up for our Free newsletter
2 – Jennifer Gidley and Sohail Inayatullah, eds. Youth Futures:
Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. Westport, Ct.
Perspectives on Youth Futures
is about renewal, fresh ideas challenging old traditions and
yearning for the untried. Youth finds change inebriating, not
intimidating. Youth is also impetuous, unpredictable: with the
promise of a better future comes a veiled threat to tear down the
past. ... Youth breaks all the rules. Youth is colorful, irreverent,
entertaining, sometimes shocking, almost always rebellious. Youth is
on the vanguard of fashion, music, literature and popular culture.
But the young are also the first to hurl stones, to lob bombs, to
rush to the barricades. Youth is, in a word, energy.
the 1999 movie, Dick, about the life of Richard Nixon as seen
through the eyes of two 15 year olds, the famous line, "young
people are the voice of the future" is used by Nixon to end the
war against Vietnam. The context is: Henry Kissinger walks into a
meeting between the President and two young girls (who had stumbled
on the Watergate affair). He asks the president what to do about the
war. One of the girls says: "War is not healthy to children and
all living beings." While Kissinger and others debate who
started the war, Nixon says that we should listen to them since they
represent the "voice of the future of America."
a series of amusing circumstances, we discover that the two girls
are in fact "Deep Throat", the person who brought the
Nixon Administration down. While
a hilarious movie, it both shows the power and idealism of youth and
utterly mocks them. They are in love with Nixon until they find out
that he mistreats his dog, Checkers.
All other issues escape them -
corruption, bribery - but
mistreatment of the dog transforms their perspective of the
President. The movie
ends with Nixon resigning, and flying home by helicopter, only to
see the girls unfurling a banner from their rooftop that reads,
"You suck, Dick."
the recently released movie Sonnenallee, 2 a German movie
of life in East Berlin during the communist era, we are shown a
similar approach to how young people construct politics.
it is essentially about fun and self-destruction - endless alcohol,
drugs and sex. However, these are not shown to us in neutral terms
but in politicized language, that is, these practices are used as
resistance against an evil regime.
To win the heart of a lovely neighbor girl, the main actor
invents a diary. In the diary he writes lengthy entries of how he
desires to rebel against East Germany tyranny. He makes sure to
mention that from an early age he was not a socialist. Rebellion
against the State means music and drugs.
Near the end of the movie, a 15 year old boy is shot by
border guards thinking that the boy is attempting to scale the wall.
Fortunately for him the Rolling Stones album he has just purchased -
Exile on Main Street - saves his life. But he can only lament about
the album (a double one) being destroyed by the bullet.
Freedom - meaning purchasing goods that revile the staleness
of communism - means more than life.
movie concludes with the young people leading a street neighborhood
party by the Wall. Soon, older East Germans join in. The police do
nothing but watch the testament to a different future the youth wish
is this different future that has been the heart of the failed
revolution in Afghanistan. The Taliban, young men between the ages
of 15-20, were schooled in madrasses,
religious schools in Pakistan, to destroy the triple evils of
communism, secularism and tribal feudalism that had claimed
the forgot the even greater evil of patriarchy, it remains
remarkable that a group of young people (however, trained and armed
by the Pakistani Army and the American CIA) can defeat a much
stronger military force. Their unity and determination as well as
desire for a moral polity has seen them to victory. The costs of
that victory - their intolerance for all other perspectives - have,
been overwhelming and unforgivable. Still, they have shown what
youth can do, exhibiting creative transformative and chaotic
powerful have been youth revolutions in Serbia. When President
Milosevic annulled local elections in 1997 giving city power to
opposition leaders, the students turned out in mass to protest. It
was the final straw. Milosevic was mocked as 500,000 took to the
streets. Eventually after three months of non-violent protest, the
students were victorious. Most recently, it was the students (with
the miners and professionals) who brought down Milosevic himself. As
they marched the streets, many feared for the lives, in any second
they knew the tanks would be among them, butchering every last
protestor (as Milosevic's wife and other associates had requested
him to do in the 1997 revolution). But the army did not intervene
and history was made that day in Belgrade.
it was the action of the Otpor (Resistance) movement that had struck
fear into the hearts of the government. Concerned not with debating
Milosevic but with tearing down his system - using disobedience in
every possible way, from web anarchy to pouring sugar into the
government-owned vehicles - the students had made a clear statement:
we want change and we will risk everything for it.
