The Anthropology of the Future

A path-breaking account of how to analyse the future anthropologically, this book presents new questions and methods for studying the subject.

Positing new questions and using innovative methods, this book discusses the future as a newly emerging field in anthropology. It will be welcomed by students and researchers in cultural and social anthropology, anthropological theory, history and philosophy.Study of the future is an important new field in anthropology. Building on a philosophical tradition running from Aristotle through Heidegger to Schatzki, this book presents the concept of 'orientations' as a way to study everyday life. It analyses six main orientations - anticipation, expectation, speculation, potentiality, hope, and destiny - which represent different ways in which the future may affect our present. While orientations entail planning towards and imagining the future, they also often involve the collapse or exhaustion of those efforts: moments where hope may turn to apathy, frustrated planning to disillusion, and imagination to fatigue. By examining these orientations at different points, the authors argue for an anthropology that takes fuller account of the teleologies of action.