174 Chapter 6 deliberate the political implications of certain anticipated futures, little critical and reflexive anticipation happens regarding this performative nature of anticipation, nor how recommendations that follow from anticipation are translated and negotiated, and what this means for whose futures are being represented or not. The most fundamental insight into this ‘marketplace’ is the closing down of pluralistic and critical forms at the onset of anticipation processes. Scholars have advocated for a better representation of diverse worldviews in global images of future progress (Appadurai, 2013; Escobar, 2020; Jasanoff & Kim, 2015) but examples in this research have shown that anticipation relies heavily on the science, technologies and funding of external consults and donors – a global foresight industry that sometimes but not always ‘trickles down’ in terms of reinforcing local capacities. While many anticipatory governance scholars see stakeholder participation as a prerequisite for legitimately making decisions about future socioecological and sociotechnical change (Boyd et al., 2015; Guston, 2014), stakeholders too often lack agency to determine what their future may look like (chapters 3 and 5) and are involved in anticipation processes in ways that educate rather than empower. Anticipation indeed relies too heavily on expert advice at the expense of citizen views (Pickering, 2019). Through the lens of opening up or closing down, the research findings furthermore explain how frames of the future tend to dispose controversies, alternative visions andmarginalized perspectives in a process of closing down towards existing policy frames (Stirling, 2008). An example in Burkina Faso demonstrated that what is considered subjective knowledge is communicated non-transparently and surpassed by quantified scenarios (chapter 3); and thus more research is needed on the role of transparency and what it means for the accountability and legitimacy of anticipatory governance (Gupta, Boas, et al., 2020). The conflict over the scenario sets in Bangladesh (chapter 5) furthermore illustrated how what is considered policy-relevant shapes the outcomes that should follow from knowledge (Turnhout et al., 2016). These examples explain how a process of translation and delimitation reduces future possibilities for action. Scholars argued that science for sustainability needs to be more just and inclusive (Lahsen & Turnhout, 2021), be clear on the functioning of scientific processes, abandon claims about truth and confirm to criteria beyond validity and reliability, such as social robustness, societal responsibility, effectiveness, and legitimacy of scientific knowledge (Leroy et al., 2010). But this thesis shows that incumbent actors prefer claims about a scientific ‘truth’, which gives incentive to a process of translation to reveal normativity. Many anticipation processes thus close futures down, even while pretending to open them up to diverse worldviews and alternative futures (chapter 5). Processes of closing down of future possibilities for action can have negative material and discursive consequences (Nordmann, 2014; Paprocki, 2019). Actors have power to
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