Democratizing Foresight
The fellows have no interest in applying or contributing to the use of foresight to advance Western, extractive, racial capitalism, Nissen wrote in the final report. Rather, they are committed to using “foresight in community to advance social justice, equity and new horizons of well-being for humans and the planet.”
Social work, Nissen says, must explicitly resist “any future or foresight practice that doesn’t assert or even recognize key human rights, liberation and antiracism as its central tenets.” Notably, the practice of foresight originated in the very systems of oppression that many social workers now seek to disrupt. Through the Health Futures Lab, Nissen says, “We have learned to ‘complicate’ a lot of traditional foresight in positive ways, and we believe we’ve learned some important things about challenging some of the dominant Western foresight frames.”
It is critical, she notes, that social work commit to a foresight praxis, not just practice. “If you’re doing this ‘right,’ you’re going to be using foresight as a tool of disruption and reimagining, not of replicating old frames.” For social workers, democratizing foresight is critical.
But what might that actually look like? “Think about planning, but go wider and deeper: What happens before we plan?” Nissen asks. “Hopefully we dream, imagine, aspire.” What is the universe of possibilities most people think of when they plan, she asks, and how might these visions be limited by those in power who may assert a self-serving version of the future? “Critical and participatory foresight suggests that these ‘official futures’ need to be interrogated, and often moved aside, in favor of more authentic, engaged and collectively imagined futures, which will include social action and social change,” Nissen says. “All meaningful social and institutional change starts with these collective imaginings and refusal to accept an unacceptable status quo. Foresight can help provide one kind of architecture for this process.”
The immediate future includes the next iteration of the lab, which is evolving into a non-hierarchical community of practice that will welcome social workers to participate from across North America. The fellows are also planning a Social Work Futures national conference for some time in 2023–24.
Nissen says that following her experience facilitating the Health Futures Lab, she is more inspired than ever. However, given the inertia and outright change resistance standing in the way, “I’m also more aware of how much harder it will be in many ways to bring some of these futures — of liberation, of joy, of human rights, of peace/safety, of antiracism — to fruition and to scale,” she says.
“One of the big things I learned in the fellowship is the importance of looking at plural futures and not only investing our energy in the rosy future, because there are multiple futures happening all at once — for different people, in different ways,” Littman adds. “I’m overly optimistic; I often am wanting to lean toward that transformational future.” It’s worth investing in dreaming, she says, but we also must anticipate the threats to our dreams.
At a time when humans are faced with complex crises such as the global COVID-19 pandemic, dreaming can be difficult, Littman acknowledges. “I think we are going to experience compounding crises — climate, political and economic crises — and that really scares me,” she says. “My work is to bring critical hope to that.”
