Ensemble Interventions: Networks of Public Interest Scenario Work as Field-Building Projects

Ann Mische, University of Notre Dame
Fabian D. Maldonado, University of Notre Dame

This paper examines the relational dynamics of transnational ensembles of actors engaged in collective deliberations about the future through a network analysis of public interest scenario projects since the 1990s. As a cultural technology for considering multiple plausible future pathways, scenario methods have been used to facilitate conversations on entrenched public problems, ranging from the future of democracy and transitions from armed conflict to urbanization, energy use, migration, food security, and adaptation to climate change. Scenario exercises convene heterogeneous – and sometimes adversarial – groups of participants ranging from academic or professional experts to government and corporate leaders, social movements, civil society organizations, and local residents or citizens. They are often supported by transnational coalitions of researchers, consultants, and donors. While sharing commonalities in rationale and technique, these projects vary in their inclusivity, their aggressiveness in pursuing diverse and contending viewpoints, and their proximity to elites and powerholders. Drawing on an original database of 240 scenario projects worldwide since the 1990s, we examine the historical emergence and transnational diffusion of public interest foresight interventions through a dual-mode network mapping of their initiators, partners, funders and facilitators. We unpack the relational complexity of these networks, involving varying combinations of "local" and "transnational" actors, as well as flows of personnel, techniques and resources between North and South. We show how the composition of these ensembles has a "field-building" effect, constituting relations in an emerging field of foresight interventions, with certain actors moving between multiple projects. We compare how the structure of these networks varies by region and by scenario project “genre,” contributing to asymmetries in access to resources, expertise, and political influence. We argue that these complex relational positionings in a global field contribute to the ambivalence about capitalism and democracy that we see emerging at the heart of transnational foresight work.

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 Presented in Session 159. Institutions and Morality