Eurograd message

                Dear EASST members,

A month ago I shared the following call. While the EU-SPRI conference call has
closed last week, the call for abstracts for the Special Issue in Futures has
been prolonged to February 29, 2024 as due to technical issues it has been put
on the journal website only recently.


CfP FUTURES Special Issue: Anticipatory practices at the intersections of
innovation, policy and society



Guest Editors: Kornelia Konrad, University of Twente, Andreas Lsch, Karlsruhe
Institute of Technology, Sergio Uruea, University of the Basque Country
UPV/EHU & University of Twente

The need for sociotechnical transformations of contemporary societies is
widely accepted and anticipatory practices are proliferating as enablers of
such transformations in various settings and for different goals (e.g., new
and emerging technologies, energy transition, digital transformation, urban
sustainability, climate change, and many more). Anticipatory practices are
typically enacted in order to explore possible directions for change and their
implications, to orientate decisions and actions, to cultivate reflection and
"futures literacies," and/or to support the coordination of the heterogeneous
groups that need to be involved - be it in the form of foresight and
technology assessment projects, modelling approaches, roadmaps, integrative
research, transdisciplinary experiments, and many other formal and informal
practices. While some anticipatory practices are conducted mainly by and for a
specific societal or expert group, they often take place at the intersections
between different societal spheres, aiming to connect various innovation,
policy and societal actors.



A burgeoning variety of methods and tools, as well as less formalized
practices, support and channelize anticipatory processes at different levels
of governance. While some methods and practices find support and materiality
in institutions and/or regulatory structures (e.g. forms of modelling in risk
governance, energy or climate policy), others are of a more localized and
temporary nature (e.g., foresight projects, events or interventions). Even if
not formally institutionalized, certain anticipatory practices such as
scenario and assessment methods are more common and legitimate in some
societal domains and communities than others. Thus, they are typically not
equally attuned to the diverse set of values, interests, reasoning and
communication styles, frames, decision-making procedures, timelines, etc. of
the various societal actors and contexts involved. Thus, choosing for one or
the other method or practice may also imply the in- or exclusion of certain
societal actors. Practices may also be more or less rigid, making it more or
less difficult to adjust to different contexts and groups. Accordingly,
facilitators working at local/micro levels are often confronted with
challenges of how to design and conduct anticipatory interventive practices in
such a way as to create anticipatory spaces that are open for all of the
actors concerned, but at the same time can be linked to the modes of
decision-making and action prevailing in the contexts of the participating
actors. For example, anticipatory practices with transdisciplinary audiences
conducted in local projects might work quite well on the local level but are
more difficult to connect to national or transnational policy modes of
anticipatory governance.



While the challenges and obstacles of working with futures at intersections
are commonly acknowledged by experts and professionals in a variety of fields
(e.g., STS, Technology Assessment, Futures Studies), it is less common to
bring together studies that range from the project level to the community,
institutional, and structural governance levels. In this special issue, we
want to explore an anticipatory practice lens. This perspective urges us to
examine elements such as materials, competencies, and meanings in practices,
as well as the degree to which these elements are embedded or
institutionalized in specific social groups and settings. Through this
exploration, we aim to deepen our understanding of the challenges inherent in
conducting anticipatory practices at the intersection of innovation, policy,
and society. In doing so, we aim to connect insights derived from studies that
focus on the micro level (e.g., on concrete anticipatory projects) with those
that focus on the meso or macro level (e.g., on established anticipatory
practices within the governance of innovation and socio-technical
transformation). In unraveling these (dis)alignments we aim to generate
insights for practitioners, just as to enhance our understanding of the role
of anticipatory practices within the broader politics and governance of and by
anticipations.



We invite papers, either empirical or conceptual, that help to better
understand the uses, roles and (mis)matches of anticipatory practices at these
crossroads, the related conceptual and practical challenges they pose, and
explore approaches to cope with them.



In particular, papers may address the following or related questions:

       How do anticipatory practices at the intersection of innovation,
policy and society differ between or need to take account of different
contexts, cultures, and institutional settings? What tensions arise when
anticipatory practices are used in new settings? How can/should anticipatory
practices be designed, curated, and implemented to be more responsive to
different contexts, cultures, and institutional settings?

       How do anticipatory practices enable and constrain interconnections
between the spheres of innovation, policy and society at the micro, meso, and
macro levels? Which (f)actors may facilitate this interconnecting role?

       How do anticipatory practices shape the intersections and governance
across the spheres of research, development, innovation, policy frameworks and
societal participation? And how are anticipatory practices institutionalized,
regulated and governed, within or across different spheres?

       How has the role of anticipatory practices at the intersections of
innovation, policy and society changed over time?

       What cultures of anticipation and types of anticipatory practices are
prevalent at the intersections of innovation, policy and/or society, and whose
voices and concerns are made (in)visible through them? We also welcome studies
that investigate the specific 'anticipatory cultures' of societal and
professional groups and contexts, especially if these include a reflection on
how these 'anticipatory cultures' enable and constrain communication between
different actors from innovation, policy and society spheres.



Deadlines and submission guidelines

Interested parties should send an abstract of 300-400 words to
k.e.konrad@utwente.nl,
andreas.loesch@kit.edu and
sergio.uruena@ehu.eus by February 29, 2024.
Authors will be informed of acceptance in March. Full papers should be
submitted to
FUTURES by
September 1, 2024. Submissions before the deadline will enter the review
process earlier. Individual papers will be published online first as soon as
they are accepted and ready for publication.
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