They have also made it to clear to the new government that
unless the last vestiges of Milosevic's regime are cleansed, they
will begin their resistance again.
have seen similar student protests against the inequities of
globalization, against particular dictators such as Marcos (and now
the corrupt Estrada) or the cruel Mahathir, or 'wanna-be' tyrants
such as Hanson of Australia, or against the destruction of nature.
Or against permanent refugee status as in Israel/Palestine. The
images of young intifada
Palestinian youth throwing stones against the heavily armed Israeli
forces tell us in no uncertain terms that youth are more than
shopping mall consumers. At the same time, even as David versus
Goliath is the operating metaphor, the futility and resultant
destruction on them shows the paradox youth find themselves in. They
are attacked by the Israeli army and used for symbolic media
purposes by the Palestinian political authority. Youth
simultaneously have agency to create a different future and their
vigor is used by others.
it is this idealism that is at the heart of young people's visions
of the future. It is
essentially the desire to create a world that works for everyone -
all humans, plants and animals. Idealism means the unwillingness to
accept adult reasons why the world cannot change or should not
change - the deep structures of history. Idealism, like utopianism,
expresses "impulses and aspirations which have been blocked by
the existing society." 3
while evil is easy to see when the forces of oppression are direct,
and thus action and inspiration are far more available and
accessible, transformation is far more problematic when the problems
are associated with worldview of post-industrialism (advanced and
hyper-capitalism) and its accompanying worldview - the deeper
patterns of thought, of epistemes that organize what constitutes the
becomes the great source of Malaise. What to do when the entire
system is a lie, when the foundations of civilization, of adult
civilization, claim universalism but in fact are the victories of
particular politics? 4 How should youth react? How do
they react? Their anger is expressed when governments express
concern for human rights but continue supporting the killing of
animals for food. They are angry when states and corporations
express concern for the environment and peace but make no investment
in public transport or continue to be part of the global military
machine. They express anger at traditional religions when religious
leaders profess a love for god but tolerate pedophilia.
they are unable to find ways to express their bright visions of the
future in positive life enhancing ways, the same expression comes
out as destruction against others (after all it is youth who do the
bulk of killing) 5 and against themselves through suicide
and long-term suicidal behavior (e.g. drug and alcohol abuse).
on the massive 10 nation study of how individuals envisioned the
Year 2000, Johan Galtung writes that the most pessimistic
respondents where those that came from the richest nations. 6
Young people expressed a development fatigue. They had seen the
limits of technology, and understood that social transformation,
inner transformation was required. But instead they received more
a result the young experience cognitive dissonance, when they hear
talk of fairness but actions that discriminate against the poor, the
indigenous. This brings a range of responses. At one extreme it is
the rush to join the MBA set, to globalize, to work hard to ensure
that one's own future is bright.
The second is the global backlash of the right - to resist
multiculturalism, and the 'other' through a return to extreme forms
of one's identity. This is the Islamic right wing or the Christian
right wing and localist/nationalistic movements throughout the
World. In more respectable forms, this is scientism, wherein science
(like god) is seen outside of history, the truth for all once they
convert to the open inquiry of the scientific method. 8
As famed physicist, Michio Kaku said in reference to the new world
being created by the technologies of genetic engineering, Nano-technology
and space research: get on the train or forever be left behind. 9
third alternative is common in OECD nations, that of suicide,
especially suicide among males. They end their physical life partly
as they see no future, they are missing moral male role models and
the only rituals left are those around consumption - the shopping
mall as the great savior. The fourth alternative is violence against
heart then is a crisis in worldview. Much of the earlier youth
futures research presented data as to whether young people are
optimistic or pessimistic about the future. Causes of suicide were
blamed on unemployment and other social and economic problems. 10
But these causes, to be sensible, must be nested in the
limits of the industrial and postindustrial worldview wherein
reality is segmented into work (profit-making) followed by years of
retirement. An analysis
of worldview must as well speak to an even deeper sense of myth and
metaphor. At this level of analysis, the issue is what stories do
young people tell themselves and others?
