Future Conflicts: On The Politics of Uncertainty

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Future Conflicts On The Politics of Uncertainty

• Chris Groves
• ESRC Centre for Business Relationships,
  Accountability, Sustainability and Society
  (BRASS)
• www.brass.cf.ac.uk
• grovesc1_at_cf.ac.uk

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Constructing futures

• Groves and Adam, Future Matters Action,
  Knowledge, Ethics (Brill 2007)
• Uncertainty as cause of transformation
• Against the hegemony of risk
• Beck and Giddens
• Nikolas Rose

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• Peter Osborne periodisation is always an
  intervention in the politics of time (The
  Politics of Time, 1995)
• An alternative approach Peter Marris (The
  Politics of Uncertainty, 1996)
• Social practices emerge against a background of
  struggle over how to define uncertainty
• All attempts to define and respond to uncertainty
  rest on some implicit conception of human
  flourishing

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Uncertainty and futuring

• Social practice futures the future
• I.e. practice is future-oriented
• Futuring is not just conscious planning/norm-guide
  d action
• Futures are not alternative outcomes, but
  alternative horizons
• How these horizons are produced can be mapped
• Relationships between different modes of
  production of futures can produce different
  transformative dynamics, e.g. harmonisation or
  conflict
• Examples empty, lived, living futures

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An analytical example nuclear power

• Technologies are social assemblages (techniques,
  laws, administrative practices, symbolic
  representations)
• E.g. Nuclear power
• links with military institutions, statutes (e.g.
  Price-Anderson Act in USA), centralised
  administrative structures.
• Technologies embody and reinforce rhythms of
  social production and reproduction, and different
  future horizons
• Nuclear tech as
• Response to projections of energy demand growth
• Reproduces social commitment to progress
• Evaluates uncertainty as opportunity for
  transgressive action

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The empty future horizon of nuclear technology
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Risk as empty future

• Connection between risk thinking and
  control/benefit maximisation
• Rose risk makes the future calculable
• Systems of rational choice made more
  comprehensive
• Wider employment of methods like CBA made
  possible

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The shadow horizon living futures

• Unintended horizons of action material,
  economic, symbolic
• High level waste
• Decommissioning costs
• Symbolism of transgression
• Latent living future
• Not an uncertainty which can be transformed into
  a risk
• Paradox of the empty future more control brings
  more uncertainty
• Increasing timeprint of unintended consequences
• Are there forms of futuring which enlighten the
  shadows of the living future?

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The lived future uncertainy and attachment

• Oriented towards attachment rather than autonomy
• Hans Jonas needful freedom as condition of
  organic life
• Peter Marris the meaning of attachment and
  subject-formation
• Places
• People and groups
• Institutions and ideals
• Care as form of knowledge, action and ethical
  orientation

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Lived futures as horizon

• Knowledge
• Expectations
• promises
• anticipations

• Ethics
• Constitutive values
• Responsibility for singular futures

Lived Future
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Futures harmonisation and conflict

• Social practices can exhibit different forms of
  futuring (e.g. technologies)
• Francoise Zonabend, The Nuclear Peninsula (1993)
• Clerks and kamikazes different narratives
  about uncertainty
• But differences between forms of futuring can
  produce conflict too
• Siting processes empty futures versus lived
  futures
• Exchangeable commensurable versus singular
  incommensurable values (David Rapoport/Joseph
  Raz)

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Future Conflicts On The Politics of Uncertainty

• Chris Groves
• ESRC Centre for Business Relationships,
  Accountability, Sustainability and Society
  (BRASS)
• www.brass.cf.ac.uk
• grovesc1_at_cf.ac.uk