Latent futures

What if the future isn’t ahead of us? What if the future lies around us, or within us: what futures are immanent, latent, and yet to unfold? Rather than imagining the future at the far end of an uncertain timeline, what if we paid attention instead to futures already in progress? The projective, instrumental futures that are integral to modernity have long been the subject of critique, both for their part in the extractive and unsustainable practices propelling us towards disaster, and for vanishing: the ‘futurelessness’ identified by Richard Tutton (2023), the absent future described earlier  by Helga Nowotny (1996), the loss of settled life trajectories described by researchers in youth studies (e.g. Woodman, 2009; Leccardi, 1999), and the more general uncertainty recognised by sociologists as a feature of the twentieth-century 'polycrisis' (e.g. Blokker & Vieten, 2022) all demonstrate the need for alternative ways of relating to the future.

This free online event, open to all, is an invitation to consider how understanding the future as unfolding around us might equip us to contest those narratives of the future that are not adequate to our current moment. Our speakers will develop a range of approaches towards recognising and working with latent futures, through ideas and examples drawn from fields like heritage studies, education, anthropology, history, futures studies, the environmental humanities, and other domains with the means to help us notice the possibilities and potentials in the present through which futures unfold. Across a range of scales, from landscapes to the everyday, their work demonstrates the different ways in which the notion of ‘latent futures’ can be put to work in building new understandings of how futures come to be.

Relevant publications

Blokker, P., & Vieten, U. M. (2022). Fear and uncertainty in late modern society. European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, 9(1), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/23254823.2022.2033461

Leccardi, C. (1999). Time, young people and the future. Young, 7(1), 3-18.

Nowotny, H. (1996). Time: The Modern and Postmodern Experience. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Tutton, R. (2023). The Sociology of Futurelessness. Sociology, 57(2), 438-453. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380385221122420

Woodman, D. (2009). The mysterious case of the pervasive choice biography: Ulrich Beck, structure/agency, and the middling state of theory in the sociology of youth. Journal of Youth Studies, 12(3), 243–256. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676260902807227 

Speakers

• Dr. Alison Oldfield, University of Bristol
• Dr. Anna Wilson, University of Glasgow
• Prof. Deborah Sutton, University of Lancaster
• Dr. Lina Rahm, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
• Prof. Esther Priyadharshini, University of East Anglia, 
• Dr. Justin Pickard
• Prof Helen Manchester, Dr Laurène Cheilan, Dr Marisela Gutierrez-Lopez, University of Bristol

Organisers

• Prof. Jen Ross, University of Edinburgh
• Prof. Richard Sandford, UCL

Speaker biographies and abstracts ►

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