Midwives of the future: Futurism, futures studies and the shaping of the global imagination
Résumé
This chapter traces the rise of futurism in the immediate post war period in the ideas of a number of intellectuals central to its making: the American urbanist Lewis Mumford; the Dutch sociologist Fred Polak; the economist Kenneth Boulding and his equally prominent wife, peace activist Elise Boulding; the German journalist Robert Jungk; the Norwegian international relations theorist Johan Galtung; and the former RANDian, systems theorist Hazan Ozbekhan. In this chapter, I argue that through the ideas of these intellectuals and scientists, the future reemerged as a utopian category.