ABSTRACT
Knowledge about the future or even futures is, like any other knowledge, ‘rooted in a life, a society, and a language that [has] a history’ (Foucault 1973:372). As we cannot know something which has not yet happened, knowledge about the future comprises ideas and assumptions about the future, images and visions of the future as well as the investigation of causalities that bring the logical consequences of certain events and trajectories. Given that the future is not predetermined, every study of the future is ‘strictly speaking, the study of ideas about the future’ (Cornish, cited in Wagar 1996: 366). It is an inquiry, or ‘the study of possibilities that are plausible in terms of present-day knowledge and theory’ (ibid.).
