Questioning the millennium: shared stories of past, present and future

Periods of rapid and turbulent change affect societies in a variety of ways including, in the 1990s, a reawakening of interest in millenarian themes. This paper reviews some key elements of the millennial tradition and then notes that little serious attention has been paid to public perceptions of the year 2000. Secondly the paper reports on an experiential research project in which participants explored what meanings the twentieth century, the millennium, and the new century held for them. In investigating their histories and hopes they found that the personal and the political were inextricably interrelated and that the stories they shared of past, present and future led them back to the deeper perennial questions of human existence. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.