122 Chapter 4 Examining the Foresight4Food initiative through the lens of the novel analytical framework on anticipatory governance recently advanced by Muiderman et al. (2020) and later Feola (2015) allowed us to typologize and systematize implicit assumptions and their implications for sustainability transformations within an influential global foresight community on food systems. In the empirical work, the anticipatory governance framework helped to bring to light often-implicit conceptions of the future in the design of anticipatory processes. Participants expressed that applying the four approaches to their work was an ‘eye opener’, which helped to elucidate steering effects of diverse approaches on actions in the present. Secondly, it allowed us to demonstrate that anticipation practitioners use hybrid approaches and that certain perspectives dominate within these hybrids. Connecting the analytical framework on anticipatory governance with the analytical framework on transformations further illustrated how fundamentally different assumptions about the future relate to approaches to transformations. In conclusion, we believe that the insights of this paper have value for 1) those involved in setting more effective and inclusive research and practice agendas for the future of foresight and anticipatory governance of sustainability transformations; 2) practitioners who want to become more reflexive about the consequences of their visions of, and approaches to, the future and the assumptions behind them; and 3) those working on sustainability transformations and interested in using anticipatory processes for more democratic and radically transformative actions. Furthermore, it also highlights the need for reflexivity about the link between anticipatory practices and the nature, depth and direction of food systems and sustainability transformations.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw