GRK 2836:  Fixing Futures: Investigating Technologies of Anticipation in Contemporary Societies

• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology, Non-European Cultures, Jewish Studies and Religious Studies
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 467892294

Contemporary societies are confronted with novel constellations of political, economic, and ecological challenges ranging from global warming, pandemic outbreaks to refugee crises and financial meltdowns. When anticipating contingent futures, societies tend to rely increasingly on ‘technological fixes’, investing them with the capacity of averting or solving future problems. Taking up insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS), the research training group sets out to empirically examine how ‘fixing futures’ works and to what effects. It proposes to investigate two different dimensions of ‘fixing’: ‘stabilisation’ and ‘repair’, focusing on economic practices, modes of government, and processes of life as the main research areas. The RTG considers the interplay of practices of ‘stabilisation’ and ‘repair’ as indicators of what we understand as ‘technologies of anticipation’ – that is, socio-material orderings and temporal orientations that have the capacity to define entire domains of knowledge, forms of social organisation, or even societies as a whole. Tied to a politics of temporality and affect, technologies of anticipation mark a move away from current concerns towards speculative forecast, a shift from scientific certainty, facts, and truth to prediction, precaution, and preparedness. In doing this, they not only aim to identify and imagine future trajectories but also to arrange or accommodate what is yet to come. A central task of the proposed research training group, therefore, is to examine how such technologies are organised, materialised, mobilised, and – equally important – how they are criticised and contested. The RTG attends to the power asymmetries and operational tensions involved in the enactment of anticipatory practices to inquire what forms of life are to be protected, enhanced, or saved (and which are excluded, marginalised, or destroyed). The originality and significance of the research training group lies in the fact that, by building on recent scholarship in science and technology studies, it seeks both to inform societal debates with robust research-driven knowledge and to contribute to contemporary scientific discussions on future-making in sociology, cultural anthropology, human geography, and beyond. As a unique collaboration among cultural anthropologists, human geographers, and sociologists, the research training group will strengthen and extend existing forms of cooperation such as the STS Master’s Programme ‘Economies, Governance, Life’, and The Lab for Studies in Science and Technology (LaSST) at Goethe University Frankfurt. Given the distinctive profile of the interdisciplinary faculty and the innovative study programme, the research training group will prepare early career researchers for a wide range of professional careers in the academic field and beyond.

• DFG Programme: Research Training Groups
• Applicant Institution: Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Thomas Lemke
• Participating Researchers: Dr. Josef Barla; Professor Dr. Marc Boeckler; Professorin Dr. Barbara Brandl, until 1/2023; Professorin Dr. Martina Klausner; Professor Dr. Peter Lindner; Professorin Dr. Lizzie Richardson; Professor Dr. Thomas Scheffer; Professorin Gisela Welz, Ph.D.