This workshop brings together different scholars from different disciplines who share a common interest in the study and the history   of the future as well as in the analysis of the political uses of predictions.The different presentations will underline the role of knowledge, future technologies and expertise.

9.15 – 9.45   Introduction: Why study the Future?
Jenny Andersson, Sciences Po-CERI/CNRS and Ariel Colonomos, Sciences Po-CERI/CNRS


9.45 – 11.15   Knowledge, Futures and Governance

The Great Future Debate and the Struggle for a New World: A Global History of the Future?
   Jenny Andersson, Sciences Po-CERI/CNRS
Towards A Social History of the Purification of Governance: The Case of the IIASA
   Egle Rindzeviciute, Gothenburg Research Institute, University of Gothenburg

Discussant: Elke Siegfried, University of Augsburg, and the German Historical Institute, London

This session is devoted to the political, cultural and social history of the future, and particularly to tracing the roots of modern forms of foresight in the post war period. To what extent does the future have a central role in shaping modern tools and technologies of governance and modern conceptions of politics?


11.15 – 1.00   Predicting Financial Crises

Prediction in Contemporary Global Finance: an Element of Power?
   Ivan Manokha, Sciences Po
Sovereign Ratings as Normative Predictions: The Preference for a Stable Future
   Ariel Colonomos, Sciences Po-CERI/CNRS

Discussant: Jérôme Sgard, Sciences Po-CERI

What are the temporal preferences of experts in global finance and what type of model for the future they elaborate? What is the role of financial predictions in the regulation of the global financial system? Does access to this ‘scientific’ expertise is a form of power over the present and the future and what are its implications for politics and the State?


2.30 – 4.00   The Future of Humanity: The Political Dimension
                        of Population Growth

"The Past Future": Why and How Past Population Predictions Failed
   Hervé Le Bras, EHESS
Conceiving the Future: Population Projections and the Political Uses of Prevision?
   Matthew Connelly, Columbia University

Discussant: Jenny Andersson, Sciences Po-CERI/CNRS

Demography has often been used as a tool to predict the future of humanity. Is demography a future-oriented science of the study of populations? What are or would be the political consequences and implications of such an assumption?

4.00 – 4.30   Coffee break


4.30 – 5.30   Conclusion: Where do we go from here?

Ce séminaire de déroule dans le cadre des projets SAB (Sciences Po) "The Political History of the Future" (resp. Jenny Andersson), et "Oracles" (resp. Ariel Colonomos)