Routledge Research in Anticipation and Futures

The Anticipation and Futures Studies series brings together scholarship and research across many disciplines to explore the relationship between ideas of the future and action in the present. It acts as a gathering point for those seeking to question the form that the future takes in contemporary or past societies, for those working to understand how futures are mobilised to effect change in the present, for those exploring how futures are made and remade through culture, for those hoping to create new relationships between past, present and future, and for those questioning the very framing of linear time as a basis for understanding the world. It explores what it might take to work with different conceptions of futures, futurity and temporality to create new conditions for democratic, sustainable futures.　

Books in the series draw from fields as diverse as psychology and literature, governance and innovation, education and design. The series enables academics and practitioners from a wide range of fields across the arts, humanities and social sciences to engage in lively debates across disciplinary perspectives, and so to deepen their understanding of anticipation as a phenomenon, a way of knowing and a social, anthropological and cultural reality. Single and co-authored monographs are welcome, as well as edited volumes and shortform books. 　

We welcome proposals in any area, but are particularly interested in books that open up new directions in relation to the following questions:　

Uncertainty – how is ‘not knowing’ the future understood, valued, explored and addressed in different contexts?　

Difference – what are the different cultural and historical traditions of thinking about time and futures and how might they complement, enrich or trouble each other?　

Pasts and Futures – how do pasts, heritage, traditions of remembrance shape and in turn are shaped by ideas of the future? What is the role of reparative futures in creating new presents and new possibilities?　

Innovation, Experimentation & Agency – how are ideas of the future translated into action? And actions translated into futures? What does it mean to ‘build’ the futures that we want, what are the risks and unintended consequences of such processes?　

More than human futures – how are futures framed and made in a non-human worldview? What role does matter play in making futures?　

Equality and Access – are futures socially and economically distributed? What resources are required to support anticipatory practice and how are these patterned socially, culturally, materially?　

Anticipatory Emotion & Affect – what non-cognitive and non-rational elements drive anticipatory practices? With what implications?　

The Dangers of Anticipation – when does anticipation become pathological, dangerous or risky to individuals, organisations and societies?　

Temporality – what models of time underpin anticipatory practice? How is time used as a resource for anticipation?　

Please contact the Editor, Grace Harrison, [email protected] to submit an outline proposal.