Marcus Bussey

Bayesian belief modeling of climate change impacts for informing regional adaptation options

A sequential approach to combining two established modeling techniques (systems thinking and Bayesian Belief Networks; BBNs) was developed and applied to climate change adaptation research within the South East Queensland Climate Adaptation Research Initiative (SEQ-CARI). Six participatory workshops involving 66 stakeholders based within SEQ produced six system conceptualizations and 22 alpha-level BBNs. The outcomes of the initial systems modeling exercise successfully allowed the selection of critical determinants of key response variables for in depth analysis within more homogeneous, sector-based groups of participants. Using two cases, this article focuses on the processes and methodological issues relating to the use of the BBN modeling technique when the data are based on expert opinion. The study expected to find both generic and specific determinants of adaptive capacity based on the perceptions of the stakeholders involved. While generic determinants were found (e.g. funding and awareness levels), sensitivity analysis identified the importance of pragmatic, context-based determinants, which also had methodological implications. The article raises questions about the most appropriate scale at which the methodology applied can be used to identify useful generic determinants of adaptive capacity when, at the scale used, the most useful determinants were sector-specific. Comparisons between individual BBN conditional probabilities identified diverging and converging beliefs, and that the sensitivity of response variables to direct descendant nodes was not always perceived consistently. It was often the accompanying narrative that provided important contextual information that explained observed differences, highlighting the benefits of using critical narrative with modeling tools.

Building adaptive capacity in South East Queensland, Australia

The effectiveness of various adaptation options is dependent on the capacity to plan, design and implement them. Understanding the determinants of adaptive capacity is, therefore, crucial for effective responses to climate change. This paper offers an assessment of adaptive capacity across a range of sectors in South East Queensland, Australia. The paper has four parts, including (1) an overview of adaptive capacity, in particular as a learning process; (2) a description of the various methods used to determine adaptive capacity; (3) a synthesis of the determinants of adaptive capacity; and (4) the identification of mechanisms to build adaptive capacity in the region. We conclude that the major issue impacting adaptive capacity is not the availability of physical resources but the dominant social, political and institutional culture of the region.

Concepts and effects: ordering and practice in foresight

Purpose – This article seeks to reflect on the role of key concepts in foresight and futures work. The goal is to explore a set of concepts and link them to the effects they have in the world of foresight practice. It is argued that concepts order foresight practice and that though each foresight context and practitioner is unique, concepts bring a sense of order and coherence to foresight work and futures thinking. This reflection is placed in the context of a set of first principles the author acknowledges as his starting place for futures thinking and foresight practice. Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes the form of conceptual analysis. Findings – Concepts have effects and these can be assessed based on their ability to increase social and personal resilience in contexts characterised by change, complexity and uncertainty. Research limitations/implications – Foresight practitioners clarify their own values and ethics through reflection on the concepts they use and the processes they deploy ...

From change to progress: critical spirituality and the futures of futures studies

Abstract This paper argues that for futures studies (FS) to have a future that is relevant to current shifts in meaning and consciousness, then it must incorporate into its methods and practices a sense of mystery founded on a critically spiritual sensibility. Critical spirituality redefines rationality and empiricism by including within their framework both the somatic and the meditative as valid and necessary components of any research activity. In the short term this means a shift away from the current Western obsession with change and a stepping back to allow for critical distance in order to understand that it is in the appreciation of progress — a fundamental shift in consciousness to include the spiritual dimensions of human experience — that discourse will emerge to take FS to the heart of civilisational renewal. In allowing for mystery, silence and the meditative empiricism required to access these categories, critical spirituality lessens the gap between thought and action and thus enables truly transformative academic practice to emerge. The idea of progress has been central to the unfolding of the modernist project over the previous century. Yet as the century drew to a close it became increasingly hard to keep faith with the idea in the face of growing disillusionment and the obvious failure of modernism to deliver what people most wanted: happiness born of personal fulfillment. A growing range of voices in the critical futures field have been questioning the assumption that change in material terms equates with progress. These voices fall into four main areas. • Post modernist and post structuralist thinkers; • Feminists empowering postmodern discourse with value laden analyses of power; • Post colonial thinkers with a debt to neo-Marxist and critical theorists; • Neo-humanist thinkers with an investment in all three of the above, who work from a critically spiritual perspective. In this paper I am going to argue that a Neo-humanist vision of the futures of Futures Studies is one which will fully engage the human potential by activating a critically spiritual methodology. This is important as many of the tools of futures work are actually intended for use in anticipating and managing change (uncritically) but have little relevance when considering the nature of progress. Those methods and techniques which engage with the less analytic more visionary process of futures are much more relevant to progress because they actively involve the individuals in the act of ‘futures building’ as opposed to ‘futures scanning’. ‘Progress’ here is used to mean fundamental change in the consciousness of both the individual and collective mind. It is essentially spiritual and has no clear temporal or spacial restrictions being timeless, or as Joanna Macy would have it, anchored in “deep time” [1] . Change, on the other hand, is very much associated with technical and material movement, having no connection with the inner fabric of the human psyche. There is no appreciation of spirit here, though great attention is paid to gross national product and the latest technical innovation to hit the market. Futures Studies has the potential to be responsive to future human dilemmas. But to be so it will need to make the effort to embrace tools and concepts that lie beyond the narrow pall of academic rationality as it is currently constituted. A greater space is already emerging within the field that not only tolerates but promotes imaginative and creative processes that break down the intellectual prudery of those who are attached to their own discipline and have little capacity to envision beyond narrow and self imposed confines. Thus we find music and song, poetry and story, art and theatre effective vehicles for work on deeper forms of consciousness. Visioning and imaging workshops such as those run by Joanna Macy, Elise Boulding, John Seed and Warren Ziegler (to name but a few) are growing in power and sophistication. Meditation and other reflective practices — the spiritual quest — seeking to plumb the depth of the human soul become relevant when seen within a broadened definition of rationality and research. Clearly futurists need to be able to assess and describe likely changes in the short, medium and long term but their central goal should be to facilitate areas of human endeavor which can benefit from a closer linkage between action, the consciousness that informs and directs the action and the spirit that underwrites the consciousness. Equally clear is the fact that not all futures trends are as relevant to this deeper layer of operation within Futures Studies.

