20 Chapter 1 connection of futures studies and environmental governance, this thesis provides novel and holistic insights into how approaches to anticipatory governance intend to realize sustainably transformations in diverse contexts across the globe (and research question 3 is dedicated to this inquiry). In general, the thesis is meant as foundational work for future research agendas that connect to the aforementioned important concerns. The empirical and conceptual insights could be useful to research on the role of transparency in guiding effective and legitimate anticipatory governance (Gupta et al., 2020). Or it can help examine who has agency to frame future problems and make authoritative decisions about the future (Stripple & Pattberg, 2014; van der Heijden et al., 2019), or what a long-term future-orientation would mean for rethinking institutional structures (Beunen & Patterson, 2019; Hoffman et al., 2021). 1.4.4. The politics of anticipation The focus on dominant approaches (research question 2) and their implication for action (research questions 3 and 4) means that the role of power is central to this thesis, and as such the research builds strongly on insights brought forward by Science and Technology Studies (often referred to as STS) and anthropology. Their constructivist perspectives on futures work have been pivotal to examine and explain dominant dynamics in anticipatory governance. Scholars have provided key insights into the construction of knowledge and its usage in decision-making about the future. Jasanoff (2004, p. 35) noted that “science is a form of organized work, a site of politics, a marketplace of ideas, an exercise in meaning-making, and an instrument of power.” In this line of thinking, it no longer suffices to believe that anticipation presents neutral, or valuefree responses and outcomes. Visions of the future shape discourses and practices of governance and thereby structure the life worlds of societies (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015). The work on imagined communities (Anderson, 2006), social imaginaries (Taylor, 2004), sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015) and fictional expectations (Beckert, 2016) help us think about the importance of the ways in which ideas about the future materialize and become collectively shared and how these frames, in turn, shape our understanding of what needs to happen. STS scholarship connects and informs environmental politics in studies on the contested role of science in understanding and shaping uncertain future socioecological and socioecological progress, in biotechnology (Gupta, 2013; Jansen & Gupta, 2009), nanotechnology (Anderson, 2007; Macnaghten, 2009) and climate engineering (Bellamy et al., 2012; Gupta & Möller, 2018; Low, 2021). It also informs debates on the de facto governance effects of vanguard visions that have not yet been institutionally stabilized (Flegal & Gupta, 2018). These studies point to the ways in which grand narratives of technological progress define the public good or delimit and control risk in projects aimed to develop technologies. Foresight processes are thus sites where science and policy are co-produced, and this thinking informed analytical
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