Speculative Research : The Lure of Possible Futures

Speculative Research is a timely edited collection that crystallises the emerging interest within social and cultural research in speculative thinking. The volume presents a range of innovative contributions that address the take-up of speculative philosophies in empirical sociocultural research to examine and grasp the complex, unforeseen and creative production of possible futures through future-making practices.

Is another future possible? So called ‘late modernity’ is marked by the escalating rise in and proliferation of uncertainties and unforeseen events brought about by the interplay between and patterning of social–natural, techno–scientific and political-economic developments. The future has indeed become problematic. The question of how heterogeneous actors engage futures, what intellectual and practical strategies they put into play and what the implications of such strategies are, have become key concerns of recent social and cultural research addressing a diverse range of fields of practice and experience. Exploring questions of speculation, possibilities and futures in contemporary societies,　Speculative Research　responds to the pressing need to not only critically account for the role of calculative logics and rationalities in managing societal futures, but to develop alternative approaches and sensibilities that take futures seriously as possibilities and that demand new habits and practices of attention, invention, and experimentation.