121 Anticipatory governance of sustainability transformations 4 These needs clash with the current dominance of approach 1 in food systems anticipation, which appears to result in propositions to transform food systems that are more about incremental adjustments to existing (neoliberal) modes of food systems governance than providing structural adjustments to its weaknesses and system failings (Maye and Duncan, 2017). Anticipation processes in line with approaches 3 and 4 can help include diverse perspectives, mobilize different groups, explore alternative futures and criticize assumptions. Without such pluralistic and critical approaches, voices are lost, perspectives are excluded, action become undesirably top-down and capacities for transforming unsustainable systems are waisted (Hajer et al., 2015; Bennett et al., 2016). Using elements of approach 3 or 4 from a fundamentally approach 1 framing closes down such future possibilities in the guise of opening them up (Stirling, 2008). 4.5.4. Ways forward for anticipation in support of sustainability transformations Engaging with the politics on anticipation means to embrace that sustainability futures are complex and normative, and this should not be minimized or structured to avoid the relations of power and contestations in them (Duncan and Claeys, 2018). Several interesting (combinations of) methods and tools of anticipation offer key avenues for engaging with ‘who wants what?’. They also make the question of ‘what is possible?’ explicitly political (Escobar, 2020). In terms of approach 3, complementing quantitative and qualitative scenario processes with experiential and creative methods might more effectively mobilize the plurality of views in policy action in the present, by building infrastructures for ‘worldmaking’ or ‘future making’ beyond established pathways (Vervoort et al., 2015; Esguerra, 2019). Approach 3, with its focus on pluralistic, politically aware visioning and the mobilization of actors is currently opening up in a number of different, fruitful directions. Experimenting with experiential futures (Candy and Dunagan, 2017), game design (Vervoort, 2019), and role-playing can help support processes of imaginative engagement with the future in ways that empower diverse societal actors to take part in reshaping their futures (Vervoort et al., 2015). Anticipation processes could also be informed by approach 4 thinking by, for example, imagining futures with the specific goal to test and challenge how imagination defines the boundaries of understanding what the future may look like (Esguerra, 2019; Low and Schäfer, 2019). Moreover, approach 4 can be crucial to building critical futures literacy as a skill among anticipation practitioners (Goode and Godhe, 2017; Mangnus et al., 2021). And thirdly, on-going work on the discourses and performativity of futures can be expanded and developed (Späth and Rohracher, 2010; see e.g. Altamirano-Allende and Selin, 2016; Hajer and Versteeg, 2019), including questioning who has agency to determine future problems and action in the present (Groves, 2017). These approaches can contribute to making futures work more reflexive in terms of assumptions and their implications for action.
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