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Americas and Oceania. This also coincided with the peak of western imperialismand global technological domination. Since the middle of the 20th century, the fer-tility and formal imperial presence of “whites” has been severely declining whilethe fertility and independence of “nonwhites” has significantly increased, for themost part. The point is, there simply won’ t be that many white folks on the globewithin another hundred years, compared to people of color, for westerners to domi-nant as they have for the past several centuries. While George W. Bush and hisadvisors seem bent on having America rule the world by military force for the fore-seeable future (and they might succeed for a while), time is definitely not on theirside (indeed, the face of the “average American” is also significantly and quicklydarkening as the Empire threatens).

Soon, though perhaps not soon enough, Futures will be filled with myriad visionsof cultural futures unimaginable by many privileged futurists now. Among these willprobably be new and diverse visions of Islamic futures as well.

And when that time comes, then what’s next? Naturally, I think futures visionsof cyborgs, artilects, clones, and assorted extra-terrestrials will be clamoring then tobe heard. But my question is, do you suppose Futures Editor Zia Sardar will beamong the first gladly to welcome them in?

Jim DatorUniversity of Hawaii, Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, 2424 Maile

Way, Honolulu, HI 96822, USAE-mail address: dator@hawaii.edu

doi:10.1016/S0016-3287(03)00137-X

Advancing futures: futures studies in higher educationEdited by James A. Dator. Praeger Publishers: Westport, Connecticut, 2002, pp409, $69.95

Advancing Futures originated as a special issue of the journal AmericanBehavioral Scientist. In organizing it, Jim Dator requested contributions from futur-ists who both practice futures research, and teach and train the next generation offutures thinkers. Contributors were asked to address five questions: 1) what is futuresstudies? 2) what is your theory of social change? 3) what methods do you use tocreate social change? 4) how do you approach futures research? And 5) how do youteach futures studies? The resulting twenty-nine essays (including Dator’s own) offera wide spectrum of responses from both the first and second generation of academicfuturists, and represent futures teaching in Western and Eastern Europe, North Amer-ica, Asia, and Oceania. Had each contributor responded punctiliously to the questionsas framed, the resulting survey, in essay form, would have provided an interestingsource of point-by-point comparisons.

But these are futures thinkers, who by definition think—and write—out of the

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box, and by originality of temperament are difficult to wrangle. Consequently, theresulting essays vary widely in topics covered, in focus—personal, conceptual,methodological, and philosophical—and in length. Dator’s five questions were some-thing of a Rorschach test for the futures field. Nonetheless, for scholars interestedin the history and sociology of futures studies, Advancing Futures provides twenty-nine fascinating examples of scholars linking, merging, or transforming more tra-ditional disciplines’ concepts and tools into futures research, thus creating the com-plex, evolving community that is futures studies worldwide. Each of the seniorauthors was trained initially in another field, and their essays describe how they builtethical, conceptual, and methodological bridges to futures studies in their teachingand research. The essays offered by “second generation” futurists—e.g., Inayatullah,Mannermaa, Huston, Jones, Serra del Pino, Rubin, and Wildman—show implicitlyhow concepts and schools of thought in futures studies have been transmitted fromthe founders of futures studies to their students, as for example the repetition ofDator’s conceptual diagram in Serra del Pino’s essay. So careful study of this collec-tion rewards the reader not only with a sense of the myriad intellectual paths possibleto the futures field, but also the genealogical interconnections of knowledge develop-ment and dissemination within it.

Dator sorted the responses into four categories: 1) “Overviews and Histories”(Bell, Masini, Riner, Wagar, Slaughter, and Inayatullah); 2) “Explaining and Defin-ing” (Manicas, Bishop, Novaky, Hideg, Mannermaa, Huston, and Yamaguchi); 3)“Courses and Methods” (Azam, Chen, Sotarauta, May, Cole, Jones, Serra del Pino,Rubin, Wildman, Hicks, and Markley); and 4) “Concerns and Issues” (Lowe, Shos-tak, Sternberg, and Halal). Commentary on each of the essays exceeds the scope ofthis review, but the examples which follow will indicate the potential usefulness ofthe volume.

