CONSTRUCTING A DISTANT FUTURE: IMAGINARIES IN GEOENGINEERING

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Augustine, Grace; Soderstrom, Sara; Milner, Daniel; Weber, Klaus
• 署名单位: City St Georges, University of London; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; Northwestern University; Northwestern University
• 刊物名称: ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0001-4273
• DOI: 10.5465/amj.2018.0059
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 1930-1960
• 关键词: GRAND CHALLENGES; climate; PERSPECTIVE; LEVEL; entrepreneurship; institutions; expectations; creation; thinking; PARADOX

摘要

We develop the concept of the distant future as a new way of seeing the future in collective efforts. While a near future is represented in practical terms and concerned with forming expectations and goals under conditions of uncertainty, a distant future is represented in stylized terms and concerned with imagining possibilities under conditions of ambiguity. Management research on future-oriented action has developed around problems of the near future. To explore distant futures, we analyze the case of geoengineering, a set of planetary-scale technologies that have been proposed as solutions to the threat of climate change. Geoengineering has increasingly been treated as if it were a reality, despite continued controversy and the absence of any implementation. We find that societal-level imaginaries that were built on deeply held moral bases and cosmologies underpinned the conception of geoengineering, and that a dialectic process of discursive attempts to reconcile oppositional imaginaries increased the concreteness and credibility of geoengineering so that it has increasingly been treated as an as-if reality. We suggest that distant futures orient collective efforts in distinctive ways, not as concrete guides for action but by expressing critiques and alternatives, that can become treated as as-if realities.