Globalized Science. The 1970s Futures Field

In the 1970s, the futures field became globalized. This paper shows how perceptions of globality shaped interdisciplinary approaches towards forecasting, planning and thinking about the future. Futures studies were reconceptualized, shifting its perspective from a West-East, technology-driven slant towards a global and human-centred one around 1970. The perceptions and conceptions of globality came out of notions of global interdependence, which emerged from three root sources. The first was the epistemic context of cybernetics and systems analysis, which had shaped the 1950s and 1960s futures studies and had led researchers to aspirations of being able to model the world system. The second, affecting significant sections of the field, was the web of new ecological ideas and their focus on interrelations within the global ecosystem. Third, futures studies took up dependency theories, responding to the rising voice of the global South and new ideas of a New International Economic Order. The futures field was not only influenced by 1970s events, it itself contributed to cultural and social change by enhancing the crisis perceptions and environmentalism of the early years of the decade and by stimulating notions of One World' solidarity. Through their insistence on the interdependence of environment and development, futurists' then laid the basis for conceptions of sustainable development.