Compare methods

	Image of the Future Analysis	Ethnographic Futures Research
Field	Futures Foresight Studies	Futures Foresight Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1973	1980
Originator	Fred Polak (Frederik Lodewijk Polak)	Robert B. Textor
Type	Interpretive cultural-analysis pipeline of a society's prevailing future-images	Interview-based ethnographic pipeline for eliciting anticipatory scenarios
Seminal source	Polak, F. (1973). The Image of the Future (E. Boulding, Trans. & Abr.). Elsevier Scientific Publishing.	Glenn, J. C., & Gordon, T. J. (Eds.). (2009). Futures Research Methodology, Version 3.0. The Millennium Project. ISBN: 9780981894119
Aliases	Polak Image of the Future, Image-of-the-Future Method, Prevailing Future-Image Analysis, Polak's Influence-and-Essence Analysis	EFR, Textor Ethnographic Futures Research, Ethnographic Futures Interviewing, Cultural Futures Elicitation
Related	3	3
Summary	Image of the future analysis, developed by the Dutch sociologist Fred Polak, studies the collective images a society holds of its own future and argues that these images exert a powerful pull on present action and so help shape the future they imagine. In his monumental work The Image of the Future, abridged and translated by Elise Boulding, Polak surveyed the rise and fall of civilizations and contended that cultures flourish when they hold compelling, positive images of a future worth striving for, and decline when those images fade or turn dark. The method analyzes future-images along two dimensions: their essence — whether the imagined future is good or bad, optimistic or pessimistic — and the degree of human influence they assume — whether people can shape that future or are merely subject to it. By reading a society's art, literature, ideology, and discourse for its prevailing future-images, the analyst diagnoses the cultural energy available to propel the society forward.	Ethnographic futures research (EFR), developed by the anthropologist Robert Textor, is a qualitative method that elicits people's images of the future through in-depth ethnographic interviews structured around three scenarios: a realistically optimistic future, a realistically pessimistic future, and the future the respondent considers most probable. Rather than imposing the researcher's drivers or categories, the interviewer draws out each informant's own anticipatory thinking in their own terms, asking them to imagine and describe each of the three futures over a defined horizon. Aggregating and analyzing these accounts across many culturally knowledgeable respondents reveals a society's or group's shared hopes, fears, and expectations — its collective anticipatory culture. Catalogued in Glenn and Gordon's Futures Research Methodology, EFR brings the rigor and respondent-centeredness of ethnography to foresight, complementing the more macro, cultural reading of future-images with grounded, individual-level elicitation.