Introduction: An anthropology of futures and technologies

This introductory chapter presents a move towards An Anthropology of Futures and Technologies. It joins recent arguments made by the authors and their colleagues, in what is fast becoming a movement which argues that thinking critically about technologies and possible, plausible and impossible futures is insufficient. Instead, insisting that anthropology must now propose alternative ways, rooted in ethnography, to approach and engage with what is coming and to contest dominant narratives of industry, policy and government.

In doing so, the Introduction discusses both methods and horizons for an anthropology of futures and technologies. It introduces the ten chapters and their cross-cutting arguments, as they examine theoretically and ethnographically – from a very tangible and situated perspective – how new technologies come about, and people and technologies participate in constituting futures that cannot be predicted or necessarily imagined. Turning to early works in the field, it raises questions about our relation to technology. It both highlights our futures with specific technologies and questions the ‘essence’ of technology in terms of how our relationship to it becomes a specific ‘enframing’ in Heidegger’s term, something that dominates how we perceive the world.