La Obediencia como concepto teológico fundamental

historically used in very different contexts, and how different types of scenarios are currently categorised. In a later section of this chapter (1.4.4) I will discuss the influence that these methods had in the field of design and how they have been adapted for speculative, rather than anticipatory, purposes.

Scenarios are plausible, challenging and relevant stories about how the future might unfold (Hunt et al. 2012), developed to inform strategies or to guide interventions (Börjeson et al. 2006). Originally developed to plan military strategies, their history unfolds along diverging paths.

As anticipated in 1.3, after World War II scenario planning as a method was transferred from the military to the civil world. In the US, in the early days of the Cold War, Herbert Kahn was credited with developing a methodology to provide a comprehensive overview of all the different possible futures that a potential nuclear crisis could bring about. He did so first with RAND Corporation (an American global policy think tank), and later on at the Hudson Institute, the American conservative organisation that he co-funded and that is still in operation. Kahn’s scenarios are probabilistic assessments of future, that focus on causal sequences of possible events and on the role of decision making (Kahn and Wiener 1968).

In the US, Scenario planning methods have later on been adopted in the private sector by companies looking for effective tools to support long-term strategies. One of the definitions of scenario in this context, provided by Peter Schwartz in “The art of the Long View” (1996) is: “a tool for ordering one’s perceptions about alternative future environments in which one’s decisions might be played out.” One of the first companies to adopt “scenario analysis” as a strategic tool was Royal Dutch/Shell, where Kahn’s approach was developed to include human behaviour as one of the non-quantifiable,

critical factors influencing pathways towards the future (van der Heijden 2005). Scenarios have been used at Shell to test initial ideas for projects and interventions against different alternative futures, with the objective of planning for flexibility. This flexibility consisted in the ability of being prepared to rearrange and take the right decisions once the key patterns that identify the emergence of one particular scenarios are detected (van der Heijden 2005). As introduced in 1.3, this approach enabled Shell to identify the first signs of the oil crisis, and to react accordingly.

In the same period, in France, scenarios were adopted to develop public policies and planning strategies. Unlike the North American approach to scenarios (that took a global perspective), French scenarios were mostly narrowly focussed, and with a normative aim (Bradfield et al. 2005).

Scenarios have also been widely used in research on resilience and sustainability, initially as a reaction to the Buntland Commission’s 1987 report “Our Common Future”. In 1991, four years after “Our Common Future” was published, Tellus Institute and Stockholm Environmental Institute, started the Polestar Project (polestar.org). The aim of the project was to develop scientifically-grounded ways to examine long-range socio- ecological prospects, evaluate policy adjustments and their implications. The research resulted in the creation of the PoleStar System, a computer-based tool intended to support the construction of integrated, long-range scenarios primarily based on quantitative data.

In 1995 Tellus Institute and Stockolm Environmental Institute assembled the Global Scenario Group (GSG), an interdisciplinary and international group that creates, evaluates, and refines scenarios of alternative futures for the 21st _{Century (GSG 1995).}

According to the GSG, “a scenario is a story, told in words and numbers, describing the way events might unfold. If constructed with rigor and imagination, scenarios help us to explore where we might be headed, but more, offering guidance on how to act now to direct the flow of events toward a desirable future” (http://www.gsg.org/gsgintro.html) The first set of scenarios was proposed in 1997, and consisted of three main scenarios and six variants. Other research groups and institutions have developed global scenarios to reflect on alternative futures at different scales. Hunt et al. (2012) collected a set of 160 scenarios produced between 1997 and 211, and identified that four of the six variations of GSG scenarios constitute recurring scenario archetypes that appear in various forms in most of the sets. These are named: Policy reform, Market forces, Fortress World, and New sustainability Paradigm. A full description of each scenario is available at http://www.gsg.org. Hunt and colleagues demonstrate in their review how this set of scenarios highly influenced the way in which futures are portrayed by various groups of academics conducting research in environmental, social, and engineering fields. 1.3.1.1 A characterization of scenarios

As a strategic planning tool, scenarios have been used in many different fields, and for this reason there is very little agreement on methods and even ways of classifying the many existing approaches. Börjeson and others provide a comprehensive

characterization of scenario types and techniques based on literature and case studies reviews (2006).

This typology (Figure 3) identifies three distinct main questions that different types of scenarios ask: what will happen? What can happen? How can a specific target be reached?

“Predictive scenarios” respond to the first question (“what will happen?”). Predictive scenarios claim to describe probable futures given existing trends. They are either forecasts

(elaborating on what is most likely to happen) or what if scenarios (answering specific questions on what is most likely to happen in case of specific events in the near-future). “Explorative Scenarios” deal with possible futures, and the question of “what can happen?” They normally are developed as sets of scenarios, and “explore situations or developments that are regarded as possible to happen, usually from a variety of

perspectives” (Börjeson et al. 2006, 727). They can be External, i.e. dealing with aspects that are entirely beyond the control of relevant actors (like in the case of the GSG scenarios) or Strategic, i.e. incorporating possible interventions “at the hand of the intended scenario users to cope wit the issue at stake” (Börjeson et al. 2006, 728). The scenarios used in the 1970s by Royal Dutch/Shell were strategic scenarios.

Finally, Normative scenarios are those that explore preferable futures, and ask: “how can a specific target be reached?” Normative scenarios suggest either how to reach a

particular target when to act within an existing system (Preserving scenarios) or how to structurally transform those aspects the prevailing system that prevent us from reaching the desired target (Transforming scenarios). Unlike in the other two categories of scenarios in the typology, the actors that are involved in building Normative scenarios adopt an active and generative role in thinking about the future.

Figure 3 Adapted from Börjeson et al. (2006): Scenario typology with three categories and six types

In this section I presented an overview of scenario-making as a methodology employed in future studies to support strategic decision making through attempts at rational modelling. However, scenarios reveal just as much of the scenario maker as they do of the future they portray. As Dator writes in his review of future studies: “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us” (2007, 2)4_.

Futurist Andrew Curry writes that “one of the problems with much futures analysis is that if it is any good it produces far too much 'variety' for the organisation (or group of organisations) to process it effectively” (2009, 119). Scenarios are therefore to be looked at critically, as processes of learning, framing, synthesis, and negotiation rather than value-free windows to the future (Curry 2009). As it will be further explained in the following section, this also means that the power of dominant groups to influence discourse (Son 2015) should not be discredited.

4 _{In reality, although not indicated in Dator’s text, this is likely not to be an original statement of the author, This quote is most commonly} attributed to Marshal McLuhan, who was citing in turn an article titled “A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan” by John M. Culkin (1967).