Making and Using Futures: Using Anticipation to Reframe Justice and Responsibility to Govern Societal Transformations

Abstract

This paper explores the concept of anticipation in the context of governing societal transformations toward sustainability in the Anthropocene. It distinguishes two interrelated processes of anticipation for the governance of just sustainable transformations: using futures and making futures, arguing that these processes of anticipation can help reframe notions of justice and responsibility. With this reframing, it is proposed that justice and responsibility should be shared and distributed among different actors, based on certain principles that take into account the complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity of the future in the context of the Anthropocene.