ABSTRACT
Between 1967 and 1972, Swedish futures studies emerged as a distinct political and intellectual endeavor. In this development, the humanities and social sciences played a special role, especially through the idea that human knowledge and knowledge about a “human system” could be brought to bear on societal problems and used to forge a new approach to the future. We focus here on two scholars, historian Birgitta Odén and geographer Torsten Hägerstrand, proposing that they were important figures in developing a new engagement with problems of social and human time in Swedish social science and humanities research.
