Suchergebnisse

For futures studies to progress toward a fully‐fledged discipline its knowledge creation processes must be clear and comprehensible. They must be capable of being taught, learned, critiqued and modified. This paper provides a rationale for using a version of Wilber's four‐quadrant model as one way of understanding the knowledge creation process in futures studies. It applies this structurally to knowledge creation through four contrasting futures methodologies. The latter are then recontextualized within the four‐quadrant framework. It is suggested that a rapprochement between futures studies and an emerging "integral agenda" provides a sound approach to the civilizational challenge facing humankind.

This paper suggests that environmental scanning (ES) has been restricted to parts of the external world and has largely overlooked the inner one. In fact the inner/outer distinction has itself been lost sight of within Futures Studies (FS), as in many other fields of enquiry and action. The result is that much well‐intentioned and otherwise disciplined work takes place in a cramped empiricist frame that has, for good reason, been dubbed "flatland". For ES to more adequately comprehend a richer and more complex reality, a broader scanning frame is needed. This paper provides a model for working toward that goal.