Ethnographic Futures Research

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.