Sohail Inayatullah

This monograph moves toward a stage theory of the uses of the future, deepening the Six Pillars framework and accompanying tools (scenarios, causal layered analysis, visioning) by inquiring which methods and tools are appropriate for which national, institutional, organizational and personal contexts. Seven stages are suggested. The first is perceived injustice - "it is not fair." The second is risk mitigation. The third is creating alternative futures. In this phase, the future is used to understand what happens if nothing changes, what happens if there is marginal change, what happens if there is adaptive change, and what happens when a different conceptualization of and access to power emerges. The fourth is directionality, the vision. The fifth is "making the vision real." The sixth is metaphor. In this phase, a narrative is created that helps move groups and individuals from the impossible to the powerful. The final state is personal and focused on using the mantra technique to transform the narrative. The entire process is designed for the context of the user, to enhance our ability to create justice in our perceived worlds, moving from one future to alternative futures, to the realization of preferred futures.

This book takes us into the future. Inayatullah and Milojevic explore five emerging issues that have the potential to dramatically impact wellbeing, food systems, climate change, gender equity, the family, and how we learn. They ask: Will the city of the future be preventive, able to provide early indicators of illness and wellbeing? Will the likely transition from meat to cellular agriculture transform the global food supply chain, shifting how we produce food and what we eat? Will women lead the Way and create a partnership society or will their - our - dreams be shattered? Will the family, stable for generations, if not hundreds of years, transform, becoming more diversified and inclusive of social and technological changes? Will learning transform, moving from the factory model to alternative paradigms such as the ecological or the digital? Will we be able to learn anytime, anywhere, from anyone? The book answers these questions by exploring the contradictions between emerging futures and tired pasts. Join us on this disruptive journey.

Taking a long-term historical and future perspective on the university is critical at this time. The university is being refashioned, often by forces out of the control of academics, students, and even administrators. However, there remain possibilities for informed action, for steering the directions that the university can take. This book maps both the historical factors and the alternative futures of the university. Whereas most books on the university remain focused on the European model, this volume explores models and issues from non-Western perspectives as well. Inayatullah and Gidley draw together essays by leading academics from a variety of disciples and nations on the futures of the university, weaving historical factors with emerging issues and trends such as globalism, virtualization, multiculturalism, and politicization. They attempt to get beyond superficial debate on how globalism and the Internet as well as multiculturalism are changing the nature of the university, and they thoughtfully assess these changes.

This dazzlingly original collaboration between two international authors focuses on 20 macrohistorians—that is to say, historians who have helped shape our entire way of conceiving ourselves—from Ssu-Ma Ch'ien and Ibn Khaldun to Oswald Spengler and Marx and Piritim Sorokin and Arnold Toynbee. The authors move toward a general theory of grand social change based on the writings of these macrohistorians and provide a comparative view of macrohistory and sociology. The book brings a cross-cultural and transhistorical perspective to the study of social change, analyzing macrohistorians and macrohistory comparatively and synthetically, from the traditional linear-cyclical divide as well as including broader transcendental and feminist approaches. Like a road map par excellence for the study of civilizational change, the book captures the panoramic sweep of history and helps readers learn to appreciate, and henceforth include in the circle of greats, those non-Western thinkers whose work they may until now have neglected.^L ^L Johan Galtung, Sohail Inayatullah, and the other contributors to ^IMacrohistory and Macrohistorians^R demonstrate that each generation may give new perspectives to ideas that we thought we understood. The book covers the vital perspective out of which the 21st century emerges, and in the cases of Sorokin, Toynbee, and Eisler, deals with theories directly bearing on the potential shape of the next thousand years. It brings a cross-cultural and transhistorical perspective to the study of social change and will be of considerable interest to historians and sociologists as well as students of philosophy, historiography, and political science.