For young people, the foundational problem is a story of the
universe in which they are expected to behave in certain ways
(become a worker, rational human being) and a reality that denies
this possibility (unemployment) and is utterly divorced from their
world (the limits of the European enlightenment with respect to
accessing other ways of knowing). There is thus a contrast between
the world of globalization and secularization and the realities of
emotions and identity creation.
is postmodernism the solution for young people. It gives them
endless choices - virtuality - but with no foundation.
Without this foundation, the result is a reality with too
many selves - the swift Teflon vision of the future, where identity
is about speed and the collection of a multitude of experiences, not
about understanding the 'Other'.
Moreover the terms remain within the confines of the Western
limitless worldview of accumulation.
This is at a time in their lives where at least two forces
are operating - that of hormonal expression of the body and of
idealism of the mind. Virtuality merely creates the illusion of
endless choice but not the fulfillment of having met and responded
to a challenge. Nature, conditions of inequity and authentic
alternatives to the postmodern are lost in this discourse.
as Galtung argues, it is too simple to say that the problematique is
of the Western worldview, of the crises of the West. First since the
West is ubiquitous and second since even closed societies exhibit
similar problems. In Libya, the problem of heroin, atheism, drugs
and hallucinogens prompted Qaddafi to say: "We have lost our
Youth." 11 And, third, it is a conceptual mistake to
argue that the West is in crisis since this is a tautological
statement. 12 The West by definition exists in this way
(indeed, as do youth, that is, being young is about a crisis in
life, the transformation from a child to an adult). That has been
its, the West, success in expanding the last 500 years.
The West is not just linear in its evolution, it is also
dramatic, apocalyptic. The West by definition searches for the
latest breakthrough, the victory, the challenge that can propel it
onwards. But the other side of the West is its alter ego. This alter
ego is focused not on expansion but on human rights. Not on the
businessman but on the shaman, not on the mature adult ready to live
and retire from the company (or kingdom or church) but on the youth
that contests reality. Not on domination focused masculine
principles but on partnership focused feminine principles.
challenge to official reality comes also from the outside, the
periphery, for example, the Bedouins not vested in the normative and
coercive power of the state, as Ibn Khaldun argues. 13
Indeed, youth are the periphery. Even as many are part of the ego of
the West (I shop therefore I am) many are of the alter-ego (I love
therefore I am and I protest therefore I am). It has been the
capacity of the West to appropriate counter movements, to use youth,
and other cultures to transform itself from within that has been the
success of making the West universal. In this sense, the youth
crisis in the West (the youth movements of the last thirty years) is
not new, it is merely the alter-ego expressing the alternative West.
mentioned above, this is easier when evil is clearer - whether a
tyrant or a multinational such as General Motors (or more recently
Microsoft) or a world organization such as the World Bank. It is
more difficult when it is the worldview that must be challenged and
challenge to worldview thus comes across in a multitude of
movements, each touching some dimension of the critique of what has
come to be called globalization.
These are expressed in the form of the spiritual movements,
the vegetarian movement, the cults, the green movement, grunge, rap,
rock and roll as well as from the south Asian diaspora -
bhangra rap. All
these movements are supported by youth as cadres even if managed by
hypothesis then is that the crisis of youth is part of the West's
own renewal and clearly part of the fatigue of development.
