Causal Layered Analysis

Causal layered analysis (CLA) is a critical futures method developed by Sohail Inayatullah and set out in his 1998 paper 'Causal layered analysis: Poststructuralism as method.' Rather than forecasting, its aim is to open up the space of possible futures by reading an issue at four levels of depth. The surface 'litany' of headlines and accepted trends sits atop systemic causes, which rest in turn on the worldviews and discourses that legitimate them, all anchored in deep myths and metaphors. By moving down through these layers to expose the assumptions and narratives beneath a problem — and then reconstructing upward from a transformed deep story — CLA produces futures that differ not merely in detail but in their underlying logic.