Thursday, July 31, 2003
RETHINKING TOURISM
One of many papers of Sohail Inayatollah - worth checking out - this is on Future of Tourism
One of many papers of Sohail Inayatollah - worth checking out - this is on Future of Tourism
Thursday, July 24, 2003
Books from the Earth Policy Institute Some chapters downloadable
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
A note on Socioeconomic Foresight
Ian Miles
Futures studies bring systematic methods to bear on appraising opportunities for action, in the light of the contexts in which these actions are liable to be undertaken. This is more than forecasting (projecting trends), more than listing critical technologies or policy measures, more than identifying appropriate objectives. It spans and integrates all of these.
(For more on Foresight, see the blog at fullyfledgedforesight.blogspot.com.)
Socioeconomic foresight is an effort to apply such approaches to
understanding,
defining the scope for action, and
improving the articulation of knowledge and centres of expertise
in a range of social and economic fields of interest. It is thus very much more than the conventional forecasting exercises which stop at identifying key trends and alternative scenarios; such work is important, but is just one contribution to foresight.
Foresight may be organised in a vast range of different ways. The particular methods employed derive from common underlying principles, but are determined in the light of the specific aims and audiences of the process. What is common to these methods is the elicitation and consolidation of expert knowledge of various kinds, and the synthesis of such knowledge in new outputs.
This pulling-together of material is not merely a cognitive affair, an intellectual overview created by a small elite team. Rather, the cognitive effort is a matter of new awareness in a wide constituency. It is accompanied and informed by a development of new or modified social networks. This change in social networks involves people expert in various related areas becoming more aware of the relevance of each others’ fields of work, and of the knowledge resources, key contacts, and operational assumptions which characterise them. Foresight is thus in part an effort to change the innovation culture of the policy environment, so that actions (and actors) can be much better-informed as to interacting influences.
Socioeconomic foresight is a notion modelled on the technology foresight exercises of recent years. In the latter exercises, efforts have been made:
to stimulate wide participation in activities which can help...
...to identify, for various fields of science and technology, and for various fields of application of science and technology,
what the emerging opportunities for creating innovations may be, what sorts of research and other effort need to underpin these, and whether the relevant capabilities are available on national, regional or global scales,
what the market demands and social needs are which could lead to the innovations being successful in terms of finding significant real-world application and uptake,
and what barriers and constraints may lie in the way of realising such opportunities.
Furthermore, wide participation in the further dissemination, elaboration, and mobilisation of action around the results of the work is also required.
The specific measures employed in such exercises typically involve mixtures of expert panels, consultation workshops, consultancy studies, meetings with senior officials, questionnaire surveys (Delphi and other methods), and in some cases facilitation of spin-off foresight exercises for specific interest groups which can be fed back into the main programme. Many of these tools can be employed, with appropriate modification, in socioeconomic foresight.
Socioeconomic foresight might be organised around societal topics - in which case the first challenge is to define a suitable set of topics. Or it might be organised around distinctive social science disciplines. (In technology foresight, the bullet points above make reference to “various fields of science and technology, and for various fields of application of science and technology”.) The former topic-centred approach is generally preferable, unless the main goal of the socioeconomic foresight exercise is to inform disciplinary research priorities. In any case, an argument can be made that disciplinary boundaries precisely need to be challenged if real foresight is to be undertaken. Granted this, it will be valuable to sample the whole range of social science disciplines to identify opportunities and issues which they may raise.
Among the main objectives of a socioeconomic foresight exercise could be:
informing governmental and intergovernmental agencies, and the expert and concerned populace at large, as to the critical issues and opportunities which confront their societies over a period of (say) up to 25 years, and the best available views of the costs and benefits of different options. (Costs and benefits are not understood here purely in a narrow financial sense: environmental, quality of life, and other factors are implicated.)
helping to establish a knowledge infrastructure, including social networks, information resources, and both visible and invisible colleges which can further develop such knowledge and help to implement and forward the conclusions for policy and for the strategy of business and voluntary organisations which emerge from the exercise.
To be effective, such an effort has to have wide credibility. It must be seen as being potentially efficacious; as being responsive to inputs from a wide constituency rather than representing entrenched interests; as involving participation from a diversity of actors and populations, while maintaining access to significant policymakers. One implication of this is that while the broad principles and stages of an exercise can be set out in advance, much of the detail has to be elaborated as part of the process.
For example, a list of socioeconomic themes which are to be considered, which would be the foci of different panels, questionnaires, etc. has to be established. It will be necessary to delimit these themes in various ways: e.g. depending on its main policy clients, the exercise might need to be restricted to a set of themes around labour markets, training, working pattern and social security arrangements; or around family structures, housing systems, childcare and the elderly; or around governance, central-local relations, political participation. The total range of potential topics is huge and the interconnectedness of society is such that topics necessarily overlap and interpenetrate. Compromises will have to be reached, but the point is that a selection of themes will need to be made by participants in the exercise, with wide consultation, within (flexible) terms of reference decided in the first instance by the sponsor of the exercise.