Six shamanic concepts: charting the between in futures work

Purpose – This paper offers six shamanic futures concepts to augment Inayatullahs six pillars, questions and concepts of futures studies.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on Ashis Nandys use of the shaman as a futures category that posits alterity and the unknowable as the dissenting component of futures studies, six concepts (geophilosophy, rhizome, intercivilisational dialogue, heterotopia, immanence and hybridity) from poststructural thinking are proposed to offer an account of the agency‐structure interface (context) that is of practical value to futures practice.Findings – Futures praxis is pragmatic and goal driven, seeking preferred futures outcomes for those in context. The six shamanic futures concepts further this end by outlining conceptual processes that deepen understanding of context as a co‐creative and living space.Research limitations/implications – Futures studies is becoming increasingly sophisticated; the six shamanic concepts push practitioners understanding of how to facilitat...

Tantra as episteme: A pedagogy of the future

In the face of the contemporary universitys failure to escape from economic rationality and therefore create environments conducive to positive futures an alternative model of university is proposed. This is based on an episteme rooted in Tantra, a world view that allows for a multi-layering of discourse to occur in order to greatly extend the universitys mandate as a cultural catalyst for future generations. It is argured that Tantra, which is situated in a resurgent indigenous consciousness, is both ancient and modern possessing as it does the deep wisdoms of this episteme while being energised with a liberatory ethic aimed at physical, social and spiritual emancipation from exploitative ideologies.

The Hidden Curriculum of Futures Studies Introducing the Futures Senses

Communicating Futures Studies to graduates steeped in specialized disciplinary domains calls for a well-structured series of thought interventions. To achieve this considerable reflexivity is called for on the teacher’s part. This article looks at futures pedagogy and my personal “hidden curriculum.” These reflections hinge on the teaching of a course titled Business and Media Futures. The skeleton of the course is presented, and an outline of the deeper learning processes is offered as a Causal Layered Pedagogy that incorporates the notion of the five Futures Senses.

Weaving pedagogies of possibility

It is easy to feel impatient with the pace of change when it comes to developing truly sustainable culture yet things are happening all over the world to lay the ground work, create the architecture and language of sustainability as a cultural reality. In Weaving Pedagogies of Possibility the authors seek to leverage from such developments. In this chapter the authors share their adventure in designing an open learning system within, across and between their institutions. We insist this work involves pedagogies in the plural as we seek to affirm and embrace alternative approaches to learning that draw on many cultures and places. We take as axiomatic that the world is always becoming other than what it appears to be; that this is contested space; and that it is in the play of environment, context, structure, culture and identity that the future lies. This sensitivity to the multiple and contested nature of social and ecological space lies at the heart of our vision and practice of pedagogies of possibility.

Anticipatory Aesthetics: New Identities and Future Senses

Anticipatory aesthetics is offered as a critical process of engagement, via a range of futures senses, with conditions that constrain neohumanist possibilities of the human and non-human actors resident to our planet. Its approach offers us an adventure into possibility via a reflection on aspects of the human ‘everyday’ we take for granted. We navigate the world sensorially both as physical and cultural beings. Our physical five senses are well-known to us even though their operation is still in many ways a mystery; our cultural senses orient us in time and space and are even less understood. In this chapter, these cultural senses are described as offering us a futures orientation with an anticipatory edge. The case is made that the aesthetic arranges perception around relationship with the past, the present and the future, and that these can be harnessed to understand and enact richer identities for the future.

Liberal education may be dead but the magic will not die

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to challenge the assumption that liberal education as we understand it today, is alive and well in our institutions of higher education. Design/methodology/approach – This article is a reflective essay Findings – The spirit of liberal education is alive and well but has largely fled the university and taken up residence in less formal, more flexible educational contexts. Originality/value – This article plays the devils advocate and argues that we need to rethink how we approach and signify “liberal education.”