This fatigue has been delayed quite a bit because of the
internet revolution. Screenagers, as Douglas Rushkoff accurately
calls them, have found a different way to express individuality. 14
It is quick time, quick communication and a chance to immediately
lead instead of to follow. This will likely be even more delayed
because of revolutions in genetics and Nano-technology. While at one
level delayed, at another level, the .com revolution is a youth
explosion. Many small start- ups are multicultural, gender
partnership based and challenge traditional notions of working 9-5
and wearing black suits. They also offer a network vision of work
and organizational structure. In this sense, they renew even as they
delay more basic (needed) changes to globalization.
SCENARIOS OF THE FUTURE
ego and alter-ego comes across in foundational scenarios of the
future. These can be seen in popular and academic images of the
future, and have certainly come across in visioning workshops with
young people (as explored in the section on case studies). 15
The first is the globalized artificial future and the second is the
communicative-inclusive future. 16
globalized scenario is
high-technology and economy driven. Features include, the right to
plastic surgery and an airplane for each person. Generally, the
vision is of endless travel and shopping, and generally a global
society where we all have fun and all our desires are met. The
underlying ethos is that technology can solve every problem and lead
to genuine human progress.
contrast is the communicative-inclusive
society, which is values driven. Consumption in this scenario is
far less important to communication. It is learning from another
that is crucial. While technology is important, the morality of
those inventing and using it is far more important. Instead of
solving the world's food problem through the genetic engineering of
food, the reorganization of society and softer more nature-oriented
alternatives such as organic foods are far more important. The goal
is not to create a world that leads to the fulfillment of desire but
one wherein desire is reduced (the Gandhian sentiment) or channeled
to spiritual and cultural pursuits.
underlying perspective is that of a global ethics with a deep
commitment that communication and consciousness transformation can
solve all our problems.
MACROHISTORY AND DEPTH
argument made so far is that there are generally two foundational
futures. Of course, the
specter of total collapse remains, either because of the
exploitation of nature or over-concentration of power and wealth.
But this image is used more as a call to action, to either join the
technology revolution or the consciousness revolution. The scenario
of muddling through as well is important, but generally rejected by
basic perspective of the globalization/technologization scenario is
that things rise - more progress, more technology, more development,
more wealth, more individuality. This is generally the view of older
age cohorts and those in the center of power. The underlying
perspective of the communicative-inclusive scenario is that of
transformation, whether because of green or spiritual values or
because of the wise and moral use of technology. This tends to be
more the vision of youth. It is idealistic, and not beholden to the
values of the Market. In contrast to the exponential curve of the
first scenario, this scenario has a spiral curve (a return to
traditional values but in far more inclusive terms).
pattern oscillates in the West. The West needing the latter, its
alter-ego, to refresh itself. Collapse
remains the fear (technology gone wrong or overpopulation from the
South) that spurs the West to constantly create new futures.
have also argued that the West is by definition in crisis, that is
how it refreshes itself. Without these two pillars it would have
fallen to the way side and other civilizations would have reigned
and the idealistic futures they imagine are central to this
oscillation. Macrohistorian Pitirim Sorokin writes of this in terms
of sensate (materialistic) civilization and ideational (mental
civilization) civilization. 17 He argues that we are in a
phase shift. Eisler writes of this in terms of dominator and
partnership society. 18 The first is based on rank
ordering, or where you are in the system of hierarchy with the goal
that of moving up. The second is based on different values, on
sharing futures, on not winning.
This transformation is based on stages of crisis, catharsis,
charisma and then transformation. Youth are foundationally engaged
in the first two - in noticing the crisis. As among the most
vulnerable, they can see the negative implications of globalization
far before elders. Also as they are less vested in the economic
basis and power politics, they are free to protest and to work to
create alternatives. However, many youth do not succeed. Others
imagine a time with no change where they were not the most
vulnerable - where borders protect them against others. This latter
is the plea of every sovereignty movement - youth would have jobs if
the others (illegal immigrants and large corporations) did not enter
the nation and take away opportunities and jobs.
futures (defined as how young people envision possible, probable,
preferred and transformational futures and how these futures are
empirically studied, interpreted and critically understood) must
thus be understood in the context of the code and cosmology of
civilization and the patterns of macrohistory.
must also be understood in the context of layers of reality.
