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Past Conceptions of the Future

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lightbulbAbout this topic
Past conceptions of the future refer to historical perspectives, beliefs, and predictions about what the future would hold, shaped by cultural, social, and technological contexts of their time. This field examines how these anticipations influenced societal development, policy-making, and individual behavior, reflecting the hopes, fears, and aspirations of different eras.
lightbulbAbout this topic
Past conceptions of the future refer to historical perspectives, beliefs, and predictions about what the future would hold, shaped by cultural, social, and technological contexts of their time. This field examines how these anticipations influenced societal development, policy-making, and individual behavior, reflecting the hopes, fears, and aspirations of different eras.

Key research themes

1. How do cognitive and social mechanisms shape human prospective thinking about the future?

This theme explores the psychological and collective cognitive processes enabling humans to imagine, plan, and simulate possible future events. It addresses the nature of prospection as a guiding behavior, distinguishing constructive and spontaneous future thoughts, and examines collective dimensions of future thought including how groups project themselves forward. The understanding of these mechanisms matters because prospection informs decision-making, motivation, and social collaboration, and links past memory with future anticipation.

Key finding: Proposes the pragmatic prospection theory that people think about the future primarily to guide action towards desirable outcomes. Initial future imaginings tend to be optimistic, but planning involves realistic appraisals of... Read more
Key finding: Identifies two distinct cognitive routes for future thinking: a voluntary constructive process involving controlled elaboration, and a spontaneous process where 'pre-made' future events arise automatically, often... Read more
Key finding: Defines 'collective future thought' as imagining future events on behalf of or by groups, which is neurally and cognitively distinct from individual future thought. Collective prospection interacts with and reconstructs... Read more
Key finding: Synthesizes emerging research on spontaneous future cognition, linking it with studies on mind-wandering and prospective memory. The paper highlights the prevalence, mechanisms, and conditions under which spontaneous future... Read more
Key finding: Using experience sampling, reports that people think about the future more often than about the past or present in everyday conscious thought. Future-oriented thoughts have adaptive motivational functions linked to planning... Read more

2. What are the phenomenological and philosophical foundations of experiencing time and future temporality?

This theme investigates how humans experience time and the future on a phenomenological, metaphysical, and philosophical level. It includes discussions of temporal consciousness, the nature of temporal reality and tense, and the subjective sense of futurity. Exploring these concepts is fundamental to understanding how temporal experience informs cognition, decision-making, and metaphysical theorizing about reality.

Key finding: Critically assesses predictive processing (PP) models of time-consciousness relative to Husserl's phenomenology, concluding that current PP accounts embody a Kantian-Brentanian approach rather than Husserlian. PP frameworks... Read more
Key finding: Develops a phenomenological conception of the future as a ‘senseless coming’—a negativity that is never present but shapes perception and experience presently without specific expectation. Argues for an 'empty teleology'... Read more
Key finding: Proposes 'perspectivalism' as an anti-atemporalist metaphysical stance to uphold deep temporality, where reality is fundamentally tensed and temporally dynamic, divided into past, present, and future realms with moving... Read more
Key finding: Empirically tests and refutes the hypothesis that the phenomenology of robust temporal passage explains the cognitive bias toward preferring positive events in the future and negative events in the past (future-bias). While... Read more
Key finding: Analyzes future-bias—preference for positive events in the future and negative events in the past—through the lens of hypothetical time travel scenarios. Argues that permissibility of future-bias is not grounded in temporal... Read more

3. How do narratives, material culture, and metaphor shape human imagination and conceptualization of future possibilities?

This theme focuses on the role of narrative forms, physical artifacts, and linguistic/metaphorical structures in constructing and mediating human conceptions of the future. Research addresses how imagined futures are expressed, shared, and internalized socially and culturally, as well as how the future is materially embodied and oriented toward through narrative and imagination. These insights illuminate how futures are socially co-created and materially inscribed, impacting identity and action.

