Design and Futures Anthropologies for Transitions: Reframing the Journey to Net Zero

In this chapter, we bring an anthropological approach into dialogue with the ambitions toward net zero futures manifested in the interdisciplinary approach of Transition Management. How could a futures anthropology that acknowledges uncertainty, possibility, plurality, and contestability of futures beneficially complicate Transition Management's multi-level socio-technical temporalities and representations of transitions? In considering this question, we draw on our interdisciplinary research across anthropology, design, and transitions, undertaken in a university precinct involved in an intentional process of transition to Net Zero futures. We highlight and demonstrate two new concepts-anticipatory infrastructures and anticipatory realism-through which we go beyond a simple critique of dominant measurement-based approaches to net zero, to propose the mobilisation of alternative layers of knowledge and imaginaries.