Introduction

Someone younger and smarter than I once wrote the following: “All social theories are based on some vision of the future. It is true, of course, that a theorist may choose to make such assumptions explicit or leave them unstated. But the assumptions are always there” (Baber 1983: 1). Though these words were written over 30 years ago, I believe them still to be true. ¹ However, it requires no great feat of theorizing to know that the future is not what it used to be.