Key finding: Develops a narrative methodological framework and 'Letters from the Future' elicitation method to analyze how individuals construct personal future imaginings. Emphasizes the balance between narrative clarity and reach, the... Read more
Key finding: Finds that imagining desirable versus undesirable future events involves distinct scene construction processes, with positive scenarios eliciting richer sensory and spatial detail, faster generation, and less reliance on... Read more
Key finding: Explores the role of material culture in past actors’ future-oriented perceptions and actions, arguing that artifacts serve as starting points for envisioning and shaping possible futures. The paper highlights methodological... Read more
Key finding: Argues for a fictionalist interpretation of anticipatory cognition, positing that anticipators enact ‘make-believe’ existential agendas rather than literal representations, encompassing both creative and biased, fallible... Read more
Key finding: Shows that manipulating temporal units (time metrics) people use influences how connected and congruent their current self feels to their future self, affecting motivation and preparatory behavior. Rather than altering... Read more

All papers in Past Conceptions of the Future

Der Tod seiner Tochter Tullia im Februar 45 v. Chr. stürzte Cicero in tiefe Trauer. Zur Bewältigung seines Schmerzes verfasste er zunächst eine Trostschrift und fokussierte sich dann auf das Vorhaben, seine Tochter zu vergöttlichen und... more
På några få minuter var det över. Fem människor låg ihjälskjutna och lika många låg sårade, på grusvägen ner till hamnen, där i Lunde. En ung kvinna, Eira Söderberg, hade träffats av kulspruteeld. Klockan visade på ett par minuter före... more
Såsom Frank Slegers påpekar i sin ingress tar intervjun främst upp byråkratiseringen i samband med Sovjetunionens utveckling. Det är också mycket förståeligt. Intervjun gjordes bara ett par år efter att Sovjetunionen hade upplösts. Övriga... more
Såsom Frank Slegers påpekar i sin ingress tar intervjun främst upp byråkratiseringen i samband med Sovjetunionens utveckling. Det är också mycket förståeligt. Intervjun gjordes bara ett par år efter att Sovjetunionen hade upplösts. Övriga... more
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and... more
This volume brings together a range of international authors exploring commemorations of the Bolshevik Revolution from the perspective of the 2017 centenary. Contributors address the international echoes of the celebrations by sketching... more
Material culture is often described as a "survival" of the past in the present, be it in the form of evocative fragments or as "traces" enlisted in historical inquiry. The implicit preoccupation with our relationship with the past has... more
This general bibliography of Willi Munzenberg covers his book publications and the different types of literature about him. For the first time, such a bibliography includes the titles of books, articles and leaflets published after the... more
Representations of the future are part of any worldview. In opposition to the Christian notion of the Apocalypse, the Enlightenment paradigm suggested the idea of a bright future. In the beginning of the 2Oth century, many people all over... more
Representations of the future are part of any worldview. In opposition to the Christian notion of the Apocalypse, the Enlightenment paradigm suggested the idea of a bright future. In the beginning of the 2Oth century, many people all over... more
Whether Comrade Freeman is sick or whether he is clumsily concealing his hostile attitude to Soviet Russia and its leaders is hard to say, but to send a man like him on a responsible and dangerous assignment is risky in the highest... more
I Ryssland finns sedan lange ett stort intresse for den stora oredans tid. Sverige intervenerade och ockuperade Novgorod 1611-1617. Framgangarna i oster kan ses som upptakten till stormaktsvaldet. ...
In this rich and comprehensive edited volume, Michele Louro, Carolien Stolte, Heather Streets-Salter, and Sana Tannoury-Karam examine the lives and afterlives of the League Against Imperialism (LAI), a transnational anti-imperialist... more
En lättläst minibiografi över Rosa Luxemburg till hundraårsminnet, behövs den? Gärna. Att kunskapsrikt och pedagogiskt förmedla den aviga revolutionsmarxistens idéer och öde i en tid av alternativens slut kan knappast vara en... more
Svensk socialistisk kulturpolitik-enjamforande studie i socialdemokratisk och kommunistisk kultursyn 1917-1939 Swedish socialistic cultural policy-a comparative study of social democratic and communist approach towards culture 1917-1939... more
