futures work cannot be improved upon. Nor does it mean that there are no disagreements
and controversies among futurists, including debates about what excellence
in futures work is and, indeed, about what counts as futures work itself. But again,
compared to what?
In every field of inquiry, we can find examples of both good and bad work, and
no field, unless it is stagnant, is free of controversy. That is precisely how fields
develop and advance: through critical inquiry and discourse.
In fact, some writers, such as the late social psychologist Donald T. Campbell,
say that the hallmark of a field of inquiry is that its members constitute a ‘disputatious
community’ [11]. Arguing about the proper purposes of collective inquiry, debating
the question of what the subject matter of that inquiry ought to be, disagreeing over
what theories and methods are appropriate, differing as to what its distinctive
assumptions and philosophical foundations are, wrangling about where to draw its
boundaries (e.g., who is included and who isn’t?), and, perhaps most important,
caring about the answers—are what it means to be a member of a field or a discipline.
Thus, when Michael Marien argues with other putative futurists about whether or
not futures studies is a field, what its boundaries are, or other debatable issues of
our ‘collective enterprise’, he is, quite despite himself, helping to establish the patterns
and flows of communication and influence that define the very field of futures
studies whose existence he denies.
This is so because the interlocking networks created by such patterns and flows
help to empirically define the boundaries of the field and to identify who is a member
of the community of futurists. Although Richard A. Slaughter says that ‘the boundaries
cannot be defined clearly’, because futures studies is ‘richly interconnected at
the margins with many other enterpises and fields’, he does not say that they