162 Chapter 6 to explain why approach 1 plays such a large role in these hybrids by illustrating how the language between approaches overlap, without embracing the principles fully of these approaches. Particularly, much anticipation for transformation talks about deep uncertainty and deliberative action without fully taking such consequences on board. This chapter offers new insights for theory and practice, by pointing out shortcomings in approaches to transform future food systems and to the need for further research to better connect and make explicit assumptions on how anticipation and transformation connect. The final empirical chapter is chapter 5, which connects the analytical framework on anticipatory governance to the notion of opening up or closing down (Stirling, 2008) to further examine and explain what dominant dynamics in anticipatory governance mean for possibilities for action. It is a cross-regional comparative analysis of four regions of the Global South. These are: West Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Central America, and builds on document analysis, interviews, and focus group discussions. The chapter finds that across the four regions, many anticipation processes are designed in ways that intend to open up dialogue about inherent uncertainties and pluralistic actions but, by suggesting quite technocratic and linear planning actions in the present, the space of future possibilities is closed down. Some closing down occurs for strategic reasons, e.g., to tailor recommendations to existing policy frames, but others are more unconscious due to a lack of recognition of closing down dynamics. The chapter makes an important contribution by explaining that the implication of this closing down, particularly in largely donor-funded anticipation contexts, may be that the global futures industry diffuses visions that reassert the status quo and push out culturally, socially, and politically diverse future worldviews. By contrast, anticipation processes in the Central American context more often follow a different path by using pluralistic and transformative anticipation and provide an important example of how setting transformative ambitions (to stay below a 1.5-degree temperature rise) gives incentive to more pluralistic, reflexive, and transformative anticipatory governance. 6.2. Answering the research questions across the chapters Having presented a summary of the findings of the conceptual and empirical chapters, I can now answer the four questions that have guided the research. 6.2.1. Research question 1: How do different approaches to anticipatory governance in the literature relate to practice? The review of the social science and interdisciplinary sustainability science literatures on anticipation and anticipatory governance demonstrates four understandings of anticipatory governance with distinct conceptions of the future, implications for the
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