Futures by Proxy - Anticipatory Governance amongst Policy Professionals, with Christina Garsten

Anticipatory action is a key means through which organizational life is experienced, conducted, disciplined and normalized. In this seminar, the various ways in which policy professionals in think tanks, and in similar kinds of organizations, engage in future foresight as a means of imagining and governing futures will be explored. Special focus will be placed on how they make use of resources and tools at hand in the creation of future scenarios, and how anticipatory action, or ‘futures literacy’ is taught as a central component in organizational governance.Research seminar with Christina Garsten, Principal of SCAS and Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm and Uppsala University. Since 2022 she is President of the European network of institutes for advanced study, NetIAS.Recorded at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm, March 2025.