En kartläggning av det högerextrema nätverket på internet-strukturella mönster 2006-2011 Ralf Wiederer sammandrag: Ralf Wiederers artikel analyserar utvecklingen hos den extrema högerns nätverk på internet genom att undersöka relationerna... more
Mycket har skrivits om första världskriget och dess politiker och militärer, inte minst vid jubileerna hundra år efteråt, men mycket mindre om offren, krigsfångarna och hjälparbetarna. Den här boken handlar om det svenska Röda korsets... more
Third Communist International or Comintern was founded in Moscow in 1919 as a new proletarian international, which, according to Lenin, would begin the task of implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat. The recognition of the... more
This report will be consulting the consequences for Kim Philbys double agency during the cold war. The report will be a literature study with the subject to apprise if Kim Philby prevented a third war to break out. The main reason to... more
In my talk today, I will summon up the Danish experiences with two Danish-Russian Archive Projects since the end of the Cold War. I will tell you about the contexts and the archival and research results of the projects and hopefully... more
Review of Michele L. Louro's book on Jawaharlal Nehru's political journey and development as an anti-imperialist in the interwar period.
The Danish Social Democratic Youth League's transnational contacts in Scandinavia, in the Youth International by Willi Munzenberg and in the Zimmerwald movement by Angelica Balabanoff constantly pushed the league to adopt a more radical... more
Article published on Svenska Yle (in English: Swedish Yle), and written in Swedish. The article outlines the transnational connections of the Finnish national liberation struggle during the First World War, and how this endeavor was... more
The chapter focus on the pivotal role of the German communist Willi Münzenberg (1889-1940) in exploring the field of propaganda to connect various campaigns against colonialism, imperialism, fascism, and the war threat during the Weimar... more
Solidarite internationale avec ou sans la revolution mondiale? Mutation de l'internationalisme dans la Russie des Soviets Cet article examine comment et pourquoi la signification de « l'internationalisme» des debuts du bolchevisme se... more
Blog posted (in Swedish) on "Historiämnets blogg" Åbo Akademi University, 5 December 2016. The blog discuss my history and relation to Moscow as a site of experience and research, and how I feel connected to the place.
The chapter is published in the anthology Communist Histories. Volume 1, edited by Vijay Prasad (New Delhi: LeftWord Books, July 2016). The text focus on the deliberations, struggles and dilemma of the Communist International of coming to... more
Hoffrogge's research is a genuine service to both scholars and activists alike. It provides a meticulously detailed yet eminently readable account of a rich life of struggle that mirrored the fate of the German workers' movement itself:... more
This unpublished paper delineates and traces the origins and outcome of the League against Imperialism (LAI) in France between 1927 and 1929. Focus is on introducing and discussing the LAI's activities and transformation from a... more
A chronological survey and presentation on the history of the sympathising organisation the League Against Imperialism and for National Independence (1927-1937), published in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism,... more
The aim of this conference paper was to shed some light on the transnational connections of the sympathizing organization the League Against Imperialism and for National Independence (LAI) and its anti-imperial intentions, trying to act... more
This paper questions the historiography of the sympathizing organization the League against Imperialism (LAI 1927-37) by focusing the discussion on relevant facts and factors essential for a general understanding of the history of the LAI... more
This article narrates the emergence of socialism as an idea, and as a theoretical and practical concept. Focus is primarily on the leading personalities in socialist historiography, dating back from the "utopian socialists", Marx and... more
This postdoctoral research project aims to investigate and analyze the radicalism and transnational character of anti-colonial movements in a changing world, i.e. from the reverberations of the Versailles Peace Treaty in 1919, the... more
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