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Lockdown, dreadful anticipation of the next “wave”, looming economic crisis, and scientists warning of threats of war and famine in the global south - the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting, although to different extents, on our collective and personal future perspectives. The experience of such an event, condensing and simultaneously expanding time and space, shows us that – now more than ever – we need to consider the future as an element of anthropological inquiry in its own right. What can we learn about present social dynamics by studying the way people imagine, know and engage with the “not-yet”? How do the various, competing modes by which we try to know the future interact with our affective experiences and agentive choices in the present?
The aim of this course is to introduce students to the emerging field of the anthropology of the future, explore its history that draws on the postmodern critique of the 1980s, bring different divergent epistemological approaches into conversation, and, by diving into empirical subfields, enable students to grasp and contribute to the productive ways in which these studies connect to larger debates in postcolonial studies, migration, social movement studies, political anthropology, medical anthropology, STS, urban anthropology, environmental anthropology etc. In the first part of the course, we will gain foundational theoretical understanding, first, about anthropological conceptions of time, space-time and temporality, second, about different epistemological approaches in the anthropology of the future, and, finally account for the ways they relate to interdisciplinary theory-building about time and power, structure and agency. In the second part of the seminar, we will connect empirical and theoretical discussions, by reading and discussing ethnography-based literature across geographical areas that tackle, for instance, pre-figuration in activism, predictions through dreams, hope in financial markets, the way ufology engages with economic decline, anticipation of armed conflict, and waiting in indeterminate meantime. This will allow us to expand our understanding of the various ways knowledge and affect relating to future orientations shape our everyday life, how we can study them and how this ethnographic attention serves to pinpoint contemporary and future complexities of power. |
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