The Sociology of the Future [antikvár]

FOREWORDWhen I first heard of the project that resulted in this volume, and discussed it with Professors Bell and Mau, I knew that it was something I wanted to encourage. It has been encouraged by the Russell Sage Foundation, but it has also been encouraged by me as a colleague. Indeed, I used many of the editors' essential ideas for my own presidential address in 1966 to the American Sociological Association ("The Utility of Utopias") and persuaded Professor Bell to present a plenary session paper at the same convention on "The Future as the Cause of the Present."It was only bad sociology that led us to think that we could not discuss social change, and particularly bad sociology that led us to think that history and the future had no connection with current plans. With this excellent collection of essays we are further forward.The editors had a grand conception, based on deep knowledge and considerable field experience in the new nations of the Caribbean. The central idea was that new nations must invent a (possibly spurious) history and set future goals that will inform current decisions. Therefore, what is being discussed here is the invention of the past as well as the future. For to invent the future may require the invention of a past, often poorly recorded.This book presents a set of essays, mainly arranged around the central theme of "images of the future." The editors explicate this theme in their introductory essay and show how it has informed a considerable amount of sociological literature, even though much of that literature has appeared to use static rather than dynamic models of social systems."Futurology" now commands considerable time and talent, and references to those efforts can be found throughout the volume and in ari appendix. But the authors have spared us endless and tedious methodological discussions of modes of forecasting. Instead, they have attended to the uses of plans and of images of the future and the current consequences of envisioned future states. In this book we travel from the former sugar-and-slave islands of the British West Indies to New York University (another former colony of some imperial power?) and from the broadly theoretical to the specific without too many awkward sea-changes.But the theme is constant and suffers no loss from application to a variety of settings. On the contrary. Did we not claim that sociology is aIX