Ian Miles
Futures studies bring systematic methods to bear on appraising opportunities for action, in the light of the contexts in which these actions are liable to be undertaken. This is more than forecasting (projecting trends), more than listing critical technologies or policy measures, more than identifying appropriate objectives. It spans and integrates all of these.
(For more on Foresight, see the blog at fullyfledgedforesight.blogspot.com.)
Socioeconomic foresight is an effort to apply such approaches to
understanding,
defining the scope for action, and
improving the articulation of knowledge and centres of expertise
in a range of social and economic fields of interest. It is thus very much more than the conventional forecasting exercises which stop at identifying key trends and alternative scenarios; such work is important, but is just one contribution to foresight.
Foresight may be organised in a vast range of different ways. The particular methods employed derive from common underlying principles, but are determined in the light of the specific aims and audiences of the process. What is common to these methods is the elicitation and consolidation of expert knowledge of various kinds, and the synthesis of such knowledge in new outputs.
This pulling-together of material is not merely a cognitive affair, an intellectual overview created by a small elite team. Rather, the cognitive effort is a matter of new awareness in a wide constituency. It is accompanied and informed by a development of new or modified social networks. This change in social networks involves people expert in various related areas becoming more aware of the relevance of each others’ fields of work, and of the knowledge resources, key contacts, and operational assumptions which characterise them. Foresight is thus in part an effort to change the innovation culture of the policy environment, so that actions (and actors) can be much better-informed as to interacting influences.
Socioeconomic foresight is a notion modelled on the technology foresight exercises of recent years. In the latter exercises, efforts have been made:
to stimulate wide participation in activities which can help...
...to identify, for various fields of science and technology, and for various fields of application of science and technology,
what the emerging opportunities for creating innovations may be, what sorts of research and other effort need to underpin these, and whether the relevant capabilities are available on national, regional or global scales,
what the market demands and social needs are which could lead to the innovations being successful in terms of finding significant real-world application and uptake,
and what barriers and constraints may lie in the way of realising such opportunities.
Furthermore, wide participation in the further dissemination, elaboration, and mobilisation of action around the results of the work is also required.
The specific measures employed in such exercises typically involve mixtures of expert panels, consultation workshops, consultancy studies, meetings with senior officials, questionnaire surveys (Delphi and other methods), and in some cases facilitation of spin-off foresight exercises for specific interest groups which can be fed back into the main programme. Many of these tools can be employed, with appropriate modification, in socioeconomic foresight.
Socioeconomic foresight might be organised around societal topics - in which case the first challenge is to define a suitable set of topics. Or it might be organised around distinctive social science disciplines. (In technology foresight, the bullet points above make reference to “various fields of science and technology, and for various fields of application of science and technology”.) The former topic-centred approach is generally preferable, unless the main goal of the socioeconomic foresight exercise is to inform disciplinary research priorities. In any case, an argument can be made that disciplinary boundaries precisely need to be challenged if real foresight is to be undertaken. Granted this, it will be valuable to sample the whole range of social science disciplines to identify opportunities and issues which they may raise.
Among the main objectives of a socioeconomic foresight exercise could be:
informing governmental and intergovernmental agencies, and the expert and concerned populace at large, as to the critical issues and opportunities which confront their societies over a period of (say) up to 25 years, and the best available views of the costs and benefits of different options. (Costs and benefits are not understood here purely in a narrow financial sense: environmental, quality of life, and other factors are implicated.)
helping to establish a knowledge infrastructure, including social networks, information resources, and both visible and invisible colleges which can further develop such knowledge and help to implement and forward the conclusions for policy and for the strategy of business and voluntary organisations which emerge from the exercise.
To be effective, such an effort has to have wide credibility. It must be seen as being potentially efficacious; as being responsive to inputs from a wide constituency rather than representing entrenched interests; as involving participation from a diversity of actors and populations, while maintaining access to significant policymakers. One implication of this is that while the broad principles and stages of an exercise can be set out in advance, much of the detail has to be elaborated as part of the process.
For example, a list of socioeconomic themes which are to be considered, which would be the foci of different panels, questionnaires, etc. has to be established. It will be necessary to delimit these themes in various ways: e.g. depending on its main policy clients, the exercise might need to be restricted to a set of themes around labour markets, training, working pattern and social security arrangements; or around family structures, housing systems, childcare and the elderly; or around governance, central-local relations, political participation. The total range of potential topics is huge and the interconnectedness of society is such that topics necessarily overlap and interpenetrate. Compromises will have to be reached, but the point is that a selection of themes will need to be made by participants in the exercise, with wide consultation, within (flexible) terms of reference decided in the first instance by the sponsor of the exercise.
