ABSTRACT
As futures become an increasingly central question for anthropologists, new conceptual and methodological tools, approaches and modes of engaging with stakeholders in research are needed. In this chapter, we take a new step in this dimension of futures anthropology. We outline and discuss how anthropologists might intervene conceptually and practically, by making ethnographic alliances with stakeholders in our research and ‘complicating’ the ways that the shared futures which are at stake are imagined. In doing so, we advance the conceptual discussion in a future-oriented anthropology through examining the potentialities and limits of future as a concept in the methodological design of ethnography, in fieldwork and in analysis. To do this, we discuss ethnographic insights developed from co-envisioning with qualified tech workers. We draw on fieldwork undertaken during different stages of the design process of Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, and our analysis of how tech designers’ practices of ‘focusing on’ or ‘sketching’ the future of market labour in technological design differ from the dominant imaginary of the dramatic changes these emerging technologies will bring.