Wendell Bell has already provided a detailed history of futures studies in Foun-dations of Futures Studies (vol. I); here he depicts a personal history of efforts tobreach the disciplinary boundaries of sociology in order to address broader issuesof societal futures. Wagar’s essay presents a similar process in reconceptualizinghistory to focus on the human timeline and thus logically include present and futurewith past. Riner describes an interest in the future that predated his anthropologicaltraining, informed it, and consequently produced a holistic approach to exploringfar-future developments in human societies and infrastructures. Both Mannermaa andSotarauta explain how they integrate futures research in their approaches to policystudies and societal decision-making. Futures studies as a discipline has beenenriched by the perspectives, concepts, and tools of every academic discipline; essayssuch as these illuminate that process. Samples of resulting conceptual frameworksused to teach this evolving multidisciplinarity are offered variously by Dator himself,by Slaughter in describing critical futures studies and strategic foresight, and byYamaguchi in explaining “Future-Oriented Complexity and Adaptive Studies(FOCAS).”

While this is a very scholarly volume (Advancing Futures is unlikely to be avehicle for mass recognition of the field of futures studies), the essays are not limitedto personal intellectual journeys and conceptual definitions; many of the authors offer

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us useful descriptions of methods as well as descriptions of their applications withregard to actual issues. Examples of the former include Inayatullah’s description ofcausal layered analysis; Cole’s detailed explanation of the Global Issues and Futuresmodel featuring linked impact analysis, backcasting/forecasting, and scenario build-ing; and Markley’s presentation of “a virtual time travel method for visionary futuresexploration,” emerging out of his work in guided cognitive imaging. With regard toexamples of applications, Masini’s article—while detailed regarding the developmentof futures studies as a field and a global network of scholarship—presents her experi-ences applying futures methods in developing economies, focusing particularly onimproving conditions for women and children. Yamaguchi’s essay addresses howfutures tools might build sustainability; Riner’s on futures methods as an aid tocommunity visioning and planning; Chen on participatory workshops exploring alter-native futures for Taiwan; and Lowe on work using futures studies and foresight innational goal-setting and policy-making.

Advancing Futures, then, offers resources for several purposes. It adds to ourhistorical records, documenting the development of the futures field from twenty-nine quite different perspectives. People looking for introductions or overviews ofcore conceptual frameworks will find several among which to choose. Within thesechapters, methodology teachers will find useful descriptions of a few quantitativeand qualitative futures research tools. Researchers focused on particular issues willfind examples of futures tools applied to community development, union disputeresolution and planning, economic change, and management. And practitioners inter-ested in the ethics of applied futures work will find critical questions with which toinitiate dialogues on responsibility and accountability in futures praxis.

Weaknesses? In the best of all possible worlds, futures colleagues from everycontinent would have responded to Dator’s request for self-reflection, thus providingthe opportunity for more explicit explorations of how futures research and teachingadapts and evolves in different cultural contexts. We could also wish for a companionvolume on teaching futures studies in elementary and secondary education (Gidley’srecent edition seems to focus more on young people’s images of the future, ratherthan curriculum modules and tools per se.) Finally, the book ends too abruptly withHalal’s essay: a more satisfying conclusion would be a subsequent essay synthesizingthe advances, and summarizing the gaps remaining, which the futures communityshould work to fill. After profiling our progress, the next obvious question is whitherfutures now?

That question is raised with increasing frequency by the “ third generation” futur-ists, as witness the February 2003 “Futures of Futures Studies” salon convened bythe Association of Professional Futurists (www.profuturists.com). One outcome oftheir scenario-building process was the identification of “union vs. fragmentation”as a critical uncertainty facing the futures field. We are a small community, globally;does proliferation of dozens of professional organizations and collaborations enhancethe support available, or scatter and diminish our energies and impacts? An interest-ing question for a field whose great strength is multidisciplinarity: overcoming terri-torial boundaries among intellectual disciplines through creative and systemic syn-thesis in order holistically to address critical issues facing humanity and the planet.

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But such a synthesis requires a foundation of clarity, and so would a global unionof our efforts as teachers of futures studies. In Advancing Futures, Dator provideda venue for these authors to articulate clearly their personal origins, values, biases,and goals in teaching futures studies. It is an exercise we would all do well tocomplete, so that we understand each other sufficiently to work towards advanc-ing futures.

Wendy Schultz,Infinite Futures: foresight training and facilitation, Oxford, UK

E-mail address: wendy@infinitefutures.comFax: +44-1865-274-125

doi:10.1016/S0016-3287(03)00138-1