Publication
Title
State of the field : histories of the future
Author
Abstract
In the last decade, future thinking has rapidly gained importance as a topic of historical study. This article provides an overview of the existing historiographies of future thinking as well as the actions and practices that follow such thoughts. We trace the pedigree of histories of the future back to the German historian of ideas Reinhart Koselleck and show how his conceptual framework has been adopted and adapted by later scholars. We highlight the sources and methods that are typically used. A particularly fruitful approach that emerges from our meta study revolves around the concept of pluritemporality – the coexistence of different layers of time. The article also seeks to uncover some weaknesses and biases that are still present in the field. The most urgent issue being probably the lack of consensus on a conceptual apparatus; other blind spots concern the relationship between future thinking and its linguistic expression in historical sources, the question of whose future thinking we are talking about, how future thinking relates to human action in the past, and how short‐term futures interact with their long‐term futures equivalents. Overall, however, the aim of this survey is to emphasise the potential of this burgeoning field for future historical research. Much is to be gained from new theories of historical time which are themselves the consequence of ideas about climate change and the dangers of the Anthropocene, human extinction and trans‐ and post‐humanism and about artificial intelligence and the digital world.
Language
English
Source (journal)
History / Historical Association [London] - London, 1912, currens
Publication
London : Historical Association , 2024
ISSN
0018-2648 [print]
1468-229X [online]
DOI
10.1111/1468-229X.13389
Volume/pages
109 :384-385 (2024) , p. 150-172
ISI
001162562100001
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Project info
Future expectations and actions in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Low Countries.
Back to the Future: Future expectations and actions in late medieval and early modern Europe, c.1400-c.1830 (Back2theFuture).
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 16.02.2024
Last edited 01.07.2024
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