16 Chapter 1 2 and 4 in its analysis of dominant approaches to anticipatory governance in various sustainability contexts across the globe and interrogates how dominant approaches open up or close down what are seen as possible futures and viable governance commitments. These empirical studies provide important insights into anticipatory governance processes in various sustainability contexts, with a focus on climate change and its impacts on food systems, but the implications of the research findings go beyond these domains (section 6.4). The empirical insights are also used to refine the analytical framework and further conceptualize anticipatory governance. 1.4. Theoretical contributions to main bodies of literature The conceptual and empirical insights from this thesis primarily contribute to the further conceptualization of anticipatory governance (section 1.3.1). However, the connection between future studies and anticipation and environmental governance in this research also means that there is an able opportunity for both disciplines to learn from the theoretical and empirical insights generated (sections 1.3.2 and 1.3.3). Finally, the research provides important empirical insights into the dominant dynamics of anticipatory governance for scholarship on the politics of anticipation (section 1.3.4). The envisioned theoretical contributions to each of these bodies are explained below. 1.4.1. Unpacking diverse understandings of anticipatory governance This thesis foremost contributes to the further conceptualization of anticipatory governance, an emerging concept that has spread across a dispersed set of social science and interdisciplinary sustainability science literatures. Most broadly, anticipatory governance can be understood as “the evolution of steering mechanisms in the present to adapt to and/or shape uncertain climate futures” (Vervoort & Gupta, 2018, p. 104). However, the concept is differently understood across those literatures with different ontological and epistemological underpinnings (chapter 2). The term anticipatory governance is most closely linked to responsible research and innovation to understand how diverse societal actors ex-ante steer technological progress (Barben et al., 2008; Guston, 2014). Another domain where anticipatory governance scholarship is growing is that of sociotechnical change, to analyze the use of biotechnology (Gupta, 2013), nanotechnology (Anderson, 2007; Barben et al., 2008) and emerging calls for geoengineering (Flegal & Gupta, 2018; Talberg et al., 2018). Furthermore, public planning scholars have developed the anticipatory governance of national security risks (Fuerth, 2009). Environmental governance scholars advanced thinking on the anticipatory governance of socioecological systems to increase the resilience of coupled ecosystems and livelihoods under a changing climate (Boyd et al., 2015). This body of work connects to work on resilience (Folke et al., 2005) and complex systems (Rosen, 1985; Young, 2017). Anticipatory governance for climate mitigation and adaptation is
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