At the most superficial (litany level), youth futures are
defined by the problematique of unemployment, crime, and family
breakdown. 19 At the deeper level of worldview, youth
futures express the transition of industrial to
postindustrial/postmodern (end of full employment, loss of meaning,
breakdown of the nation-state). At the deepest level of metaphor,
the crisis of identity is central - do youth have one self,
multicultural, many selves or virtual fragmented selves. In this
sense whether youths are optimistic or pessimistic matters less than
the vision of the future they have, the idealism embedded in it, and
whether they believe they have the capacity to realize that vision.
at one level the discussion of youth futures is an exercise in
banality. "The future is the youth" and other similar
statements are generally symbolic politics used to create an
appearance that something for the future is being done - that
vitality and innovation are just around the corner. It is code for
the reality of deep oppressive structures that mitigate against
OPPRESSION AND CHANGE
future of no change, or muddling through, is, however, the reality
for most in the World. In the West, this is the scenario of liberal
government, of increasing wealth, of all problems being solved
through the democratic scenario, of not rocking the boat, lest the
entire project capsize.
the non-West, muddling through is dealing with colonialism and
neo-colonialism. It means the continued centralization of power in
the hands of the military and feudal lords. Shifts in power are
merely shifts in who gets to rule not in transformations of culture
is especially so in traditional societies such as Pakistan. Youth
futures there are focused on a fatigue not with development but with
feudalism and state corruption.20 While initially the ways out were
marches against the government or the university vice-chancellor,
over time with military dictatorships and violent suppression by
right-wing parties, a deep fatigue set in. The result of this deep
fatigue has been a desire to escape to high-income areas, either
middle-eastern countries or OECD. Youth who could not escape have
generally had to make the best of it. Of course, the 'best of it'
tends to mean high heroin addiction. 21
a new factor to emerge is the Net (www). This has allowed the
hundreds of thousands of youths who cannot emigrate to the USA to
connect with youth all over the world, and for some, to find ways to
earn income (or create viruses). They are dramatically changing the
economic and political landscape of regions, especially South Asia
while global, these young people are not postmodern in the Western
sense of the word as with Doug Rushkoff's postmodern youth (who can
quickly and swiftly adapt). This is because Pakistan and other third
world nations do not exist in advanced knowledge economies. The
day-to-day realities of power surges, of blackouts, of coup d'etats
do not allow the victory of life as mediated through the modem.
Third world youth live in conditions of pre-agricultural,
agricultural, industrial, modern and postmodern.
It is this authentic diversity of worldviews and commitments
to these perspectives that makes problematic Rushkoff's hypothesis.
Far more resonating are the images of community/green/sustainability
as well as images of national success, wherein economic development
is realized and poverty is escaped. Another image and alternative,
as mentioned earlier, has been joining the madrasses
and seeing Islam as the vehicle to create a purer world. India and
other third world nations are and have undergone similar processes.
While some take strict exclusive anti-West or anti-'other'
definitions of their religious sensitivities (and are captured by
movements of the right), others, following Ashis Nandy's vision of a
Gaia of civilizations, understand that no culture is complete in
itself, all cultures exist in fields that make up humanity. 22
When constructive alternatives are not possible, then the
result is violence, either against the self, or as in Pakistan in
the last generation, against the other sect of Islam (i.e. Sunnis
attack Shia and visa versa and all attack Ahmedis).
YOUTH FUTURES AROUND THE
then can we say about youth futures around the world?
