Presentation at the STEPS Conference 2010 - Pathways to Sustainability: Agendas for a new politics of environment, development and social justice http://www.steps-centre.org/events/stepsconference2010.html

1. Learning to rhyme: reflections on
foresight
STEPS Conference
24th September 2010
Michael Reilly
Foresight Research and Knowledge Management
Government Office for Science

2. What is Foresight?
Land Use Futures Mental Capital Sustainable Detection & Intelligent
and Wellbeing Energy & the Built Identification of Infrastructure
Environment Infectious Diseases Systems
Tackling Obesities: Brain Science Flooding & Cyber Trust & Exploiting the
Future Choices Addiction & Drugs Coastal Crime Prevention Electromagnetic
Defence Spectrum

3. Four discussion points on anticipating future
critical transitions and tipping points
• Exploring the future is contingent on understanding the past but without
becoming beholden to history
• Social structures create noise that can that make it difficult for us to hear the
signal of transition
• Need to improve our knowledge on social system dynamics at micro and
macro levels
• Could a data revolution and improved modelling capability be in of itself a
critical transition?

4. Obesity Systems Map1
Societal influences
Individual
psychology
Individual
Food activity Activity
Food Production
Consumption environment
Biology

5. Four key variables that act as conduits of
dispersed changes into the core engine2

6. Social Flood Vulnerability Index was a lens to
explore critical transitions for flooding in the UK3,4

7. Basic disease model – a systematic method for
gathering informed opinion and insights5

8. Zoonoses identified as one of eight global
disease risks6,7

9. Cognitive resilience and reserve are important
aspects of mental capital8
Cognitive resilience Cognitive reserve
“an individual’s successful adaptation “an individual’s resistance to
and functioning in the face of stress or impairment in cognitive processes eg
trauma” memory, reasoning and attention”
• Predictors for children - high levels •Evidence that education and
of intellectual functioning, strong occupational social class provide
attachment behaviour, optimism, some cognitive reserve
altruism and active coping styles •Appears to be affected by
• Predictors for adults - group environmental factors acting during
bonding, altruism and effective adulthood
performance under stress •Recent evidence suggests that
• Religious coping and social support cognitive reserve is not fixed, and can
also confer resilience be increased through physical or
• May become possible to strengthen mental activity, social stimulation, and
resilience through pharmacological potentially also through medication or
and non-pharmacological means dietary interventions

10. The volatility of the price of rice has risen
significantly in the last twenty years9
Changes in volatility over time. Lavender coloured bars, 1970–1989; magenta bars,
1990–2009.

11. Export restrictions played a particularly
significant role in the rice price peak of 200810
The effects of export restrictions on rice, 2007/08

12. William Sewell suggested a simple duality of
social structure that can explain transformation11
• Cultural schemas (or rules) are the code (or DNA) of a society
• Resources embody their and fortify their schemas
• Social structures therefore have reproductive bias
• But transformation in social structure can be explained
• Structures are diverse, subject to agency, they can intersect, schemas are
transposable, resource accumulation is unpredictable

13. Diffusion of innovation has two complementary
theories based on weak and strong social ties
• Weak ties (eg acquaintances) can
provide remarkable shortcuts
between remote clusters12
• Takes only a small fraction of these
shortcuts to reduce the degree of
separation in highly clustered
networks13
• But strong ties (eg friends) may be
required to provide social
reinforcement for adoption of
riskier innovations14
• Social relations, structure and
network size are important
explanatory variables

14. Can demographic-structural theory explain
critical socio-political transitions in history15?
Integrative secular trend Disintegrative secular trend
Variables Expansion Stagflation Crisis Depression/Intercycle
Population dynamics Low; Rate of growth High; Rate of growth Declines; Rate of Low; Declines or
accelerates decelerates decline accelerates stagnates
Elite dynamics Low to moderate Competition; High numbers; conflict Reductions; civil war
numbers; modest conspicuous cons.; and downward mobility;
consumption counter-elites consumption collapse
Socio-political Low point Low but increasing Peaks High but declining
instability
Taxes Increasing Stagnant or declining in Tax system in state of Variable; periods of high
real terms; heavy crisis taxes alternate with
burden on peasantry collapse of system
Internal peace and Increasing; a ‘golden High but unravelling; Uprisings; interelite Recurrent civil war;
order age’ resistance to taxation conflicts; political fragmentation

15. References
1. Foresight. 2007. Tacking Obesities. Government Office for Science
2. Ibid.
3. Foresight. 2004. Volume I: Future risks and their drivers. Flooding and Coastal
Defence. Office for Science and Innovation.
4. Tapsell, S.M et al. 2002. Vulnerability to flooding: health and social dimensions. Phil.
Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A 360, 1511-1525
5. Foresight. 2006. Risk analysis. The Detection and Identification of Infectious
Diseases.
6. Foresight. 2006. Future Threats. The Detection and Identification of Infectious
Diseases.
7. Zommers, Z. and McDonald, D. 2006. The wildlife trade and global disease
emergence. Office for Science and Innovation.
8. Foresight. 2008. Mental capital through life: future challenges. Mental Capital and
Wellbeing. Government Office for Science.

16. References
9. Gilbert, C.L. and Morgan, C.W. 2010. Food price volatility. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 365,
3023-3034.
10. International Food Research Policy Institute.
11. Sewell, W. H. 1992. A theory of structure: duality, agency and transformation. The
American Journal of Sociology 98, 1-29.
12. Granovetter, M.S. 1973. The strength of weak ties. The American Jounral of
Sociology 78, 1360-1380
13. Watts, D. J. and Strogatz, S.H. 1998. Collective dynamics of ‘small-worl’ networks.
Nature 393, 440-442.
14. Centola, D. and Macy, M. 2005. Complex contagion and the weakness of long ties.
15. Turchin, P. and Nefedov, S. 2009. Secular cycles. US; Princeton University Press.

17. Learning to rhyme: reflections on
foresight
Michael Reilly, Foresight Research
STEPS Conference
24th September 2010