53 Four approaches to anticipatory governance 2 detailing the four approaches are not repeated here again, in order to improve the readability of the figure. As Figure 2.2 illustrates, many of these methods overlap and can be used across these continua and approaches. The crucial distinction lies thus not so much in type of method used in the four approaches — these can be similar — but in the ends they serve. These ends can vary significantly, as can the associated perceptions of the future and actions in the present (for a recent extensive review of anticipatory tools and methods in envisioning climate engineered futures, see Low & Schäfer, 2019). Our analysis supplements hence the insight of Anderson (2007, p. 158), who argues that different methods and tools of anticipation “produce different epistemic objects through which future possibilities and potentialities are disclosed, objectified, communicated and rendered mobile, through the very way in which they are employed”. As our analysis suggests, even if the anticipatory methods are similar, the ways they are employed can vary because of the diverse conceptions of the future they take as a starting point, the actions to be taken in the present that they prioritize, and the ends they seek to achieve. 2.6. Conclusion This article has reviewed scholarly writings on anticipation and anticipatory governance in the social science and interdisciplinary sustainability science literatures. Our focus on explicit and implicit notions of anticipatory governance across a wide range of research fields makes our analysis different both in scope and intent from existing typologies of engagements with the future, particularly in futures studies research, which have focused more narrowly on futures methods and content (see e.g. Bradfield et al., 2005; van Notten et al., 2003; Wilkinson & Eidinow, 2008). We have identified four approaches to anticipatory governance here, each of which embodies different conceptions of the future and actions to be taken in the present, in order to realize different ends. Divergences across these elements allowed us to identify and map four distinct and internally coherent approaches to anticipatory governance. We visualized these four approaches to anticipatory governance in Figure 2.1, with the x-axis depicting a continuum of diverse conceptions of the future; and the y-axis depicting the distinct implications for actions in the present. We mapped and summarized the content of each approach to anticipatory governance in the boxed text, including here the ultimate aim as well. We also analyzed the tools and methods of anticipation that these four approaches rely on, finding that many of these are common to more than one approach. In Figure 2.2 we
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