First, there are clear differences among the futures youth
practice around the world. This is so partly because of the
structures of history. The future is created by three factors. The
first is the push of the future - technology (the net, genomics),
demographics (the aging population living in the West and the global
teenager living in the Third World), for example. The second are
deep structures which are difficult, nearly impossible, to change -
feudalism in Pakistan, tribalism in Africa, Confucianism in East
Asia, imperialism and colonialism in the OECD, and patriarchy in
various forms throughout the world. Third is the image of the
future, this is the pull of the future, the vision that transforms.
It transforms either because it creates a new pattern of ideas which
aids in human social evolution (Sarkar's Microvita, 23
Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields) or it serves as a point of
coherence for practical actions.
the non-West, the Third world, traditions are stronger: Islam,
Confucianism (which cohere) as well as feudalism and patriarchy
(which create strong hierarchies). In OECD nations, the problems are
associated with a loss of meaning, a loss of a clear vision of the
future - except in the banal forms of consumption -
the problem of hyper-wealth for a few a middle class for most
(with a strong underclass of others including youth) and the
ecological problematique. This is in the context of the underlying
imperialistic nature of the West, for example, in the lack of
institutional capacity to apologize to Aboriginals in Australia.
trends impacting youth are also different. Technological
transformations are far more prevalent in the West as is the aging
of society. In the Third world it is the global teenager and huge
numbers all moving to the city in the hope of escaping the tyranny
of community and poverty in the village (while in the West, there is
movement away from the tyranny of individuality in the city and a
desperate search for community).
differences are also explained by the different expectations. In the
Third world context, the expectation is of continuing the family
tradition, of earning income to support the family. While in the
West, independence and carving one's life out in an autonomous
manner is far more important.
both cases there are pressures on youth to either conform to
structures not in their making or rebel against them. This must be
placed in the context of changing hormonal patterns and an idealism
to create a better world.
generally the form in which youth express their concerns, is based
on the social and cultural conditions young people find themselves
in. Australian youth rebel through the green movement and the dope
and dole culture (drugs and government handouts). Malaysian youth
rebel via rock and roll (Western music and clothes) and via a return
to Islam (challenging state secularism and westernization). Chinese
youth rebel through the symbols of Western democracy, spiritual
practices and the Internet. German youth rebel via the green
anti-nuke movement and as well through the neo-nazi movement.
leads back to the movie Dick. Youth, of course, are the future. More
so in the West as they become a scarce demographic commodity (with
an aging population, there will be less of them).
have seen youth revolutions and rebellions play an instrumental role
in challenging strong state structures, most recently in Belgrade
and in Israel/Palestine with the intifada, and now throughout the
world against globalization and the more extreme forms of corporate
movements emerged in the 1960s and have evolved in various forms
(the green movement, the non-governmental movements, the spiritual
movements, the ethical business movements). 24 They
continue to play an important anti-systemic view in transforming the
capitalism system. And this should not be seen as a surprise as they
are part of the alter-ego of the West.
non-West is of course mirroring the West. While the official
discourse is religion, the unofficial is escape from religion and
the chase for all things Western (T-shirts, cigarettes and rock
music). However, if the wealthier East Asian nations are a sign of
the future, then a shift to a communicative-inclusive or partnership
future as a guiding image is a possibility since they are already
showing signs of tiring of endless development.
are one aspect of the creation of a different future. What role they
will play in either solidifying global capitalism (muddling-through)
and creating the Artificial Society or in helping transform the
world to a communicative-inclusive future is not clear. Certainly
they are playing dramatic roles in all these scenarios, from street
protests against globalization to the .com revolution to working
with environmental and spiritual social movements. Through their
actions and their visions they are creating a different future.
Whether they do it through dance or music, or student rebellion or
the latest Web-site, they should not be ignored. The periphery,
after all, was once the Center. And if this generation of youth age
and normalize and naturalize themselves in the prevailing paradigm -
muddling through - there
is always the next generation to come.
Terry McCarthy, "Lost Generation," Time
(23 October 2000): 35.
