The 'Future' according to Mahdi Elmandjra
Mahdi Elmandjra
Arab and Islamic World
Although Mahdi Elmandjra was one of the world's leading futurists during the last quarter of the 20th century, for him, foresight was not a self-sustaining vertical field, but rather a "lateral" academic discipline that permeates all other extant fields. This research paper deals with the future aspects of Elmandjra's thought. This paper demonstrates that Elmandjra's association with futurology is not akin to the restriction of economics to economic indicators, or similarly the restriction of sociology to societal indictators. Instead, it shows how the late futurologist was aware of the need to integrate economic and societal indictors into a single, holistic system of factors that interact spatially and temporally. It concludes that Elmandjra's thinking begins with the state of these phenomena in their past, asks questions about their fluctuations in the present, and then goes on to forecast future outcomes.
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