116

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Reflections

Futures studies and future generations

Jordi Serra del Pino�

Periscopi de prospectiva i estrategia, Provenc-a, 282, 3r, 5a, 08037 Barcelona, Spain

Available online 24 April 2006

For some time now there has been a significant growth of literature around the notion ofFuture Generations. Yet it still remains to be fully seen if this varied collection of essays,articles, books and theoretical reflections amount to a discipline of the so-called FutureGenerations Studies (FSG). In any case, some kind of intellectual body of work is plainlybeing generated and is addressing relevant questions for any concerned futurist. ‘Whatshould be understood as Future Generations? How can their needs be ascertained? And,more important, how might these needs be articulated within our present requirements?’These queries do have important implications regarding to our legacy for the future. Butthey are not the main point of this article.

The main purpose here is to reflect on the relationship between Futures Studies (FS) andFGS. Contrary to the widespread assumption that FS is a good basis, if not the naturalground, to move on to FGS, this essay will argue that FS can only offer limited help whenaddressing the issue of Future Generations. The reasons lie in arguments of a different andspecific nature. Ontologically, FS and FGS relate to diverse objects; epistemologically,they rely on dissimilar kinds of knowledge. Therefore, if FGS is to become a distinctdiscipline, it will have to emancipate itself from FS and develop a theoretical corpus of itsown.

The issue of Future Generations began to capture futurists’ attention a couple ofdecades ago and has developed since then. It has become common now that every Futuresconference, meeting or congress will have a topic group, a debate or a session devoted toFuture Generations, and even when there is no such an option, chances are that somebodywill raise the issue from the open floor. We might speculate why the notion of FutureGeneration so powerfully caught the Futures community’s imagination, but it can be

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ARTICLE IN PRESSJ. Serra del Pino / Futures 39 (2007) 113–116114

because futurists have identified Future Generations as their natural constituency,particularly since they seem to have had such a minor effect on present generations.I have already argued that the futures debate too often tends to move more on the

normative side than on the descriptive. Part of this has surely to do with the unavoidablefact that futures studies often to have to work with normative input. Being able to process,classify and to operate with value-laden information is, no doubt, an asset of the discipline.But being capable, or even comfortable, of working with normative data is still a long wayfrom concentrating discussion on the subjective domain. The futures debate seems to findit hard to differentiate the former from the latter. Either that, or it should be concludedthat deontological discussion exerts a greater attraction on the futurist’ community.In this context, it appears understandable why the Futures Generation issue has grown

so appealing to many futurists. On the one hand, there is the intellectual challenge ofdetermining which are the needs and the requirements of our descendants. On the other,we find the ethical argument: the consequences of our actions, and their derivedresponsibilities, on those oncoming generations. The argument that we have a moralobligation towards our ‘futurecesors’1 is compelling and deeply rooted in many culturesand traditions, and therefore should come as no surprise that it has so strongly foundresponse in a community already interested in the future implications of present activity.But the question here is if this sort of professional predisposition makes futurists moresuited to deal with Future Generation issues.The positive answer to that question relies on the fact that futurists are especially

practised in dealing with questions and issues whose outcomes lie somewhere in the future.Futurists are accustomed to compensating for time lapses. They know how and where tolook for relevant information and are trained to elaborate future hypotheses and scenarios.These are the aspects which should assist in a futurist engagement with FGS. However, themain obstacle here is an implicit assumption that being knowledgeable in FS makes one defacto knowledgeable in FGS, and this is a big mistake.But before considering the relative accessibility of FGS to futurists, there is a prior

question to resolve. Is FGS truly a discipline? I am inclined to say no, or at best, not yet.A discipline is defined as an intellectual domain that should above all comprise a theory,

but also other recognizable ingredients such as concepts, methods and an object of study.Ideally, the theory should help us identify what are we looking at, what we intend touncover and how we will do it. Out of all these elements, only its object in FGS seemsclearly recognizable: the Future Generations. But is this so? If we try to describe who thesefuturecesors will be, their ethnic composition, their gender and age distribution, then wealready have demography. If we seek to forecast how these future people will do things,how they will interact among themselves and which values will motivate them, then wealready have FS. No, the specific interest of FGS is targeted on something more elusive: todetermine in which sense our present actions are affecting, positively or negatively, thewell-being of future generations.This is a totally different endeavour which conflates two kinds of information. Data on

the actual needs, demands and requirements of these future generations might be hard toascertain but not beyond possibility. A definition of what might be this ‘well-being’ forthem would be far more complicated to agree on. More to the point, FGS should beequipped to assist its practitioners to identify and neatly delimit those Future Generations;

1This concept, as conceived by Sohail Inayatullah, is defined by its opposed meaning to antecesors.

