Abstract
This reflections article is a comment upon Rhys Jones’ paper (in this issue) which deals with the geographies of the governance of the future. I suggest that the constant production of governmental imaginaries dealing with the future should be understood as “future work” that is an essential dimension of a broader phenomenon of “territory work” whereby processes of re-territorialization and de-territorialization come together. The active attempt to “know” and cope with the future should be understood as an essential constituent of all governing activities without which the rationality of governance would lose much of its meaning. Governance of the future, as it occurs in governmental practices and associated imaginaries that translate the future into a governable object, is an essential dimension in the ongoing remaking of territories of wealth, power and belonging. This process merits more geographical examination and commentary.
Highlights
As the enlightening paper by professor Rhys Jones (2019) underscores, the spatiality of the future is produced in the present in diverse practices of governance, steering, political economy and institutional arrangements
The study of the governance of the future is too important to be left to Futures Studies, let alone to futurologists for whom the future is synonym to technological development or economic calculus
In his book Seeing like a State, Scott (1998) suggest that the central dimension of the modern state is “legibility”, which refers to the practices of rationalizing and standardization of state space into administratively convenient format
Summary
S. (2019) Governing political spaces through “future work” – commentary to Jones. This reflections article is a comment upon Rhys Jones’ paper (in this issue) which deals with the geographies of the governance of the future. I suggest that the constant production of governmental imaginaries dealing with the future should be understood as “future work” that is an essential dimension of a broader phenomenon of “territory work” whereby processes of re-territorialization and de-territorialization come together. Governance of the future, as it occurs in governmental practices and associated imaginaries that translate the future into a governable object, is an essential dimension in the ongoing remaking of territories of wealth, power and belonging. This process merits more geographical examination and commentary
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