Abstract:

 In Uncertainty by Design Limor Samimian-Darash presents cases of the use of scenario technology in the fields of security and emergency preparedness, energy, and health by analyzing scenario narratives and practices at the National Emergency Management Authority in Israel, the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Europe, and the World Energy Council.Humankind has long struggled with the uncertainty of the future, with how to foresee the future, imagine alternatives, or prepare for and guard against undesirable eventualities. Scenario—or scenario planning—emerged in recent decades to become a widespread means through which states, large corporations, and local organizations imagine and prepare for the future.The scenario technology cases examined in Uncertainty by Design provide a useful lens through which to view contemporary efforts to engage in an overall journey of discovering the future, along with the modality of governing involved in these endeavors to face future uncertainties. Collectively, they enable us to understand in depth how scenarios express a new governing modality. This book sheds light on a technology for systematically thinking, envisioning, and preparing for future uncertainties: the scenario – an uncertainty-based technology that not only accepts the potential uncertainty of the future but also promotes uncertainty as a mode of observing and acting in the world. The book presents sociocultural perspectives and anthropological research on cases where the scenario has been used within the fields of security and emergency preparedness, energy, and health, analyzing and comparing scenario narratives and practices at Israel’s National Emergency Management Authority, the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Europe, and the World Energy Council. Taken together, these cases provide a useful lens through which to view contemporary attempts to address future uncertainties with a new modality of governing here termed “uncertainty by design” – a mode of governing that is based on imagination, potentiality, and acceptance of the emergent and the unpredictable, but that is nonetheless a designed practice, one that has specific rules and systems for creating, narrating, and using the future stories that make up the scenario.