There are at least four areas from which the tools and methods of dissenting futures can be derived.
They are: critical futures studies, multicultural futures work, macrohistory and design/visioning
approaches. Each is briefly outlined below. Others can, and certainly will, be added over time.
Critical futures studies
This emerged from the perceived shortcomings of the largely empiricist American tradition and its
unconscious reliance upon unquestioned (and hence invisible) socio-cultural presuppositions. In
this context ‘critical’ does not simply mean ‘to criticise’. A more accurate formulation would be:
‘looking more deeply’. What this means in practice is a process of ‘probing beneath the surface’ to
consider futures problems at a range of levels right down to the framing of worldviews and
worldview commitments. Careful attention to phenomena at these levels provides a much richer
account of social reality, social change, social potential than could ever be derived from more the
more superficial accounts available in pop futurism. So, for example, in a critical futures approach,
topics such as ‘health’, ‘wealth’, ‘growth’ and ‘development’ are subjected to fairly thorough
treatment such that processes of socio-cultural framing, editing, exclusion etc are revealed. When
such phenomena emerge into human consciousness they become visible and can be dealt with
clearly. Hence, critical FS provides tools of understanding that can help to reveal why things are the
way they are and, to some extent, how they can be changed. For example the notion of a ‘wise
culture’ can be used to contrast with, and problematise, industrial culture, thereby opening out new
conceptual and practical spaces. The latter provides the grounding for a vast range of social
innovations. Hence, although there is a necessary abstraction in some aspects of critical futures
work, the outputs can be intensely practical.