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it should be able to offer principles on which to determine what could be the needs of thosegenerations and, more important, in what ways our present actions are affecting them—and it should be able to do all of this in a variety of conditions. But, at present, FGS isunable to perform these functions. These studies have more to do at the moment withethical discussion than with a scientific research. Perhaps in time FGS will become adiscipline of its own, but for now it has more in common with philosophy than withscience.

Let us return to the question of FGS accessibility for futurists.It might be thought that apart from the question of relative maturity, both FGS and FS

are simply different branches on the same tree of disciplines which study the future. Toaccept this identification would mean conceding that there are no ontological differencesbetween them, or at best, only epistemological ones. But the point is that they deal withessentially distinct objects, approaches and purposes.

FS is a social science that investigates the future to assess present decisions. In order todo this, futurists employ a variety of theories dealing with social change and havedeveloped a theoretical corpus of its own which includes numerous methods, concepts andspecific study objects. FGS is instead a philosophical enquiry that aims to build ethicallysound statements about the well-being of future generations. In other words, FGS seeks togenerate moral conclusions derived from behaviour based on ethical principles. Suchconclusions would have to prove universal and timeless, or if you wish, aspire to conceiveof binding obligations on anybody, anywhere and at anytime regardless of particular localcircumstance. FS, on the contrary, only aims at types of contingent information whichcould applicable to different given sets of temporal and spatial circumstances. That is whyexperiments become so relevant, because initial conditions have great influence on finaloutcomes. Not only does this place FGS and FS on different theoretical planes but revealsepistemological dissimilarities as well.

FGS can only pretend to reach some consensus based on shared values. FGS results arealways moral because always based on a single ethical position: the present generation hasan obligation towards the future one. Without this essential assumption, FGS collapses.The core of FGS debates will be to reach agreement on the content and scope of this moralobligation. This means that the emphasis of FGS will be on developing circles of sharedmeaning regarding basic values that could serve to ground the commitment towards futuregenerations.

FS, on the contrary, will instead try to reach conclusions that are valid regardless of theethical position of those implementing them. Values are treated as data and normativeinput transformed into operative variables. That is not to say that FS is either immoral oramoral. Its purpose is not to reach universal behaviour principles but offer assessments ofpressing decisions, and by such focus to provide the best advice.

In short, FS and FGS are different intellectual endeavours. They have different purposeseach with a different modus operandi. More to the point, there is little basis to support thenotion that a futurist, merely by being professionally so, qualifies as an expert in FGS.There is a significant amount of FGS literature which, although affected by a similarproblem, adopts a working approach based on assumptions or taken-for-grantedprinciples. Most often these grounding notions are not discussed but simply taken tofinal conclusions which are somehow ‘self-evident’. This approach is acceptable in case-testing the validity of a theory. One need not discuss the principles because these are merelyhypothetical expectations to be proven or not by the results of experiment. But to argue a

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moral statement cannot avoid involving discussion of its initial assumptions because theseare connected to supporting values. It is essential to develop a meaningful frame in whichpeople from different positions, backgrounds and circumstances can decide if they agree,or not, with these revealed principles. In FS the expectation is that the process will belearning; in FGS there can be no learning unless you create a common departure. That iswhy the aspiration of FS is to obtain insight and contextual knowledge; whereas FGSseeks to attain enlightenment and absolute knowledge.It is time for FGS to leave the nest and fly on its own, and FS has to let it go. Questions

of what should be understood as Future Generations, how their needs can be ascertainedand how these needs might be articulated within the limits of our present requirements, aretoo important to be left only to futurists.