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Giving Images a Chance

Images of the Future as a Tool for Sociology

Finland Futures Research Centre

Social sciences inevitably both trigger and enforce social change. However, current sociology has become more analysis oriented than action oriented. Futures studies can improve sociological thinking by its general cross-disciplinary approach, methods that emphasize alternatives and encourage participation in public discussions and decision making. The author discusses the idea of evolutionary transition as progressive differentiation toward increasing complexity that explains social change. This theory is then used to explore images of the future that arise from different interpretations of the present (Western) transition from modernity through late modernity to postmodernity and, similarly, from industrialism through late industrialism to a new epoch. The images consist of items that reflect the simultaneous existence of different and partly contradictory interpretations of reality that reflect socioeconomic and cultural change.

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