Directed by Leander Haussmann, released 1999.
Vincent Geoghegan, Utopianism and Marxism (New York: Methuen,
The UNDP annual report tells us that in 1999 the combined
wealth of the world's 200 richest individuals hit 1 trillion US$
while the combined incomes of the 582 million people living in the
43 least developed countries was 146 billion US$; Jeff Gates. Democracy
at Risk: Rescuing Main
Street from Wall Street -- A Populist Vision for the 21st Century.
(Perseus Books, 2000). He writes that in the USA, the financial
wealth of the top 1% of households exceeds the combined wealth of
the bottom 95%.
In the USA, the second leading cause of death among 15-19
year olds is being murdered with a gun. Michelle Slatalla,
"Teens: A Primer," Time
(November 6, 2000): 82.
Johan Galtung, "The future: a forgotten dimension,"
in H Ornauer, H Wiberg, A Sicinki and J Galtung, (eds.) Images
of the World in the Year 2000 (Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Humanities press, 1976).
Johan Galtung, "Who got the year 2000 right - the people
or the experts," WFSF
Futures Bulletin, 25, 4, (2000): 6.
Ziauddin Sardar, Thomas
Khun and the Science Wars (Cambridge Books: Icon, 2000).
Speech at Humanity 3000 Symposium. Seattle Washington.
September 23-26th. See for details on this: Sohail Inayatullah,
"Science, Civilization and Global Ethics: Can we understand the
next 1000 years?" Journal
of Futures Studies (November 2000).
The unemployment figures for youth are generally hovering
around the 40-50% mark throughout the world, worse in poorer nations
and in most areas, minority groups are hit the hardest. See:
Andrew Cockburn, "Libya: An End to Isolation," National
Geographic, (November 2000): 22.
Johan Galtung, On
the Last 2,500 years in Western History, and some remarks on the
Coming 500," in Peter Burke (ed.) The
New Cambridge Modern History, Companion Volume, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1979).
Ibn Khaldun, The
Muqaddimah (An Introduction to History). Translated by N.J.
Dawood. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).
Doug Rushkoff, Children
of Chaos (New York: Harper Collins, 1996).
These include visioning workshops in Thailand, Malaysia, New
Zealand, Australia, Germany, Austria, Taiwan, Pakistan, Yugoslavia
and the United States. Workshop reports available from
<firstname.lastname@example.org> See, for example, Samar Ihsan,
Sohail Inayatullah and Levi Obijiofor,
"The Futures of Communication," Futures,
27, 8, October (1995), 897-904.
Sohail Inayatullah, "Possibilities for the Future,"
Development, 43,4 (December,
Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah, (eds.), Macrohistory
and Macrohistorians, (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997). Also see:
Pitirim Sorokin, Social and
Cultural Dynamics (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1970).
Riane Eisler, Sacred
Pleasure (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1996).
For the methodology behind this see, Layered Methodology.
Edited by Sohail Inayatullah. Special issue of Futures
In Pakistan for example children of 15 years form nearly half
of the country's population of 144 million and every third child
lives below the poverty line due to which they are forced into
begging and labor. Qurat-ul-Ain Sadozai, "Facts of child
poverty," The News,
(July 3, 2000): 6.
Pakistan has 1.5 million heroin addicts of a population of
150 million. Karachi alone has 600,000 addicts.
Ashis Nandy and Giri Deshingkar, "The Futures of
Cultures: An Asian Perspective," in Eleonora Masini and Yoges
Atal, (eds.), The
Futures of Asian Cultures (Bangkok: UNESCO, 1993).
Sohail Inayatullah and Jennifer Fitzgerald, (eds.), Transcending
Boundaries (Maleny, Australia: Gurukul, 1999). Rupert Sheldrake,
A New Science of Life
(Los Angeles: Jeremy Tarcher, 1981).
Immanuel Wallerstein, The
Politics of the World Economy: The States, the Movements and the
Civilizations. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).